Government Wages and Racial Pay Parity

The US federal government relies on wage scales to establish wage rates for many of its employees. One of those scales is the Federal Wage System, or FWS. The FWS was passed in 1972 and is used to set the wages of many blue-collar workers.

How did the FWS come to be in the first place? Therein lies a tale of workers—and specifically African American workers—who mobilized to make sure the FWS was adopted.

It all started with a union of federal workers called the American Federation of Government Employees. Formed in the early 1930s, the AFGE began as a largely white union that initially involved itself with women's issues; it even pushed through a maternity leave bill in 1949. But its concern for women workers did not translate into a concern for black workers—not yet. 

That began to change in the 1960s. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, more and more blacks began to be hired for federal jobs. It was then that the question of organizing them arose. The AFGE took up the charge. The effort to organize black workers was led by a man named Ralph Biser, a former auto repairman and Metal Trades unionist, and a man named John Griner, who was elected head of the union in exchange for promising to work on behalf of black-worker issues.

By 1967, the AFGE was ready for action, pushing for a bill in Congress that would improve the pay of black workers in laundry services, housekeeping, and dining. Crucial was the testimony before Congress of a man named Royal Sims, the union's most prominent black member. Sims worked with Griner to draw up a bill to present to Congress. Republicans opposed the bill, and President Nixon even vetoed one version of it. But by then, other unions had rallied to support the AFGE, and momentum was building. “We are being faced with a grave situation,” Griner told Congress. “Militancy among this group of employees is on the increase. All they are asking for is justice and equity. I say to you, they are not getting justice and equity.” Finally, in 1972, Nixon struck a political deal with Griner and signed the Federal Wage System into law. 

This account of the Federal Wage System draws on a new article in Politics & Society titled "Racial Pay Parity in the Public Sector: The Overlooked Role of Employee Mobilization," by Isabel M. Perera, an assistant professor of government at Cornell University, and Desmond King, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of American Government at the University of Oxford. Unlike previous researchers, Perera and King stress the role of worker mobilization in the passing of the wage system. Thanks to the FWS and other scales like it, black workers have found a level of pay parity with whites that is missing in the private sector.