Deserving librarians. (Letters).

SIR: Editorials are an exercise in pomposity at the best of times. But given their usual here-is-the-verdict-from-the-font-of-all-wisdom tone, those who compile them might at least try to get the facts right. Your June effort on the subject of pay rises for New South Wales librarians is replete with patronising comments about them but blessed with very little understanding of the Industrial Relations Commission decision which granted them long-overdue wage improvements.

Leaving aside the absence of real argument to support most of its assertions, the editorial's major failing is simply that it is wrong. Three examples will suffice. First, you state that wage increases granted to librarians were "based on ... an invalid comparison ... with geologists". The full bench reviewed comparisons with, among others, psychologists, teachers, scientific officers, legal officers, geologists, engineers, administrative and clerical staff. In doing so, the bench made it clear that such comparisons were not made on the basis that librarians' work per se was of equal value to that of those other categories. What comparison did establish, however, was that only the work of librarians had not been assessed for changing work value over the past twenty years.

Second, you assert that "the real issue is the absurd notion that work in female-dominated industries is historically undervalued". Space obviously precludes my dealing fully with this remarkable observation. But tell that to successive generations of women and see what reaction you get. For present purposes, Justice Mary Gaudron's well-known observation covers the point well: "We got equal pay once, then we got it again and now we still don't have it."

Third, you claim that "in the case of libraries it is historically untrue that it was mainly a female profession"; that "it is only in the past twenty years or so that women have come to dominate the profession"; that "there is no evidence that salaries have been driven down by women entering it". In the New South Wales case, evidence put before the Pay Equity Inquiry confirmed that as long ago as 1930 there was 85 per cent female employment in the State Library, but largely unqualified men held the senior positions. Those men enjoyed salaries on a par with other professionals across the public sector. It was only when more women gained senior positions that relativities declined. Further evidence showed that in 1955, 83 per cent of female librarians held tertiary qualifications compared with only 60 per cent of men. Yet female librarians' pay was lower than that of their male counterparts and was falling relative to other professions with which librarianship had previously had parity. For your information, what actually happened was that as women came to dominate the librarian workforce, qualification levels increased but relative pay fell.

Finally, you simplistically (and ideologically) observe that "since libraries are chiefly a matter of public sector employment, there is no appropriate basis for market comparisons. Any other form of evaluation of [the] value of work must be based on non-economic considerations, and hence must be irrelevant to wage comparisons". The many well-known national and international companies conducting comprehensive job evaluations for private and public organisations will doubtless be interested to find their systems are irrelevant. ...