As I said, I retired to spend more time with my children. The man hired to replace me was a director from the hospital that is half owner of the business. He had experience managing a medical floor and people, but no experience running a business. As a director in the hospital, he made more approximately $2000/year more than I did, and when he was hired to my position as administrator, he was given another $2000. He has much less experience, does not know anything about dialysis and I am teaching him as a consultant. I am bothered by the inequality in pay and wondered if I had any recourse since I have retired. Thank you for your time. I have enjoyed your site, it is full of information. - Jodi

Thanks for your note. Unfortunately, I don't believe that you have any recourse for making up for the pay inequity that you experienced. However, what you do have as an "outsider/consultant" is leverage. For instance, often times people fear pursuing job discrimination claims, because of the repucussions at work--i.e. they might be hired, hated by everyone at work, etc. What you have is the advantage of being free from all that. And you also probably have more liberty to talk to people at all levels of the company--and thus more room to discover where inequities still exist.

Perhaps you could call on the company to do an internal evaluation of sorts. Each level of employee, gender and salary. The goal being comparable worth--jobs should be based on what they are worth regardless of the person filling them. This prevents the company from making excuses such as "well, he has more education..."

The current problem with pay equity laws is that they leave too much room for people to fall through the cracks. For instance, the laws only apply to companies with a certain number of employees--I think over 50. Also, employers get around the laws, because they make excuses that education is more valuable and other times, experience. This is why the job needs a value.

I hope that's clear and I hope that though you won't see justice in your experience, justice might come from your experience.

—Amy