Equality at Work

Abstract

Discrimination in the labour market is a longstanding problem. It exists because employers make recruitment, training and promotion decisions on grounds which are irrelevant from the point of view of the economic performance of the labour concerned. Their decisions should be based on characteristics such as price and productiveness, but instead they are guided by ones to which they should be indifferent such as gender, race, age, and able-bodiedness. The specific labour involved — the people subject to discrimination — is devalued. Under the pure model of market forces, this devaluation should not exist, in reality it does, and has existed for a very long time.