[Code of Federal Regulations]
[Title 29, Volume 4]
[Revised as of July 1, 2003]
From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access
[CITE: 29CFR1620.17]

[Page 301-302]
 
                             TITLE 29--LABOR
 
                               COMMISSION
 
PART 1620--THE EQUAL PAY ACT--Table of Contents
 
Sec. 1620.17  Jobs requiring equal responsibility in performance.

    (a) In general. The equal pay standard applies to jobs the 
performance of which requires equal responsibility. Responsibility is 
concerned with the degree of accountability required in the performance 
of the job, with emphasis on the importance of the job obligation. 
Differences in the degree of responsibility required in the performance 
of otherwise equal jobs cover a wide variety of situations. The 
following illustrations in subsection (b), while by no means exhaustive, 
may suggest the nature or degree of differences in responsibility which 
will constitute unequal work.
    (b) Comparing responsibility requirements of jobs. (1) There are 
many situations where one employee of a group performing jobs which are 
equal in other respects is required from time to time to assume 
supervisory duties for reasons such as the absence of the regular 
supervisor. Suppose, for instance, that it is the employer's practice to 
pay a higher wage rate to such a ``relief'' supervisor with the 
understanding that during the intervals in which the employee performs 
supervisory duties the employee is in training for a supervisory 
position. In such a situation, payment of the higher rate to the 
employee might well be based solely on the additional responsibility 
required to perform the job and the equal pay provisions would not 
require the same rates to be paid to an employee of the opposite sex in 
the group who does not have an equal responsibility. There would clearly 
be no question concerning such a wage rate differential if the employer 
pays the higher rate to both men and women who are called upon from time 
to time to assume such supervisory responsibilities.
    (2) Other differences in responsibilities of employees in generally 
similar jobs may require similar conclusions. Sales clerks, for example, 
who are engaged primarily in selling identical or similar merchandise 
may be given different responsibilities. Suppose that one employee of 
such a group (who may be either a man or a woman) is authorized and 
required to determine whether to accept payment for purchases by

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personal checks of customers. The person having this authority to accept 
personal checks may have a considerable, additional degree of 
responsibility which may materially affect the business operations of 
the employer. In this situation, payment of a higher wage rate to this 
employee would be permissible.
    (3) On the other hand, there are situations where one employee of 
the group may be given some minor responsibility which the others do not 
have (e.g., turning out the lights in his or her department at the end 
of the business day) but which is not of sufficient consequence or 
importance to justify a finding of unequal responsibility. As another 
example of a minor difference in responsibility, suppose that office 
employees of both sexes work in jobs essentially alike but at certain 
intervals a male and female employee performing otherwise equal work 
within the meaning of the statute are responsible for the office 
payroll. One of these employees may be assigned the job of checking time 
cards and compiling the payroll list. The other, of the opposite sex, 
may be required to make out paychecks, or divide up cash and put the 
proper amounts into pay envelopes after drawing a payroll check. In such 
circumstances, although some of the employees' duties are occasionally 
dissimilar, the difference in responsibility involved would not appear 
to be of a kind that is recognized in wage administration as a 
significant factor in determining wage rates. Under such circumstances, 
this difference would seem insufficient to justify a wage rate 
differential between the man's and woman's job if the equal pay 
provisions otherwise apply.