The pay equity study, which recently found that city employees, especially women and minorities are significantly underpaid compared to the region's labor market, also shows that city government as a whole is "designed to discriminate" against women and minorities, City Council President Doug Shields said this morning during a review of the study.

"Whether by intent or by sloth," Mr. Shields said, city government has long established a culture of marginalizing women and minorities, in many cases relying on an entrenched system of political patronage to hire less women and minorities and to pay them less than their white counterparts, particularly white males.

"These things are known to us who have worked here for many years," Mr. Shields said, during a post-agenda council session to discuss the 156-page study-- Comprehensive Study of Positions Within Pittsburgh City Government-- that was released early this month.

The study of city compensation, pushed forward by the Women and Girls Foundation, looked into 44 of the city's 610 job classifications, and found that many workers were underpaid compared to peers with other organizations in the region's labor market.

For example, the study by Evergreen Solutions LLC found that the city's network technicians make $32,728 less than their counterparts in the local market. Internal auditors get $25,234 less, legal secretaries $13,934 less, firefighter recruits $5,315 less, and second-year police officers $4,893 less than comparable workers in the region.

More than that, however, Heather Arnet, executive director of the Women and Girls Foundation, Mr. Shields and other city council members said, a more insidious aspect of the study's conclusions was a significant wage disparity for women and minorities in city government.

Mr. Shields cited some of study's key conclusions that "the female employee average [salary] is almost $10,000 less than the male employee average." He said city government politics and patronage continue to play a role in the hiring and wage equity of women and minorities.

The study also concludes: "Female earnings equal only 79.9 percent of average male earnings or a 20 percent wage gap. This is almost identical to the average ... there is significant difference between male and female pay levels among city employees."

More details in tomorrow's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.