Dear Joyce: Three years ago, my current employer (company A) bought the firm (company B) where I had worked for four years. Two years ago, it bought still another firm (company C). The offices for companies B and C are in different geographical markets.

Company C office management now supervises the old company B office where I work. We are still separate but soon will be merged into one unit at one location. The problem: a two-tier pay system. Pay disparities at all levels existed between B and C offices and continue today, despite company A's emphasis on "one office" and "one team."

Morale is low in our office, B, because we believe the pay levels should be the same as office C. After all, we're doing virtually the same work and will eventually be merged into a single office. Not only is the pay inequity an irritation because of its basic unfairness, but I recently graduated with a master's degree in business and want to be paid market value for my skills and abilities. The people in office C with the same credentials and work tasks are paid up to 35 percent more than I am.

Should I (1) go to my boss in office C, (2) appeal to the human resources department, or (3) leave the company? I'd rather stay than leave if I can accomplish a compensation adjustment. Advice? -- S.O.

Dear S.O.: Americans loathe unfairness. Being ethical includes having a sense of what's just and fair, and most people think "like work demands like pay." Three examples briefly illustrate: Remember the two-tier pay system controversy associated with the airlines? The two-tier heyday was in the 1980s, when airlines seeking to increase profitability sought to pay new pilots about half of what current pilots earned. But market forces and a good economy in the 1990s ended that managerial misstep. Think back a few years ago to the uproar caused by a United Parcel Service strike when part-timers were fed up with a two-tier system that paid them about half the rate of full-time core workers for the same tasks in many cases. And of course, the cry for equal pay for equal work, in a gender version, fueled the Equal Pay Act of 1963.

In your situation, you don't have a union to negotiate contracts or anti-discrimination law to back your insistence on equity. So you'll have to act on your own, largely basing your appeal on an employer's sense of fairness. But while predicating your request for pay equity on fairness is a powerful argument, it doesn't always work, so flesh out your campaign with advance planning. Here's what I'd do: