Letters to the Editor. Fair play at the UN?

I read with interest your informative article [``The United Nations at 40,'' Oct. 17]. However, the author asks the question ``Is it realistic to give the same voting power at the UN to small countries . . . as to the US and the Soviet Union?'' While it is true that the United States, with 225 million or so inhabitants, does in fact have an equal voice in the General Assembly with such small island nations as Grenada and the Seychelles, the Soviet Union has three votes. This has always struck me as unfair, since it is represented in the UN as the ``USSR,'' ``the Ukrainian SSR,'' and ``Byelorussia.'' How come Texas and California don't have their own seats? Add to that the rubber-stamp votes of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and the German Democratic Republic. How many times do these nations diverge from the ``correct'' voting line of Moscow?

Meanwhile, the US foots the bill for 25 percent of UN expenses, while the three Russias and entourage pay for half that amount. I am not at all against the UN, its idealism, and its many contributions to the world. But its present form has become a sad shadow of what it once was supposed to be. Lenard E. Davis Newport Beach, Calif.

In the Sept. 30 article, ``Supreme Court to `get down to business,' '' the writer referred to the ``comparable-worth employment statute from the state of Washington which was recently struck down by the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals'' as ``the nation's first test of the controversial principle that public jobs requiring similar skills, duties, and qualifications be compensated at equal wages regardless of whether they are performed by men or women.'' In fact, the decision makes no reference to jobs of ``similar skills, duties, and qualifications.''

What it struck down was the ``comparable worth'' theory that compares ``employees in male-dominated jobs with employees in dissimilar female-dominated jobs.'' The classic comparable-worth complaints have been based on dissimilar jobs like nurses and tree trimmers and secretaries and truck drivers.

Furthermore, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 does require that in all employment, public and private, jobs requiring equal effort, skill, and responsibility be paid the same regardless of whether they are performed by men or women. Eliza Paschall Atlanta

Letters are welcome. Only a selection can be published and none individually acknowledged. All are subject to condensation. Please address letters to ``readers write.''