Skip to main content

Today's Poll: Should there be new laws to ensure equal pay for women?

By Howard B. Owens
Dave Meyer

Let's see....slightly over 50% of the population are women and 33% of the people voting voted no. (gee....I wonder what gender those voters were :))

How do you vote no on this poll unless you believe that there are existing laws that already cover this issue which are not being enforced.

Jan 25, 2013, 11:08am Permalink
Randy Smart

The way that politicians do things, or word things, if such a law is passed it is easy to imagine a day when that law would be used adversely against women. For example, "I'm sorry Daphne but we can't give you that raise that you deserve because then you would be making more than Fred, and we can't afford to give him a raise too. You know that the law says that the wages must be equal."

Jan 25, 2013, 11:34am Permalink
Dave Olsen

You are quite correct Randy. This idea is chock full of unintended consequences. I'm going to guess this idea was floated by some attorney's group. There are already so many confusing laws, that you really have no choice but to hire a lawyer to sort it out. Currently there are at least 8 Federal Laws making pay discrimination except for merit or seniority illegal. How many more do we really need?

http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/index.cfm

Jan 25, 2013, 12:46pm Permalink
david spaulding

i gave a NO vote for a couple of reasons,first being i don't need anymore government in my life and second,i work for a company,put in 5 years,work my way up pay scale,now another person gets hired on,and it happens to be a woman,she starts out at my current pay...she gets a free ride all because she is a woman....yes she is doing the exact same job as me...
sour grares?don't think so,i had to prove myself to my employer,all she would have to do is show up and claim some kind of discrimination.then my employer is hiring lawyers while she sits back,scott free waiting for a settlement......NO more laws,let's deal with the ones we have now.

Jan 25, 2013, 1:20pm Permalink
Jeff Allen

All people should get equal pay for equal work regardless of distinctives and there are sufficient laws on the books to enforce it. We DON'T NEED MORE LAWS! How about one more law....For every law passed, two antiquated or redundant ones need to be taken off the books.

Jan 25, 2013, 5:53pm Permalink
Bob Harker

Do we have to have a law for everything??!! Just about everybody agrees that we are over regulated, over taxed, and have way too much government.

Do I believe that equal performance should be met with equal compensation, no matter gender (or any other personal attribute)?

Absolutely!

Do we need to further government intrusion into the private sector to accomplish it? I think not.

Lets be real. Business is all about profit. (No, liberals, that's not a bad thing). Any serious business owner will look at ALL employees from an ROI perspective. It's all about the bottom line. I assert that in business (not the public sector) the "good old boy" mentality long ago breathed it's last breath.

Side note on government wisdom: The company I work for just lost a valuable NYS agency as a customer.

Why? Our company is not minority owned.

Although the state will be paying MUCH more (about 42% more as best as I can figure) of our tax dollars to a minority owned company, the product and service WE will be paying for is of much lower value - by every metric.

Phil Jeff, and Dave, I hate to admit it after all these years, but I may have been wrong in my strong conservative views. Every day as I scour the news, I am leaning further to a libertarian viewpoint.

Jan 25, 2013, 8:55pm Permalink

Authentically Local