Ever since last week’s vote by the Maryland legislature to override Governor Ehrlich’s veto of what has come to be known as the “Walmart law”, the anti-WalMart and pro-labor union forces have contended they are on a roll. As I wrote on Tuesday, similar legislation is pending in West Virginia and has apparently been proposed in Kentucky. It seemed like there was no stopping this juggernaut, despite the fact that so many people agreed that it was, at its base, an insane law. Now, there are signs that things may not go quite as well as the labor unions supporting this legislation across the nation had planned.
First comes news from Wisconsin that a similar bill failed to even make it out of committee.
A highlight from Tuesday night’s State of the State speech was Governor Jim Doyle’s wish that retailer Wal-Mart take employee health care off the shoulders of taxpayers. “Badger Care is intended to help working families, not multi-billion dollar corproations,” he said.
Doyle, however, may have to wait longer for that wish. Replublican lawmakers weren’t cheering last night and an Assembly labor committee today killed such a bill asking for the same concept, sponsored by Madison respresentative Terese Berceau.
Assembly Bill 860 would have required companies with more than 10,000 employees in Wisconsin to pay 80-percent of its workers’ health care costs. If not, then the company has to reimburse the state when those workers hop on to the state-funded Badger Care program
Additionally, across the country, newspaper editorial boards, hardly typically defenders of free market capitalism, are recognizing the danger inherent in laws like this.
The Tacoma News Tribune, for example, had this to say about proposals to pass such a law in Washington:
The proposed mandate is flawed in several ways, not the least of which is the idea that lawmakers should dictate how much any business should spend on an employee benefit. It?s plain bad public policy for the state to attempt to micromanage the budgets of private companies.
(…)
But perhaps the biggest flaw is that these bills really have just one target: Wal-Mart. Unions have made no secret of the fact that they consider non-union Wal-Mart the most egregious example of companies not providing adequate health care benefits. Labor is pushing similar legislation in several states. It scored its first win in Maryland last week, where experts already are suggesting ways to get around the new law.
Wal-Mart?s controversial business practices make it an easy mark, but this is not a referendum on the megaretailer?s operational model.
State laws are ? or should be ? written to address broad public concerns, not a beef with one company. It?s hard to make a case that there is a universal problem when employee benefit surveys in Washington and nationwide have shown that big businesses offer more benefits than their smaller counterparts.
Seattle’s Post-Intelligencer had a similar take to the proposed legislation and points out that the law would hurt low-income workers far more than it would help them.
A study by the Employment Policies Institute shows that 45 percent of the uninsured work at companies with fewer than 25 employees and estimates that if employer health care mandates were passed nationwide, it could cost 315,000 jobs, as employers make cuts elsewhere.
The Rocky Mountain News also focuses on the negative impacts that would flow from passing the law in Colorado:
If Colorado follows Maryland’s lead, look for Wal-Mart to slow local expansion plans, and maybe raise prices. Low-income consumers who save hundreds of dollars a year at Wal-Mart would hardly call that fair. Nor would the entry-level workers who’ll find fewer opportunities for meaningful employment as the hiring windows at Wal-Mart close.
And yet the union PR machines continue to bellow that organized labor is looking out for the little guy. Go figure.
Finally, writing from the front in the next battle against this law, the Charleston Daily Mail has uncovers the truth of what this fight is really about:
This push is supported by organized labor, Wal-Mart competitors and advocates of federalized health insurance. The last time somebody floated that balloon, it carried a lowball pricetag of an 8 percent payroll tax.
Americans balked at that.
“An explicit part of the program is to put pressure on organizations nationally to do national reform,” an AFL-CIO official told the Wall Street Journal. “If people can’t manage the political will to do something nationally to solve this problem, then would they like to deal with us in 50 different ways in 50 different states?”
There you have it. It’s about a socialized medicine agenda and the AFL’s inability to sell itself to Wal-Mart employees.
There you have it. Even if the unions win across the board and get this pased in all 50 states, it won’t stop there. It won’t stop until the entire health care system is nationalized and one of America’s most important industries is destroyed.
Related Posts:
Little Tyrannies
Well That Didn’t Take Long At All
Stupid Is As Stupid Does
Hell Freezes Over
Targeting WalMart
Technorati Tags: WalMart, Maryland, West Virginia, Health Care
