Wal-Mart may be required to pay for insurance (Seattle Times)

[icymist]

Friday, February 18, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 a.m.



Wal-Mart may be required to pay for insurance

By Nick Perry

Seattle Times staff reporter

Three Wal-Mart executives from the chain's Bentonville, Ark., headquarters arrived in Olympia yesterday to try to fend off legislation that would force large companies to pay for health insurance.

Both the state House and state Senate are considering a measure that would require employers with 50 or more workers to provide health coverage for all employees or pay an equivalent fee into the state's Basic Health Plan.

<snip>

Impetus for the bill stems from state figures showing that some large companies have hundreds of employees getting state assistance for health care.

The state Health Care Authority, which oversees the state-subsidized Basic Health Plan, says Wal-Mart had 261 employees on Basic Health as of early last year. Other companies on the list were Del Monte, with 165 employees on Basic Health; Target, with 68; Bon-Macy's (now Macy's), with 62; and Safeway, with 56.
"It's getting to the point that good employers — and I like to think of myself as a good employer — feel like chumps for covering employees and dependents," said Craig Cole, president and CEO of Bellingham-based Brown & Cole grocery stores, during a House Health Care Committee hearing yesterday.

"If we can meet the requirements of the bill, then so can the solar system's largest corporation," said Brown, referring to Wal-Mart.

More:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002183497_walmart28m.html

[LiberalEsto]

1. Aaaawwww, poor widdle Walmart!

If the big bullies make them pay health insurance for their workers, their execs might lose a few bucks off their bonuses.

:nopity:

[Me.]

2. Good

maybe this will start a trend and help to begin leveling the playing field.

[tsuki]

3. Watch out. They'll 'tomp their widdle feet, pick up their marbles, and

leave.

[icymist]

4. To that, I say great!

Goodbye! Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out!

[gorbal]

5. Nah nah nah nah,

Yeah, Wallmart leaving will be a BIG problem, right! Sombody should do a comparison tour of towns with and without a Wallmart nearby and compare and contrast.

[havocmom]

6. About time to start billing corporations for the $$ they cost the states

If Costco can pay decent wages and benefits, so can Walmart. If they refuse to pay living wages, they SHOULD be penalized for the costs they are shifting to state governments when their abused (and slave wages IS abuse) workers need medical care they cannot begin to afford.

Working people should make enough that they are not a burden on other working people. The rich who benefit from maintaining poverty are at fault.

[LiberalEsto]

7. Excellent idea!

And if they don't like it, they can move to China, or India, or Iraq.

Bye-bye!

[havocmom]

13. They can move the manufacturing overseas, but retail has to be local.

And if it is local, they are hurting your neighbors, either by paying too little to live on or making people pay taxes to support working people who are not paid a living wage.

They had plenty of profit last year. They can start sharing more with the people who worked to get that profit to them or they can pay the states that have to supplement those workers' paychecks with services because they are in poverty.

[DBoon]

14. Every time one of their workers has to use publicly funded health services

I'd send a bill for the total amount right to Walmart.

If they don't want to pay, fine, file a lien against their property. Same as any other entity that tries to rip off government services.

[Streetdoc270]

8. I hate to admit this but....

"Through Wal-Mart, Haefner said, a worker can get health insurance for $40 a month while a family can buy coverage for $155 a month. Full-time workers qualify for coverage after three to six months on the job, while part-time workers must wait two years, he added. "


That is very good rates for family HC! I pay $20 a month for my coverage but I would have to pay an additional $632 a month for family coverage!
So it looks like the problem lies in paying a living wage, nit in the benefits package.

[durablend]

10. Probably tons of loopholes/catches in that plan

Smiley Mart's coverage probably has deductibles and copays up the wazoo, and probably plenty of limits on coverage. That's probably why the employees can't afford it--with everything else, they'd be broke if they actually used it.

[icymist]

11. All Walmart has to do is keep most employees at part-time.

Pay them like dirt and over-work them in hopes that they'll quit before the two years is up. If that don't work, they can fire them after one year and eleven months for some small reason or another and then 'rehire' them as part-time workers again. What's the worker with no money going do? Sue Walmart in a class action?

[Yavin4]

12. The Operative Phrase In That Statement, "Full Time Workers"

What WalMart will do is cut hours so that you don't qualify for full time benefits.

[DBoon]

15. They will schedule you for 38 hours a week

you will come within 2 hours a week of being "full time". They have to leave that two hour buffer, so unexpected additional hours won't accidentally make someone "full time"

[icymist]

16. Except that in Washington State anything above 32 hours is

considered full time. If they work them 31 hours or have the poor sod be placed into the category of being 'on call', then they would be considered part time.

[Yavin4]

17. Part-Time = No Benefits

Then there are stories of managers rolling back hours on the employees in order to block them from getting full-time status.

[Cooley Hurd]

9. If Wal-Mart wants to be respected as a "family-friendly" employer...

...then they'd better cough up the bennies.

Until then, my boycott of all things Walton continues...

Except these Waltons. (Cooley reveals a secret - big fan of "The Waltons." So shoot me...;))