February 22, 2006

By CYDNEY GILLIS
Staff Reporter

Wal-Mart needs to step up to the plate.

Instead of letting the state or a spouse’s health coverage pay its workers’ doctor bills, it’s time the giant discounter — the world’s largest retailer — got off the dole.

That’s what some business owners are saying about Arkansas-based Wal-Mart, which, at last count in 2003, had about 13,000 employees in Washington state — more than 700 of whom were on the state’s Basic Health Program or Medicaid, according to the Center for a Changing Workforce, a Seattle nonprofit research group.

Legislation introduced Jan. 9 in the state House and Senate would force Wal-Mart and other companies with more than 5,000 workers in Washington to spend 9 percent of their payroll cost on health coverage or pay the state up to 9 percent for its programs, minus the cost of whatever health benefits a company currently provides.

The Fair Share Health Care bills — House Bill 2517 and Senate Bill 6356 — were just two pieces of legislation pushed Monday at an anti-poverty forum and march at the state Capitol on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. More than 200 people from around the state marched in the rain to demand more health care, housing, education and protection from payday loans that prey on the poor.

The AFL-CIO is backing the Wal-Mart bills as part of a national campaign that’s working to introduce similar legislation in 30 states this year. The Maryland General Assembly recently overrode a veto by the governor to become the first state to enact the legislation.

In Washington, a bill that would have forced companies with 50 or more workers to provide health coverage failed last year. Though the new bills — sponsored by Rep. Eileen Cody (D-Seattle) and Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle) — would affect less than 25 companies statewide, the Association of Washington Businesses is working to defeat them. “Targeting large employers is the wrong answer,” the AWB’s Mellani McAleenan says. “The way to solve the problem is to address the underlying cost of health care.”

David West, director of the Center for a Changing Workforce, disagrees. He says less than half of Wal-Mart’s workers buy into the retailer’s health plan because, with a $5,000 deductible, they see paying monthly premiums as a waste of money. Instead, the family gets coverage through the state or the company their spouse works for.

“ They’re passing the buck and dumping their responsibility onto Medicaid and other employers,” West says.

Craig Brown, president of Bellingham-based Brown & Cole, a chain of 29 grocery stores that covers 95 percent of its workers, says the company had to close three stores last year because of Wal-Mart and its unfair competition — something he plans to tell legislators Jan. 19 in hearings scheduled for the Fair Share bills.

“ This is a crisis in American business ethics,” Brown says. “If we want to abandon the employer-supported health-care model, that one’s OK. But as long as we look to that, we must have major employers participating in the system.” 

[Resource]

To look up any bill or find your legislator, go to www.leg.wa.gov. Or call the free legislative hotline at 800-562-6000 and leave your legislators a message telling them whether you are for or against a bill.