My personal boycott of Wal-Mart is in serious jeopardy.
Like any good bleeding-heart, latte-sipping, hybrid-driving, capitalism-hating, Mao-worshipping liberal, I've been properly appalled at the way Wal-Mart treats its workers and expands its empire. The anecdotal evidence is staggering: stories of crews being locked in the store all night with no exiting permitted, employees' hours being managed to prevent them from qualifying for health care benefits, oh so many harassment claims, driving locally owned mom-and-pops out of business while requesting special tax breaks from the municipality it infects... all that stuff is googlable. (New word? Someone before me has surely invented it. I should do a search...)
Well, my mortal enemy has struck back. Negotiations with the Obama White House on health care issues have led to this: The company just declared it FAVORS requiring employers to extend medical insurance to employees.
Yeah, yeah, you're probably thinking, "Wait now, aren't businesses of a certain size ALREADY required to do so?" They are not.
Well then, how do I know the mandate is a good idea? One very big clue, a quote I lifted from the Wall Street Journal:
"The National Retail Federation, the industry's main lobby, said it was 'flabbergasted' by Wal-Mart's move. 'We have been one of the foremost opponents to employer mandate,' said Neil Trautwein, vice president with the Washington-based trade group. 'We are surprised and disappointed by Wal-Mart's choice to embrace an employer mandate in exchange for a promise of cost savings.'
Mr. Trautwein said an employer mandate is 'the single most destructive thing you could do to the health-care system shy of a single-payer system.' "
If Mr. Trautwein says an employer mandate is a terrible, horrible, catastrophic idea, I am excited to see it come to fruition. The sooner, the better, I say.
More from the WSJ:
"As the White House and Congress began floating proposals, Wal-Mart felt it needed to shape the debate, said Leslie Dach, Wal-Mart's executive vice president of corporate affairs and government relations.
'As a company, we believe the present health-care system is unsustainable and making the country's businesses less competitive in the global economy,' said Mr. Dach."
Translation: Wal-Mart recognized that it risked being shut out of negotiations and could be stuck with a system far scarier, to it, than a simple employer mandate. I'll stay tuned to the rest of this story. Maybe I'll even lose an enemy. Or Wal-Mart will try and game the system, and I can keep hatin' on 'em. Oooh, win-win for me!
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