Wal-Mart, Unions Unite on Health Care

[Omaha Steve]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070207/D8N512I00.html

Wal-Mart, Unions Unite on Health Care

Feb 7, 12:49 PM (ET)

By DAN CATERINICCHIA

WASHINGTON (AP) - Executives from Wal-Mart and three other major U.S. employers on Wednesday joined hands with union leaders in setting a goal of providing "quality, affordable" health care for every American by 2012.

However, they did not propose any specific policies to achieve this goal, or commit to spending any extra money in the near-term to provide health coverage to more workers.

Joining Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) CEO Lee Scott and Service Employees International Union leader Andrew Stern at a Washington press conference were top executives from Intel Corp. (INTC) (INTC), AT&T Inc. (T) and Kelly Services Inc. (KELYA) (KELYA), a temporary staffing agency. Still, the health-care initiative left Wal-Mart's two leading union critics divided.

The partnership of business and union leaders laid out four main goals, including universal health-care coverage for all Americans and boosting the value of every dollar spent on health care.

FULL story at link.

[ThomCat]

1. It's a PR stunt.

There's no way in hell Walmart is going to support anything that might make them pay for or provide insurance for their employees. :eyes:

[Shakespeare]

2. No, but there's something more significant going on here.

There was an excellent article in (I think) Harper's about a year ago suggesting that, evil corporate megalith status notwithstanding, Walmart can and should be our best ally in pushing for universal healthcare. As the country's largest employer, they alone have the corporate clout to push for this, as it ultimately helps their bottom line. Getting the board of directors to overcome their kneejerk rejection of anything seemingly liberal is one of the few obstacles in making this happen. Perhaps this is a first step in that direction.

[underpants]

5. Toyota decided to build a plant in Canada based on this

this happened a few years ago. Now Toyota does have a lot of plants in the US but they needed another one in North America and they chose Canada because basically the employEEs pay for the healthcare themselves.

They must have seen the 90% increase in health care costs to the payer coming.

One fundamental point missed in this whole discussion is the fact that employers need healthy well fed well trained (or trainable) workforce. That is what we are in one respect a workforce keeping it, us, healthy is paramount to continued profits.

[rfranklin]

4. No, but the good thing is they might force a government...

solution so they don't have to do it. And we know that something like Medicare is the only real solution.

[Massacure]

6. No, but if they can convince other big business to then they will

Especially if they think they can force to the government to take action on it.

[Cleita]

3. Wal-Mart already has a health plan. It's known as Medicaid.

If the minimum wage get's raised then their employees might make too much to qualify. I wonder if Wal-Mart will allow any unionization of their employees or are these unions the ones that are formed by the companies themselves to keep the real unions out?