Maryland makes Wal-Mart pay

BALTIMORE — Labor and community organizations are celebrating the Maryland Legislature’s vote Jan. 12 to override Republican Gov. Bob Ehrlich’s veto of the Fair Share Health Care Act, better known as the “Wal-Mart bill.”

An exultant Vinnie DeMarco, president of the Maryland Health Care For All Coalition, told the World, “Fair Share Health Care is going to sweep the nation. This is an important step for health care. Corporations like Wal-Mart cannot shift this burden to taxpayers.”

Already, a coalition spearheaded by the United Food and Commercial Workers is planning to introduce legislation modeled on the Maryland bill in 30 or more states.

UFCW President Joe Hansen hailed the veto override. “Working families nationwide will take heart from the passage of Fair Share Health Care,” he said. “We have a national health care crisis in this country but that doesn’t excuse large employers like Wal-Mart from shifting their health care costs onto taxpayers and responsible employers.”

Every time UFCW members negotiate health care benefits with their employers, said Hansen, “they face demands for cutbacks. … Large employers like Wal-Mart game the system to get unfair business advantages.” He was referring to a bitter strike battle by 70,000 grocery workers in California just to save their health care benefits from a Wal-Mart instigated takeaway drive.

The legislation stipulates that any corporation with 10,000 or more employees must earmark at least 8 percent of its payroll to provide health care or pay an equivalent amount to the state to provide health care benefits for its workers.

Only four employers in the state — Johns Hopkins, Giant Food, Lockheed-Martin and Wal-Mart — have that many employees. All but Wal-Mart already provide health benefits above that threshold. Critics accuse Wal-Mart of spending 5 percent or less of its payroll on health care compared with unionized Giant Food, which spends 23 percent of its payroll costs for health care. Giant supported the bill. Wal-Mart employs 17,000 employees in Maryland and instructs its workers to seek health care under Medicaid, costing taxpayers more than $2,000 annually per worker.

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