Not a surprise: SEIU & Wal-Mart unite behind Obamacare
Wal-Mart announced today that it was backing Obama’s government health care plan. The discount retail giant was joined by the Service Employees International Union and the left-wing Center for American Progress. CQ reports:
Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, announced Tuesday that it would support a mandate on businesses to help expand health care coverage, an about-face from other business interests that have strongly opposed any such requirement.
But this is not a sudden “about-face.” Wal-Mart and the SEIU, still bitter enemies on most other policy and employment matters, first joined hands on health care two years ago. The unholy alliance was forged out of mutual desperation and political expediency.
More from Forbes, USAToday. And AP:
Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, announced its position in a letter to congressional and administration officials Tuesday. It was joined by a major labor union that sometimes has criticized Wal-Mart as stingy with employee benefits.
“We are for an employer mandate which is fair and broad in its coverage,” the letter said. “Any alternative to an employer mandate should not create barriers to hiring entry-level employees.”
That was a reference to some proposals in Congress to have employers pay the Medicaid costs of new hires. Critics say that would discourage the hiring of low-income people.
The letter was also signed by Andrew L. Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, which has more than a million members and counts more U.S. health workers than any other union. Also signing it was John Podesta, who headed Obama’s transition team and is president of the Center for American Progress.
Wal-Mart wants the union thugs off its back. Stern wants more power and publicity.
Take this marriage for what it’s worth.
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Timothy Carney has more.
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Amusing aside: Wonder what the Congressional Black Caucus is thinking right now? Flashback:
The Service Employees International Union has angered a number of African American House members by protesting Wal-Mart’s involvement in a Congressional Black Caucus fundraiser.
The conflict between two mainstays of the Democratic Party began after Anna Burger, SEIU secretary-treasurer, wrote caucus members “to express our disappointment that the Congressional Black Caucus has given Wal-Mart an opportunity to fashion a false image as a friend of African Americans and of working people generally.”
SEIU and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. sponsored an April 27 caucus fundraiser. The union has criticized Wal-Mart’s personnel practices as anti-labor.
Caucus member Rep. Albert R. Wynn (D-Md.) described the letter as “presumptuous.”
“The attitude of the letter was that somehow we were allowing someone to do this as though we had no free will or common sense,” he said.
The CBC chairman, Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.), said, “I couldn’t imagine them writing a similar letter to other members of Congress, Democrats, Blue Dogs [conservative Democrats], Republicans.”
Wynn and Watt argued that it would make no sense for the caucus to break off ties with Wal-Mart officials, noting that at meetings with the company caucus members have raised many of same issues of low pay, limited fringe benefits and outsourcing to China that concern labor leaders.
The dispute was first reported Tuesday by the Hill newspaper.
“As the largest employer in the world, Wal-Mart’s labor relations model is now undermining standards for all American workers,” Burger wrote in her letter to caucus members. “The average salesclerk makes below the poverty line, and a majority of Wal-Mart workers cannot afford the company’s health insurance plan. . . . Wal-Mart has forced its more than 600 suppliers to shift operations overseas to exploit workers there at even lower wages while destroying good American jobs.”
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- The Radio Patriot
- SEIU loves ObamaCARE (so does WalMart) | Fire Andrea Mitchell!
- Bent Notes » Blog Archive » Wal-Mart is hoping the alligator will eat it last
- COACHEP » Blog Archive » Posts about Obama Health Care Failure as of June 30, 2009
- The Writing On The Wal » Blog Archive » Does this mean Walmart is sorry about those secret anti-Obama meetings?
- Health Care BS - UNIONS EXEMPT FROM HEALTH CARE TAX?
- If anything will kill Obamacare, it’s this « The TrogloPundit
- Wal-Mart Suprises Somes, But Not Others « Around The Sphere
- Canada has a Boom in Private Health Care Business « Goodtimepolitics
- Journalist Doing His Job: Jake Tapper Challenges Obama on Socialized Health Care (video) « Frugal Café Blog Zone
- News The Mainstream Media Doesn’t Want You To See Thursday, July 2, 2009 — ExposeTheMedia.com
- Obama Slammed by CBS over Obama Health Care Propaganda; You just can’t make this stuff up! « VotingFemale Speaks!
- The Obama Big Lie and Inconvenient Truth About Health Care–The Public Option Trojan Horse–Leads To A Single Payor Goverment Monopoly of Health Care and The Bankruptcy of USA! « Pronk Palisades
- Obama-Raffle for Obamacare « America, You Asked For It!
- Economy » Obama’s Latest Con Game–Obamacare Raffle
- Obama’s Marching Orders For His Red Shirts (ACORN), Purple Shirts (SEIU) and Black Shirts (New Panther Party)–Progressive Radical Socialists « Pronk Palisades
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think WallyWorld offers health insurance except for management. Let the government take care of it.
anybody got a contact address for walmart, so I can tell them they are losing my thousands of $ a year of business for this move?
…with Ayers & Dorhn in the Obama’s living room.
Had to fix that.
Why is Obama in a hurry on getting everything passed five minutes ago?
The answer is in all of the stories on this site.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
What next for wally world, cap and trade, card check? Boy, wally I will not be doing much business with you.
L
if any gubmint subsidizing is involved, I favor it being directly with taxpayers, in the form of a credit. I prefer individuals and medical professionals to bargain face-to-face and eliminate all middlepersons. of course local charities can support the truly needy in their medical necessities.
Carefull Michelle!
Wal-Mart did NOT endorse Obamacare. All wal-mart said was that ‘an employer mandate’ was not something they wish to object to.
Mandating that an employer have access to some sort of health care for their employees to purchase is not what Obamacare entails.
Watch out for the media spin of the headlines as they abbreviate in order to try to lie about what people, corporations, and organizations say.
Is there any way we can stay away from there, though? We are all consumers first, trying to save a buck. But is it worth it to save 50 cents on underwear?
Try Ace Hardware when they have sales on gardening supplies, automotive supplies, paints and various other things.
JC Penney and KMart have great sales too.
Try your grocery down the street when they have stuff on sale AND you have a double coupon.
Target is almost equally as good as Walmart.
…and sometimes your local independent business man has good deals, and that helps your own community.
Drive around town once in a while, get to know where deals are or where they may be soon.
Maybe. My concern is that Walmart and all businesses will not provide the healthcare they presently do to their employees, and shift it to the Federal Gov.
Any business worth their bottomline will run the numbers and discover it is less expensive to allow a federal health program. This of course will lead to every business dropping their private coverage and signing on to the Gov Plan, which will be a single payer. No more competition.
The end result will be a monopoly, and the economic dislocations at this point on a medical healthcare monopoly is incalcuable at this point.
Price fixing, price floors, price ceilings. It is not good. Look at what Government intervention has done to farming. Paying people not to grow certain crops. What are we going pay for not doing certain medical procedures. What are we going to pay for a simple medical procedure.
Like it or not, insurance companies already set limits to what they will pay for, or not pay for. Having the Goverment do it is less palatable.
I don’t go to Wal-Mart. It is the best place to go in the world if you want your car doors dinged or scraped by people who don’t know how to park or are too lazy to return their shopping carts.
Got it in one.
Let’s send a strong message to Walmart and boycott their crappy merchandise.
No offense, but…DUH!
Here’s the corporate contact page…..
http://walmartstores.com/7663.aspx
Hmmm, me thinks what little I buy at Wal-mart can be purchased elsewhere now.
Agree. This is a scary thought, but it would also mean a large percentage of employers would have to think along these lines. However, taxation is unfortunately an effective way to make them come to that conclusion.
If people do not want to be on the government plan, offering an alternative might become an effective tool and differentiation for employee recruitment and retention. It might also help underscore just how bad things will be with the government plan. But this is a slim hope for me.
The irony of all this was that employer offered health coverage plans rose out of bad legislation on wage controls. Companies needed them to be competitive and now the government has found a way to punish them for this as well.
How liberals can claim this is not socialism is beyond me.
Errah, so when all companies drop their private insurance for the eventual government single payer entity will WalMart be selling goats or chickens so I can barter one of them with a real doctor who has to make a profit, pay their student loans, pay malpractice insurance and pay their employees. I don’t believe or want a nurse practioner, physicians assistant or congressional aide treating me for hemmeroids. It could be fatal.
I quit shopping walmart years ago. It’s worth a little extra to support my local business people that actually pay their workers a livable wage.
It might be because they are so fat they have to open their doors really wide?
Actually, if you don’t mind the walk, there are plenty of places at Walmart to park your car in relative safety.
Where will Canadians go for their health care now?
Not only does WalMart want the unions off it’s back, they would happily pass the cost of any and all benefits along to the general public if we’ll allow them to.
This just makes it easier for them to pay people less.
If I’m reading this right, Walmart is not advocating for government run healthcare but for the expansion of private coverage provided by businesses. While it may be wrong-headed for Walmart to support increased government mandates, it’s a far cry from supporting a public (government) option or, even worse, a single-payer system.
We need to focus our efforts on opposing government run health care and any attempt to nationalize our health care system by stealth or otherwise. If we have a knee-jerk reaction against every suggestion of reform in the private health care system, we will make its demise inevitable. The best way to preserve the private system is to support reasonable reforms for making it more affordable. Otherwise, public support for our private health care system will erode to the point that government will take it over and there will be nothing we can do to stop it.
On June 30th, 2009 at 5:41 pm, BOB said:
I don’t mind the walk, but here in Hawaii, the slope of the parking lot is so that the carts roll downhill towards the distant spots.
Also, the spaces are so narrow here that hitting the car next to you is easy even if they know how to park straight. My wife (local girl) marvels at how big the parking spaces are on the Mainland.
As for fat, Hawaii has many people that show up on Google Earth. My neighbor gets her nails done at Earl Scheib.
I laughed, and then I cried. I coughed up a mouthful of water laughing and then realized that the image you had just painted into my mind will probably never go away and I nearly began to cry in horror. Al Bundy used to suffer this affliction whenever he saw Peg’s mom in the buff (hysterical blindness).
hope ya didn’t get my carplate # today.
and FWIW I didn’t bang any car doors
- today.
Plus there are a lot of items that are not carried at any store in town at a price I am willing to pay. EXAMPLE: canning jars. Vons, $21.00/doz, SmartNFinal, $12/doz, Walmart, $9/doz. Then there’s the tools I needed that were only available at WW or WWW, where one would have to pay shipping . (The jar lifter I bought was $7+tax at WW; listed at $12+shipping/tax on WWW.)
When my sister worked at WW, it was a good experience for her and she got health benefits as a cashier when that didn’t happen in the midwest. My DIL says the same thing is true for KS now, although she liked state work better because of the hours.
It’s all relative. Those of you used to gucci bene’s will whine, while people who barely graduated from HS (if at all) are grateful for WW. For people who work hard, it is a good opportunity to grow into management. FOr the rest, it keeps them off the dole.
Saw a program a while back on how interrelated our economy is with that of China.
Cutting up my Sam’s Club card tomorrow, in front of my local store’s manager. I’m going to hand it to him & tell him it’s nothing personal, but your company has just crossed over the line into the realm of fascism & being Un-American..
I don’t need Sam’s Club, or Wal-Mart to survive.. A good boycott will help bring them back to reality.
Costco provides health insurance for most of their employees, and pays higher wages than Wal-Mart and has similar prices. guess where i shop.
God!
It looks like Nannycare’s in the bag! This is a billfold steamroller!!
Thank you gutless RINOs!!!
James Greenidge
Queens NY
The unions are looking to have a windfall by having bailout money in which was calculated the cost of benefits and then cost shifting health care out of their expenses by handing health care cost off to a one payor nationalzed health care program.
Understandable, despicable, but understandable from a cost savings/money in the coffers to influence elections point of view.
I only wish there was a COSTCO in my area…they haven’t moved into OK as yet…
Well if the Sonics moved there – can Costco be far behind?
For years I’ve avoided shopping at Wal-Mart because I’ve always felt like taking a shower after I left…I could never explain why I had that “dirty” feeling. Now I know. Just a better reason not to patronize them. SEIU…please!
Several very liberal friends of mine have refused to shop at Wal-Mart because of their policy of selling products made with child labor…I’ll bet they love Wally World now.
A thought just occurred to me…how long will it be before the Democrats demand that businesses give every employee at least 40 hours per week? I haven’t heard this suggested…yet.
Or, make entitlement recipients work (read; volunteer) for their benefits. Work might consist of stuffing envelopes, passing out fliers, knocking on doors…for the benefit of their Democrat benefactors who authorized their pay….just wait….it’s coming!
Aloha Guy – Costco isn’t any better than Walmart or Sam’s Club. The wages are the similar and Costco doesn’t have any better health insurance than WM. Further, WM employees CHOSE to purchase health insurance, have several plans to chose from, and are eligible whether part time or fulltime. I’m a retired Navy pharmacist who has worked for several years part time for Sam’s Club. I don’t know any WM/Sam’s Club employee who actually hate the company. Most feel fortunate to be employed. I don’t agree with all of their policies, but they have done more to make prescription drugs more affordable than ANYONE. You all write as though WM is an evil entity to be avoided at all costs. You’re starting to sound like liberals who hate private businesses making a profit.
Another good reason to shop at Target.
Whatever. I didn’t quit my bank when they were forced to take bailout money.
Until Target or Costco sell ammo, I’m sticking with Walmart.
liberty3…thank you. For a moment I thought Michelles site had been taken over by the liberal left. My wife has worked at wal-mart for many years…guess what, of her own free will. Surprisingly no one held a gun to her head and forced her to work there. Our whole family is on the wal-mart health plan…it’s not the best in the world but for the price, you can’t beat it. Again, our choice. Run the numbers people, wal-mart allows us middle income families to keep a bit more of our money so maybe we can enjoy a night out at the movies every now and again. It’s fine to prefer Target over Wal-mart or Costco over Sams, but you could do it by not smearing Wal-mart but that would require too much effort. Some of us work for a living and look to save money where ever we can.
An addendum to my last post:
Offspring #1 has 7 kids and the best store in the area for them is WalMart. They can get everything – including pharmacy, clothes and groceries – in one place. I believe he even bought a set of tires there once. Did the shopping while they were put on.
Eh, shop at other places if you like. But since they carry ammo, canning supplies, camping supplies and such at reasonable prices, me and mine are shopping at Wally World. WW’s done right by us.
Besides there are a lot of folks who depend on those jobs and benefits. Boycott ‘em and you increase the unemployment in that city.
That’s the only reason I’ve shopped there. However, they don’t get .45, .223, or 9mm in quantities anymore, nor on a regular basis. H-m-m-m…I wonder why? NOT!
Go online. You have to look around, but you can get it when it becomes available. Wal-mart…no longer dependable…at least where I live.
I work for Wal-Mart in the Home Office in Bentonville and I have an HSA.
Wal-Mart would like to be able to provide everyone with an HSA if they could as they are great plans. Wal-Mart contributes $1200 each Jan to my HSA and matches another $1200. It’s quite generous. My plan premium only costs me $55/month.
What Wal-Mart supports is a free-market solution but they also know that the Democrats are in the majority.
Well put and very astute. Walmart doesn’t support this job killing exercise, they want the unions off their backs. Although this won’t guarantee that the unions will leave Wal-Mart alone.
I do like Walmart’s policy of donating to the organizations that their employees volunteer at. They have given our team quite a bit of money and a laptop over the years.
In this area we have a new Super Walmart. It’s terrible. It doesn’t have as much as the old Walmart and after being open for 2 months is already filthy. That is the fault of the local management though and not the corporation.
That’s one of the reasons I shop at Target more often.
I am wondering if they put out this statement that they support Barry’s socialized medicine in order to get not only unions, but liberals off their backs.
Maybe they see this as a way to become less of a target of the left.
I was awakened to WalMart’s business practices some time ago. It was different when founder Sam Walton was in charge. He would go out of his way to find US producers to supply his stores, but that changed when The New Breed took over in the wake of his death. He must be flip-flopping in his grave!
When I need something now, I scan the internet to see if I can find an American-made version. It doesn’t always work but it’s worth the effort to me, the better to support American workers rather than Asians.
That’s how I see it also.
Wow… we agree on something.
I do something similar. I just try to find an alternative NOT made in China. I usually do. If I don’t find anything, I try to do without whatever it is that I needed. Most times I can. But not always.
After altering my Sam’s Club card to say: “Obama’s Club” on the front, I turned it into my Local Sam’s Club Store Manager.
Here’s a picture of it.
http://tn2ndamendment.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Obamas-Club.jpg
Tammi, the store manager, was unaware of her company’s unholy alliance with Obama’s administration. I told her that unfortunately after 20 years of doing business with Wal-Mart, I would no longer do business with them because of their choices involving trying to help strong arm other businesses into getting on board with socialized medicine. We cut my wife’s card up. She was very nice about it, & said she was sorry to lose us as customer’s.
They really should be. Over the last 20 years we’ve thousands of dollars in their stores.
I hope a lot of others will do the same, & not go back to Wal-Mart or Sam’s club until they reverse course on this issue.
So much for WalMart. Penny’s is cheaper these days anyway and it’s better stuff. I’ll miss the drug plan but can get along without it. I’ll just pay the couple dollars more at the drug store. To h–l with WalMart.