Since the historic victory in Maryland, an avalanche of fair share health care bill’s have swept the nation. And after the Census Bureau released data showing state taxes have increased by 41% thanks to budgets being strained by Medicaid costs, expect more lawmakers to introduce fair share bills. The Rocky Mountain News reports on the latest effort in Colorado.

A bill that would force large Colorado employers to pay 11 percent of wages toward health care costs was introduced in the legislature Wednesday.

Although naming no names, this week’s House Bill 1316 is widely thought to target Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, which employs 25,380 in Colorado.

The bill would require firms with 3,500 or more workers to spend at least 11 percent of payroll on health care or hand over the difference to Medicaid, the state and federal program for the poor and disabled.

Affected Colorado companies would include Wal-Mart, King Soopers, Centura Health, Safeway, HCA- HealthOne, Exempla Health, IBM and the University of Denver. All government agencies are exempt.

Medicaid’s astronomical growth - with caseload increases of 59 percent in the past five years in Colorado - prompted state Rep. Judy Solano, D-Brighton, to sponsor the bill.

“Either we talk about providing health care for everyone in this country,” Solano said, “or we bring everybody to the table to talk about being responsible to the community they locate in.”

Supporter AFL-CIO says such legislation evens the playing field between Wal-Mart and union shops such as King Soopers and Safeway, which are losing market share to the retail giant.

“(The law) will stop large, profitable corporations from freeloading off communities and shifting their employees’ health care insurance costs onto workers, taxpayers and smaller businesses,” the trade union federation said in a statement.

Visit our web page tracking fair share health care bills around the nation, and take action in your state today.

Also in The Onion: Wal-Mart Parking Lot Puts Municipal Parking Lot Out Of Business

Surely this isn’t the sort of press coverage Wal-Mart was hoping for when they sent Lee Scott to Capitol Hill today. Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus grilled Scott on a host of issues ranging from wages to health care to political contributions. From Thursday’s issue of The Hill newspaper:

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) met with Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott yesterday morning, the first such meeting between the largely liberal group and the controversial company’s top official.

Sources close to the caucus described the meeting as largely civil but said the lawmakers asked critical questions about Wal-Mart’s labor practices. Many of the CHC’s stances on issues as diverse as union organizing, wages, healthcare and pensions differ markedly with the giant retailer’s positions…

Rep. Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.), who chairs the CHC’s labor task force and arranged the meeting, asked the executive about pensions, health care and livable wages.

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) asked about child labor and selecting sites for new stores.

Grijalva said afterward that he was not impressed with Scott.

“I think he danced around my questions. I understand that, but the questions I asked persist,” Grijalva said. “It was a courtesy call in my opinion. It didn’t satisfy me. It didn’t change my mind.”…

During one particularly heated moment, [Rep. Joe] Baca called Wal-Mart executives “poverty pimps,” arguing that they exploited the Hispanic community, then tried to make up for it by contributing to Latino organizations, according to a House Democratic aide with ties to the CHC.

The CHC’s labor task force has pressed for a better environment for union organizing and for a hike in the minimum wage. Wal-Mart has opposed an increase in the minimum wage and recently closed a Canadian store after its workers joined a union.

Wal-Mart has been aggressively courting the CHC in recent months, sources close to the caucus said. Last fall, shortly after the company suffered a public-relations setback with the publication of an internal memo on healthcare practices, the retailer hired D&P Public Strategies, a lobbying firm known for its work with Hispanics, to approach members of the Hispanic Caucus on its behalf.

“If you have any questions or concerns that you would like to discuss regarding the health care benefits or other issues related to Wal-Mart or the Memo that was in the press recently we would be happy to sit down with you to further discuss,” read an e-mail one of the firm’s principals, Ingrid Duran, sent to a Capitol Hill office in November.

As of yesterday afternoon, however, the firm had yet to file a disclosure report indicating it was representing Wal-Mart. The Lobbying Disclosure Act requires firms to file such reports no later than 45 days after acquiring a new client.

Calls to Duran and the firm’s other principal, Catherine Pino, were not returned before press time…

A spokesman for Wal-Mart Watch, Nu Wexler, took a dim view of Scott’s meeting with Hispanic members: “Lee Scott has an extremely tough row to hoe with Hispanic Caucus members, and they have every right to be skeptical of his promises,” he said. “Wal-Mart’s political contributions can’t cover up its ugly record of discrimination lawsuits, illegal hiring practices, EEOC complaints and immigrant labor exploitation.”

Click here to read the full story.

Click here (PDF) to read Wal-Mart Watch’s letter to members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

On behalf of Wal-Mart, today a retail trade group, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, filed two lawsuits challenging new health care legislation in Maryland and Suffolk County, New York that compel Wal-Mart to improve its health care benefits.  By hiding behind this trade group, Wal-Mart is trying to protect its already-battered reputation while still failing to improve the access and affordability of health benefits to its 1.3 million employees.

Wal-Mart Watch Executive Director Andrew Grossman issues the following statement:

By enlisting this trade group to do its legal maneuvering, Wal-Mart is clearly trying to shield itself from legal discovery and the continuing public relations fallout over its inadequate employee health care plans.  Wal-Mart is also trying to intimidate other legislative bodies around the country who are considering similar measures.  We agree that a solution to the nation’s health care crisis is in order, but we do not agree that Wal-Mart can continue to shirk its unique role in that crisis.

The lawsuit comes after Maryland Attorney General Joseph Curran issued a legal opinion that the Fair Share Health Care Act is not preempted by federal law.

Wal-Mart will start selling a line of organic cotton baby clothes in Europe and Japan later this year. The Financial Times has the story.

“My sense is that there is a lot of concern that they are taking a piecemeal approach,” says David Waskow, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth’s Washington office. “People want to see more broad-based evidence of change.”

The scepticism reflects Wal-Mart’s troubled record. In the US, the company has been repeatedly censured by the Environmental Protection Agency over waste water run-offs from its stores, which are cited as a factor encouraging urban sprawl. Activists say the company also traditionally supports congressional candidates with poor environmental records. It is facing a lawsuit alleging sex discrimination against its women workers, and last year it paid $11m to the justice department for allowing subcontractors to use undocumented immigrant labour.

“Environmentalists are cautious about applauding Wal-Mart’s commitments because we believe that the company is trying to isolate the labour movement,” says Michael Marx, head of Corporate Ethics International, an environmental campaign group, noting that the unions are regarded by many environmentalists as important allies.

In a sign of the distrust it faces, Wal-Mart has been unsuccessfully trying for a year to find a “senior director of stakeholder management”, a position that it says would “help pioneer a new model of how Wal-Mart works with outside stakeholders, resulting in fundamental changes in how the company does business.”

Wal-Mart Watch Executive Director Andrew Grossman today testified before the New Jersey Senate Committee on Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens, in support of a bill that would require the state’s large employers to disclose the number of recipients on taxpayer-funded health care. Excerpts from Grossman’s testimony are below.

I am here to speak on S539, a health care disclosure bill. This bill would direct the Commissioner of the Department of Health Services (DHS) to prepare an annual report on Access to Employer-Based Health Insurance for NJ Family Care Enrollees. The purpose of this law would be to identify large employers in the state whose failure to provide affordable health care leaves employees and their dependents forced to turn to taxpayer-funded care. 

I am here to talk about Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., and its role as a catalyst for this type of legislation.  I will begin by providing some background on Wal-Mart’s health care offerings.  According to Wal-Mart’s public information, the company provides health care to just 48 percent of its workforce, about 620,000 of their 1.3 million United States employees.  To put this figure in a national context, 68 percent of workers in large firms (200 employees or more) receive health benefits from their employer.  And within the retail industry specifically, other large retailers often provide health care to a much larger share of employees.  For example, 82 percent of Costco’s employees are covered under that company’s plans…

As a result of Wal-Mart’s policies, many employees and their family members are forced to rely on publicly funded programs for their health care coverage. There is compelling evidence that shows Wal-Mart has a deliberate corporate strategy to externalize the costs of health care for its employees by relying heavily upon state-run and taxpayer-funded health care programs…

When Wal-Mart shifts its worker’s health care costs to NJ Family Care, it is the taxpayers that cover the costs.  New Jersey taxpayers deserve to know how many Wal-Mart employees are on Family Care.  But because Wal-Mart does not reveal how many of its employees are on the program, this law is an important way for taxpayers to learn the truth.  Wal-Mart Watch strongly and unequivocally supports S539 and mandatory health care disclosure.

Click here (PDF) to read a full copy of the testimony.

From today’s Salt Lake Tribune:

Looking to hold down spending on health care, employers have made unpopular choices, scaling back workers’ health coverage or eliminating it altogether.

But there’s another way: get Medicaid to pick up the tab.

An analysis by The Salt Lake Tribune of Utah Department of Health data shows taxpayers footed the health insurance bill for 7,220 working Wasatch Front Utahns and their children in 2004…

The subsidies have broad implications for the country’s health insurance crisis. This year, Utah will spend more than $1.5 billion on Medicaid, with Uncle Sam paying more than $1 billion of that total.

Last month, Maryland became the first state to mandate that large employers, those with 10,000 workers or more, spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on health care or contribute to a state fund. Other states have ordered the public disclosure of large employers whose workers receive government-paid healthcare.

Who is on Utah’s List? Topping Utah’s roster is Wal-Mart, which has 234 workers getting Medicaid or related assistance through the Primary Care Network and Children’s Health Insurance Program…

The average annual cost per Utahn on Medicaid: $5,838.

Click here to read the full story.

Click here to see what other states are picking up the health care tab for Wal-Mart’s employees.

Wal-Mart - always eager to champion family values to boost sales - appears to be losing its religion. Today the Associated Press is reporting Christian booksellers are taking a hit from Wal-Mart’s expansion. According to the Christian Booksellers of America, 337 retailers closed last year. But this trend isn’t new. 288 Christian retail stores closed in 2004. This includes 66 former registrants at the International Christian Retail Show, held in Colorado last year, that have shut their doors since the prior expo. Christian retailers saw their market share fall by 3.5 percent between 2002 and 2004.

The ironic twist to this story is that while Christian booksellers are closing, demand for Christain merchandise is rising. A Christian Booksellers of America-sponsored study found that nearly three in four people buy books from a discount store like Wal-Mart. Of those, four in nine said they have purchased Christian or religious books or magazines from this type of store in the past. 

Wal-Mart has well over $1 billion in sales of Christian-themed merchandise. The company carries 1,200 inspirational titles, and has a bible buying guide on its website. In Fiscal year 2005, Wal-Mart had 1,353 Discount Stores and 1,713 Supercenters in the United States.

Click here for more background.

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