Two bills making their way through Washington’s state legislature require employers with more than 5,000 workers in the state to set aside 9 percent of their payroll for health care benefits. Senate Bill 6356 and House Bill2517 are part of a growing legislative movement to wean companies like Wal Mart from the public teat.

According to the Spokesman-Review:

Jan Teague, president of the state retail association, said the ridiculous” proposal would hurt business and does nothing about the real problem: fast-rising insurance and medical costs.

We are a necessary employer, Teague said. We should be valued and taken care of – not attacked.

The union members and supporters who crowded legislative hearing rooms Thursday said it’s uninsured workers who should be valued and taken care of. Without company insurance, they said, people will fall back on state aid and charity care, costing everyone more.

Yeah, like the Bentonville Behemoth needs any state to take care of it. This reminds me of the opening lines of local poet Ken Duncan’s poem Politics 101:

Conservatives want to make life easier
for people who already have easy lives.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 29th, 2006 at 1444 by Jeff Hess and is filed under News, Organized Labor, State, Western U.S.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.