WalMart should fire 7,001 employees and tell the State of Maryland to screw.

Don't they realize this is what ruined the American Auto industry? I suppose next they will force them to pay a pension to someone who stands at the door and says hi.

Leave it to the liberal idiots in MARYLAND to come up with such a stupid idea why dont they all just get a life and quit being such a bunch of job killers

I live in Maryland, and I can tell you that the state is very unfriendly to retail in general. Some chains have closed their stores in Maryland while remaining open in other states. Other chains have scaled-down versions of their stores in Maryland. Wal-Mart is one chain whose Maryland stores seemed about on a par with other states. I guess they had to be punished for that.

Maryland is a small state. Walmart should close most of their stores in the state and build a new super center 100 yards across the state line on every major highway in and out of the entire state. Maryland will then lose tens of millions of dollars in sales tax to adjoining states, and Walmart will lose little or nothing.

Of course, like New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island, it's a stretch to consider Maryland part of the "United States".

This action smacks of class envy. Why do the Rats hate success so much? If you don't like Wal-Mart, then don't shop there or work there. I don't think Wal-Mart is keeping any customers or workers there against their will.

This also he stink of the unions all over it. They can't get them to unionize so they get the Rats to pass laws to make them fall in line with their demands. This is just the beginning.

Any particularly good reason Maryland taxpayers should be footing the health insurance bills of Walmart employees?

Any particular proof that Maryland residents ACTUALLY ARE footing the bill for the health benefits of Walmart employees?

In our area, WalMart pays more than Target or Kmart at every level, and has better health benefits.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is about liberal Democrats and pandering to unions.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is about liberal Democrats and pandering to unions.

----

Given the two options of:

a) The state is acting because they have evidence (state healthplan applications) showing that a significant number of full time Walmart employees are being steered to (by Walmart Human Resources personnel), and qualify for, state aid for healthcare, and that's becoming a burden on the state taxpayer at large,

OR

b) a conspiracy by liberal Democrats to pander to unions

I have to suspect it'd be "a"....

I'm not very comfortable with the state's position of dictating what benefits Walmart offers, but if they have a legitimate grievance -- say they're giving Walmart tax breaks to be in MD and now they're subsidizing healthcare for full time workers, something needs re-thought in that picture.

From - shock - the AFL-CIO (sorry, the libby mega union, but maybe they have a point. A few excerpts:

> California taxpayers pay $86 million annually for such public programs as health care and subsidized housing that low-wage Wal-Mart workers rely on, according to an August 2004 report from the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley.

> Over the past 20 years, taxpayers have contributed at least $1 billion in subsidies to Wal-Mart stores and distribution centers, as well as to developers of shopping centers anchored by Wal-Mart stores, according to Good Jobs First, a nonprofit research group.

Walmart needs to leave or at least majorly scale back its stores in MD.

Low-income families *rely* on Walmart for many of their needs--the goods are inexpensive and plentyful. Although Target is an "upscale Walmart", it doesn't have nearly the amount of merchandise and cannot fill this vital need.

I'm with GaryS--a few "super-Walmarts" just across the state line would seriously stick it to MD. Heck, Walmart could even run buses from major cities to these stores.

Karey,

Let me get this straight. They implement a social welfare program and then are bitching about people making use of it.

Even if you could prove that Wal-Mart employees make up a significant number of subsidized health care recipients, so what? Are they any worse than the masses who don't go out and get a job?

You're right, you do need a vacation.

Response to so what?:

Somebody is going to pay for the healthcare of the poor; whether preventive or ER driven. That can be the taxpayers of Maryland or Walmart. Why should the state of Maryland be subsidizing employee benefits for Walmart? (And you know if the gov has its hands in it, it costs a helluva lot more!)

Within the present system, every taxpayer in Maryland is forced to subsidize Walmart. Would make more sense to me to let Walmart shoppers subsidize Walmart.

Enjoy your vacation, too bad I found your blog on the eve of your ending it.

It seems to me that Maryland is subsidizing the poor. Whether or not they work at Wal-Mart is kind of a red herring.

If I were in charge of Walmart, I'd close every single Walmart store in Maryland. With each employee's pink slip, I'd have a brochure printed up as to why they lost their jobs, and to contact the State Legislature so they could "thank them" for the wonderful job they did in securing their employment within their wonderful state of Maryland.

> It seems to me that Maryland is subsidizing the poor. Whether or not they work at Wal-Mart is kind of a red herring.

Here's the catch: Americans aren't willing, or is it ready?, to turn sick or injured Americans away from the ER because they don't have cash or an insurance card. Something about being judged by how we treat the weakest amongst us. As long as that premise remains the dominant one in our culture, we want someone to fix it so people aren't turned away from medical treatment because of poverty.

Who can fix it? The conventional answer (not saying the correct one) has been government, but government is inherently corrupt and incompetent to some degree so we pretty much picked the most expensive way to deliver healthcare to the poor.

That said, what I don't understand about the Right is pulling out the pom poms for Walmart, a company known for sucking tax dollars in incentives to come into an area, pays low wages and adds to the tax burden because folks are working full time and still at or below 125% of the poverty guidelines and therefore qualify for public financed healthcare (and housing and assorted goodies). How cheap are the Chinese imports at Walmart really? You pay for it at the register, in up front tax incentives and at the end of the pipe in public benefits. Adds a bit to the price on the sticker. Or the contradiction in the Right's disdain for "wealth distribution" -- using my tax dollars to pay for X's public benefits, but apparently is gung ho about distributing their wealth to Walmart with tax incentives and public paid employee benefits -- all for cheap Chinese imports that the poor (the people working at Walmart?) can afford to buy.

Which still leaves us with the folks who are poor and their healthcare is being subsidized by the state -- or the Maryland taxpayer, and our original problem of not turning poor people away from medical care. Until people are convinced that we should turn sick and injured people away based on their ability to pay, you've got to work within the reality today.

Walmart pays or the state pays. The state has an interest in reducing its healthcare costs and it has grounds if its already heavily financially interested in Walmart's presence in the state. It remains Walmart's option to leave the state rather than comply with the new law. It will be interesting to see if they actually do.

(Walmart going 100 yards over the stateline isn't a sure gotcha -- Maryland has the right to regulate commerce crossing into its borders... I live on the border of two states and "bootlegging" border laws apply to more than booze.)

Karey,

You said: "Walmart pays or the state pays. "

Actually, neither of them pay.

It's a catch 22. Walmart has to respond in a financially sound way to the demands being placed on it by state government. Somewhere along the way, the state government figured out that it could not afford the health care costs. But, to set the number at 10,000 when only one company can boast of that many employees in your state smells of an ulterior motive. I'm a Mississipian ans this would cripple some of the local economies if jobs were cut and prices were hiked. Perhaps the criteria should be companies of 5,000 or more at about 2 percent if the state really can't afford health care coverage for the poor. That to me would hurt a lot less in rural communities and put a lot more cash in the health care pot.