As Kevin wrote last month, the claim that Wal-Mart sucks at the tit of the taxpayers by forcing their workers to accept jobs without health benefits [my words, not Kevin's] is incorrect and incomplete. But that hasn't stopped Ted Kennedy et al. from introducing a bill designed to address this situation.
Several congressional Democrats introduced a bill yesterday that would force states to report the names of companies that have 50 or more employees who receive government-funded health care, an effort to pressure Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in particular to improve employee health coverage.
How many fast-food outlets, pizza parlours, hair salons, drug stores, etc., bulk up on part-timers and offer no benefits? LOTS.
And yet people take these jobs. The primary reason people take these jobs is that they receive benefits from parents or spouses. Those who don't, still are not suffering from the monopsony power of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart does not locate in small isolated communities where employees have no other options; rather it locates where there is a large number of buyers, and that usually means there is also a large number of employment alternatives, too.
Posted by TheEclecticEconoclast on June, 23 2005 at 09:08 AM
