01-14-06,10:31am
Jan. 13—In a significant win for working families, the Maryland Legislature late on Jan. 12 overrode Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich’s veto of a bill that would require large corporations to provide affordable health care for their Maryland employees.
In passing the Fair Share Health Care bill, Maryland became the first state to require its largest employers to spend 8 percent of their payroll on health care for their workers. Of the four employers in the state with more than 10,000 workers, only Wal-Mart does not meet the 8 percent threshold for employee health care. In May 2005, Ehrlich—with a top Wal-Mart executive by his side—vetoed the bill.
'What the Maryland victory shows is that the tide is turning because working people are not just fed up—they are ready to get active to set our country in a different direction, one state at a time,' says AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney. 'The time is ripe for change.'
Maryland is among 33 states where working families, their unions and community allies are joining with the AFL-CIO in launching Fair Share Health Care campaigns to ensure the largest corporations stop shifting health care insurance costs onto workers, taxpayers and other businesses.
Fair Share Health Care legislation will reduce the bill taxpayers pay to cover profitable corporations’ employee expenses, ease the financial strain states face in growing Medicaid costs and help level the playing field between companies that provide good jobs and benefits and those that don’t.
Among corporations forcing communities to provide public health care, Wal-Mart pays its hundreds of thousands of employees such low wages they can’t afford company health benefits. Although Wal-Mart made $10 billion last year in profits, 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart’s 1.33 million U.S. workers are either uninsured or on Medicaid, according to Wal-Mart’s own information. In addition, fewer than half of Wal-Mart’s workers have health care coverage on the job, according to an October 2003 AFL-CIO report.
Many Wal-Mart workers and their families turn to emergency rooms and other public health services as their only health care option. In 12 of the 13 states where data has been released and analyzed, Wal-Mart workers rely on public health programs more than workers from any other company in those states.
Two polls released Jan. 10 show the majority of Marylanders believe Ehrlich, a staunch supporter of President George W. Bush, is wrong and that Wal-Mart should be required to spend more on health benefits for its 17,000 employees in Maryland. According to a Zogby International poll, some 66 percent of adults say legislators should overrule Ehrlich’s veto, as did 55 percent of those contacted in a Gonzales-Arscott Research poll.
Michigan, Wisconsin and Washington are among states considering similar legislation.
