SEIU and Podesta got you by the balls, Wal-Mart!
Wal-Mart, SEIU and Center for American Progress (aka John Podesta, Obama’s Transition Dude) penned a letter together yesterday to President Obama urging support for an employer mandate for the health care reform. Huh? Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest employer who is also hostile to union organizing and SEIU, arguably the nation’s most powerful and effective union, penned a letter together to push support for the federal mandate in the health care reform bill that requires employers to provide some kind of health care coverage.
Is Wal-Mart “waking up” finally and becoming a good player? Or is this yet another plot by the country’s largest employer to snuff out small business competitors who will struggle to meet the demands of employer mandates for health care?
Let’s recall: this is the same company that warned its managers of an Obama win last year and the horrors such a win would create for Wal-Mart and union organizing. Now they are warming up to his very left-of-center, very anti-US Chamber of Commerce health care plan? Either Podesta and SEIU are very persuasive (possible) or there’s something in that Kool-Aid at Wal-Mart. (Note to our Republican readers: Don’t buy the bulk Kool-Aid at Wal-Mart, you’re likely to switch parties.) Or it’s something else entirely more self-serving .
It’s not news that Wal-Mart has spent the last few years trying to give itself a little image makeover. See, they have had what you’d call a “tarnished reputation” as an employer (“Hi, class action!”) And now with Democrats in control and pro-class action Sotomayor waiting in the SCOTUS wings, maybe Wal-Mart realizes it’s time to clean up their act and get with the program.
Wrong. Call me cynical, but a little testifying before Congress to increase the minimum wage and settling some lawsuits pertaining to wage discrimination doesn’t make you a good business player all of a sudden. These efforts are not an Extreme Home Makeover or The Swan; rather, it’s an attempt to maintain their edge. Wal-Mart can afford an employer mandate, Mom-n-Pop grocery or retail stores, not so much.
