Quid Pro Quo-Mart

Brian Beutler has an article up at TPM that shows concern that the cost for Wal-Mart's support for Obama on employer mandates for health care reform is the complete and permanent death of the Employee Free Choice Act.

Labor sources, well-acquainted with Wal-Mart's anti-EFCA tactics, have suggested or acknowledged this concern to me in the days since the administration announced the deal--and as hard as it is to imagine Wal-Mart fighting that legislation harder than they already do, the sources say both sides may turn up the temperature in the fight over employee rights in the weeks and months ahead.

It's unclear where the basis of this concern lies--whether it comes from internal knowledge of Wal-Mart's negotiations with key health care players in Washington; or from an understanding of the company's incentives; or whether some in the labor movement are using this moment to launch a pre-emptive strike against their main EFCA opponent.

But either way, it's clear that the uneasy alliance between labor and Wal-Mart on the question of health reform does not translate into rapprochement on the issue of unionization. If anything, it makes the fight over that issue bloodier.

This makes sense. If there's any company on Earth that would be completely opposed to employee mandates, it would be the country's largest private employer, Wal-Mart. And let's face it, Wal-Mart is not exactly known for its generous health care benefits. Wal-Mart would be on the hook for a whole bunch of employees for health care, most of them earning around $10 an hour, even the part-timers.

The death of EFCA may in fact be the price Wal-Mart wants for flexing its muscle and getting behind Obamacare.

[UPDATE 1:06 PM] Amanda Marcotte has another explanation for Wal-Mart's sudden generosity: it expects the cost of employer-mandated health insurance to finish off the rest of the country's supermarket chains and discount stores.

The likely employer mandate that Wal-Mart wants to see would cost every business that doesn’t provide benefits to part-timers, particularly those that finagle hours so that full-time employees are nominally part-time. The clearest example of this? Retailers, particularly grocery stores. If there’s one operational tactic that Wal-Mart has perfected, it’s short-term loss for long-term gain. Five years of an employer mandate on most small margin retailers around the country will put many of them out of business, leaving Wal-Mart with an effective monopoly across most of the country.

The real question is why SEIU is letting themselves get played like this. An employer mandate is one of the worst possible ways to achieve universal health insurance, forcing everyone into the current terrible private health insurance system through employers, which is like curing your polio by going around smacking other kids in the knees with hammers.

I'd have to argue that an employer mandate is better than the no health insurance 50 million people have now, but that's another thing. I absolutely agree with Amanda that this is a totally valid reason why Wal-Mart is going with this, and certainly a reason why mandates should be reconsidered.