Living Wage Laws Save Tax Dollars Three Ways

Whether it's companies that do business with the county, companies that get subsidies from our county's Industrial Development Agency, or corporations like Wal-Mart-- Dutchess County taxpayers should be protected from subsidizing poverty wages.

[Contact our County Legislature at 486-2100 and CountyLegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us to make a difference on this!]

Living Wage Laws-- Republicans in Suffolk County agree.

County Legislature Minority Leader Roger Higgins and Assistant Minority Leader Sandy Goldberg have agreed to co-sponsor Legislator Joel Tyner's resolution calling on our county to do the same thing the Republican-led Suffolk County Legislature did four years ago (Westchester & NYC too)-- pass a living wage law that mandates that all companies who do business with the county have to pay their workers a living wage. Otherwise, taxpayers end up making up the difference when workers paid poverty wages come to the county for help on health care, food, or housing. More than a dozen studies on the effect of living wage laws across the country have proven that living wage laws help local economies. [see LivingWageCampaign.org]

Industrial Development Agency Laws-- Republicans in Ulster County agree.

Assistant Minority Leader Sandy Goldberg has also agreed to co-sponsor a different Tyner resolution calling on our county's Industrial Development Agency to only fund companies who pay the prevailing wage and seek local labor first before going outside the county. A similar resolution passed the Ulster County Legislature unanimously last month, spearheaded by Ulster County Legislator Hector Rodriguez and Hudson Valley Area Labor Federation Senior Field Coordinator Jen Fuentes; legislation has been passed in Rockland and Westchester counties as well.

Hold the Wal-Mart's of the World Accountable-- Stop & Shop & Pathmark agree.

Last month the New York City Council passed a precedent-setting bill to level the playing field for responsible businesses facing pressure to stop providing their employees with health coverage. The new law was supported by over 100 businesses, including Stop & Shop, Pathmark, Key Food, Gristedes, D'Agostino's, and Fairway, as well as labor unions, health care advocates and NYC Jobs with Justice (see NYCHealthCareSecurity.org).

Over 70\% of employers in the grocery industry currently pay for their employees' health care. Employers will be required to contribute approximately $2.50-$3.00 for health care for each hour that their employees work - this is the average amount that employers in New York's grocery industry that provide health care are currently contributing. Employers will have broad flexibility in how they make the contributions - everything from paying it into employee health accounts to using it to reimburse employee health bills. Employers that don't comply will be fined.

The Health Care Security Act responds to a nationwide trend. Employers like Wal-Mart keep costs low by refusing to provide many of their employees with health care, flooding state Medicaid rolls. The "Wal-Mart effect" pressures other retailers to slash their health care costs to remain competitive.

The new law is expected to ease the burden on taxpayers who pick up the tab when businesses force their workers onto public assistance programs. "California taxpayers are spending $86 million a year providing healthcare and other public assistance to the state's 44,000 Wal-Mart employees," according to a study last year by UC Berkeley's Institute for Industrial Relations. The study, "Hidden Cost of Wal-Mart Jobs," found that the average Wal-Mart worker required $730 in taxpayer-funded healthcare and $1,222 in other forms of assistance, such as food stamps and subsidized housing, to get by (see WalMartWatch.com).

New York State's Medicaid program costs state, local and federal taxpayers approximately $45 billion each year. Taxpayers also pick up 85 percent of the cost of care for the uninsured, many of whom work full time. Columbia University researchers estimate that New York City's government, taxpayers, and public health system spend more than $612 million each year on care for uninsured workers and their families.

Similar legislation (the Fair Share Health Care Act) was passed this spring in Maryland and is expected to become law in January when the legislature overrides the governor's veto. Suffolk County on Long Island and San Francisco are considering similar bills, as are several states including New Jersey, Connecticut and Washington.

Moreover, the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin have all analyzed the impact of Wal-Mart and determined that taxpayers in those states are carrying a tremendous burden in subsidizing poverty wages.

Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the United States, with over 1.2 million associates, yet they fail to give health insurance to 53 percent of its employees.
"Wal-Mart's blowing people out of the water and if they're doing that by having the public sector subsidize their health care, that's wrong...That's really wrong."
-- Idaho Speaker of the House, Bruce Newcomb (R)

"So here's how it works: Wal-Mart offers insurance, but aggressively shifts the cost onto its employees. The low-wage workers then pass up the unaffordable coverage and turn to the states. If this isn't exactly company policy, it is at least company philosophy. CEO Lee Scott, at the company's recent ''summit'' for the media, even described it. He said some state health programs are 'so lucrative that, in fact, it's hard to be competitive with them and certainly extraordinarily expensive to be competitive with them.'"
[Editorial, Miami Herald 6/11/05]

[Finally, Legislator Tyner has also sent letters requesting this information and submitted an actual resolution that our County Legislature take the first step towards protecting taxpayers from subsidizing poverty wages-- request that at the very least our county's Department of Social Services and Department of Health research and report back to the County Legislature within three months how many county residents are on Medicaid, Family Health Plus, food stamps, in public housing, or other forms of public assistance and are now working, and what companies they are working for. Tyner continues to await this information from DSS and DOH.]