Nathan Newman, deploying his typical talent subtlety and nuance, accuses me of "attacking the Chicago Retail Workers bill as a danger since it might actually improve the lives of Wal-Mart workers." What can I say? Nathan's got me dead to rights. I'm a mean-spirited cur implacably opposed to any program that makes a worker's life slightly less miserable and any policy that leaves a cashier less likely to collapse into tears in the morning -- that's what I live to forestall. Also: Vote Bush!
Back in reality, what I actually said was "Chicago's law was basically useless for the unions (and possibly counterproductive)." For those who don't know, the Chicago city council passed legislation forcing big box retailers to pay a living wage. This, of course, will make organizing in Chicago a great deal trickier. The likeliest outcome is that Wal-Mart will either open up into the suburbs,or if that gets closed off by legislation, forsake Chicago entirely in order to warn other city councils not to try the same trick. What it won't do is create Wal-Mart density in urban areas, which would be the easiest for the unions to target which, if you read the original sentence, is what I'm talking about.
Newman goes on to reprise a health care argument we have every so often. To Newman, there's precisely no tension between achieving universal health insurance and reinforcing the employer-based system. That, of course, is exactly what the history of health care in America shows (as the kids say: Syke!). He then does some tricky stuff like confusing the Japanese system, which operates under the National Health Insurance Act of 1961 and has only 26 percent of workers covered under employer-operated plans, with piecemeal big box employer mandates like the one in Maryland that just got declared unconstitutional.
At base, there's a real disagreement here between those who believe incremental reform offers the best hope for the future and those of us who don't. Nathan, stung by past failures in achieving universal care, is now a believer in smaller initiatives that go after individual employer types. I, on the other hand, am not. My guess is such mandates will make for bad health care plans with heavy cost-shifting while simultaneously picking off constituencies who could actually achieve universal reforms. To me, the system shouldn't discriminate by employment status, shouldn't force widget manufacturers to assume responsibility for medical care, and shouldn't rest till everyone -- not just big box employees -- has coverage. And, from a political strategy perspective, I'm profoundly unsettled by Nathan's willingness to start with half measures rather than demanding comprehensive reform and bargaining backwards. That's a poor negotiation strategy that seems oddly discordant with the fact that 76 percent of Americans want fundamental changes to the system.
Cross-posted at Tapped