Business

Colorado Peace: Labor Pulls Four Measures From The Ballot

Joe Mathews — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:43:00 -0400

While I was asleep in Switzerland, peace broke out Thursday in Colorado's multi-measure labor vs. business war. As part of a deal negotiated just before the deadline for sponsors to pull their support for an initiative, business groups agreed to fund a campaign against three ballot initiatives targeting labor prerogatives, including Amendment 47, the initiative to make Colorado a right-to-work state. In return, labor agreed to drop four initiatives that it had qualified to challenge business prerogatives. More details here.

The four labor initiatives being withdrawn are Amendments 53 (making executive wrongdoing a state crime), 55 (requiring employers to show cause before firing a worker), 56 (requiring most employers to provide health insurance for workers), and 57 (permitting workers to sue employers in workers comp cases). The measures still appear on the ballots, which have been printed, but votes won't be counted.

Now business and labor will team up to defeat not only Amendment 47 but also Amendment 49, a so-called "paycheck protection" member limiting the political use of dues by public employee unions, and Amendment 54. This last is an interesting case, since it's not targeted solely at labor unions. It's an attempt to end "pay to play" politics by banning political donations from anyone -- including unions -- who has an exclusive contract with government agencies.

Colorado Compromise?

Joe Mathews — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 22:35:00 -0400

In Colorado, there's a multi-initiative war between business and labor interests. Each side is sponsoring multiple measures. But there are talks underway, with some participation by Gov. Bill Ritter, aimed at avoiding a full war in November. The Denver Business Journal has details. Labor has agreed to drop its initiatives -- which are aimed at business prerogatives -- if business leaders will help the unions defeat Measure 47, an initiative to make Colorado a "right-to-work," or open shop, state.

ADDED, 9/21: More details on the talks from the Rocky Mountain News, which even has some documents on the deal-making.

Greetings From Denver

Joe Mathews — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:28:00 -0400

I'm back in Denver today and tomorrow, to do a few reporting errands. (Word to the wise: don't be like your blogger, a Socal boy who is constitutionally incapable of checking reports, and pack a jacket when you visit the Mile High City. It's darn cold here). I'm also touching base with a variety of initiative sponsors here. In a lighter-than-expected year for ballot measures nationwide (with measures failing to make the ballot or being pulled in Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, etc.), Colorado is this year's ballot champion. Nineteen -- that's right, 19 -- measures will be on the November state ballot.

But as I talk to folks on both sides of these campaigns, I feel like I'm entering a time machine -- a time machine that takes me back to 2005 California. There, we saw Gov. Schwarzenegger and his business backers qualify a number of initiatives to the ballot. Labor then countered with a fierce "no" campaign and a few counter-measures of its own. Virtually the same thing has happened in Colorado this year, the one key difference being that Gov. Bill Ritter counseled both sides against going to war. There hasn't been much public polling. Private polling that I'm seeing shows some initiatives doing better than others, but all with serious vulnerabilities. It's quite likely that history will repeat itself here and voters will shoot down both the business initiatives and the labor counter-measures. And no one will emerge a winner after a big, multi-front, expensive campaign -- well, no one except the political consultants.

IN THE STATES: What's the Matter With Kansas (City)?

Paul Testa — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:37:00 -0400

Kansas City, Missouri—hometown to winners of not one, but two seasons of Survivor, as well as the most recent season of American Idol—lost its bid on Sunday to land a $375 million Bombardier aircraft plant, which will instead be located closer to the Canadian company's headquarters in Montreal.

Why did the Paris of the Plains lose out to its Quebecois competitor? Globalization brings many variables into play, but Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) says it was health care that tipped the scale, according to the Kansas City Star's Jason Noble.

She's got a point. According to a recent policy paper by our New America colleagues Len Nichols and Sarah Axeen, U.S. manufacturing firms pay nearly three times as much per hour in health benefits as their Canadian competitors.

We've talked about the Kevin Bacon Theory of Health Care and the Economy, but when it comes to the competitiveness of American businesses in the global economy, Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow from Michigan has made the case for health reform far more eloquently. She spoke at a recent New America event on Employer Health Costs in a Global Economy, and we particularly remember the scene she described in her home state of Michigan:

[W]e look across the river at the great country of Canada... [and] we see plants, auto plants, being built across the river. The wages are the same. There is Canadian UAW. The environmental standards are the same or stronger. The only difference—the only difference is healthcare. We are losing jobs whether it is a race to the bottom, coupling healthcare and wages, or whether it is just simply looking at healthcare differences. We are losing jobs and we have a competitive disadvantage.

Stabenow's insights drive home the fact that our health care crisis in the U.S. creates an economic as well as a moral imperative for reform. We must find a more sustainable way to finance health care in this country—one that will leave our businesses more competitive and our workers more secure.

What Does Walmart Know?

Terry Tamminen — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 02:54:00 -0400

Last month I visited Walmart's annual sustainable packaging conference in Bentonville, Arkansas. I learned that the first such meeting took place in a conference room in Walmart's headquarters just three years ago and 50 people attended. The 2008 version needed a massive convention center and was bursting at the seams with suppliers, shippers, and buyers of eco-friendly packaging. You can see where this trend is going.

So what does Walmart know that the rest of the world may still be trying to understand? CEO Lee Scott reportedly told his employees and suppliers alike to reduce wasteful, non-recyclable packaging, because Walmart was paying for waste twice - - once when the package came in the door, and once when they paid someone to haul it away from the back of the stores. Walmart saw the opportunity to benefit the environment and their bottom line at the same time.

But how does the world's largest retailer cut the waste from so many products? They computerized a scorecard, evaluating packaging on a variety of sustainability metrics that flow all the way back down the supply chain. Vendors get a score for the packaging of each item and are then automatically directed to suppliers of products that are more sustainable any time the packaging comes up short.

Walmart took a simple problem - - but a massive one - - and created a clever, self-perpetuating solution. Bottom line? Less waste, more recyclable content (that Walmart now separates and recycles at a profit), better economics, better environment.

Who says you can't judge a book, or any other product, by its cover?!

VOICES OF REFORM: CED's Charles Kolb Explains Why Business Has Had Enough

Joanne Kenen — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:52:00 -0400

Charles Kolb, president of the Committee for Economic Development, a business-led think tank here in D.C., took part in a New America Foundation panel discussion this spring about the economic burden that health care puts on our nation's businesses. We were particularly struck at the time by Kolb's perspective on just how seriously the health care system has declined, and how bold the solutions must now be. The CED understands bold; created in 1942, it helped draw up what eventually became the post-war Marshall plan. With Kolb's permission, we're sharing an edited version of his remarks that day. For more detail on the CED's health care proposals, see the long version here or the summary here ).

Six years ago, the CED looked at health care and concluded that the employer-sponsored system was sustainable, it was fixable. We recommended a number of things that the government could do, that the private sector could do, that individuals could do. We thought through all the little tweaks, how to take better advantage of the market power that employers had, how we could save the system.

Nothing happened.

Actually some things did happen: The system got worse. The costs continued to escalate faster than GDP and the number of uninsured rose. And, the impact on business is even worse. We now see situations where families are actually facing bankruptcy with catastrophic or near-catastrophic health care expenses. We are outspending the rest of the world in the aggregate and on a per capita basis, yet we're not living as long as people in countries that spend less. The health care system we have now is simply not working. It is not sustainable.

The employer-sponsored system, as we know it, is not sustainable for a number of reasons. Employer-based health insurance is costly to market and to administer—roughly 20 percent of the total plus employer costs. (That's far more than it would cost if there were competitive regional exchanges that equalized risks.) And the employer-benefits system leaves out too many people. It leaves many others insecure. It depresses real wages and interferes with the efficiency of the job market. "Job lock" blocks people from going out and starting their own businesses. The employer-sponsored system even interferes with the continuity of medical care and medical records. As people change jobs, they are forced to change doctors and delivery systems. This gives health plans short-term incentives in a world where median job tenure is short. The whole system, the way it has been structured and how it's evolved since World War II, when we stumbled into it, is frankly, now, an anachronism.

If employers could fix it themselves, they would, but we've talked to them and they can't. So the question is, when you have a basically dysfunctional system, how do you move beyond it? The debate on healthcare in this country starts generally from an ideological premise. On the right, people say we must let the markets drive everything. And, on the left, we have to have universal coverage, typically by folding everything into a Medicare-for-All system. Both starting points, in my view, are wrong. It is not a question of ideology: We need pragmatism.

CED proposes establishing an independent body or a "Health Fed" that would oversee regional health insurance exchanges or markets. The "Health Fed" would modernize and simplify insurance regulation and ensure standards. This would build on and improve the current Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan. Only quality plans with broad coverage would be allowed to compete.

Second, we would grant fixed dollar credits to every American to purchase health insurance. Needless to say, we would get rid of the current tax treatment.

Finally we would create a National Institute for Medical Outcomes and technology assessment to help provide authoritative, scientific information about the value and costs of clinical interventions.

We also need to use the IT revolution—the whole movement towards openness can help drive down health care costs and increase efficiencies. The health care system simply does not take full advantage of the technology that has evolved over the last 20 or 25 years. You have been to a doctor's office recently, you have to fill out the same form five times and tell them your Social Security number and your birth date, that paper goes somewhere. There are people who file it. You can follow on the costs that are associated with just that one failure to take advantage of the technology. Not to mention the wonderful handwriting that most physicians have when it comes to writing prescriptions.

So, each healthcare consumer would receive fixed dollar amounts to purchase health insurance from the regional health exchanges. They'd be able to make cost-conscious decisions. What we proposed is very similar coincidentally—this was not intentional, it was a wonderful coincidence—to what was emerging in the Senate as the Wyden-Bennett Healthy Americans Act. We are very grateful for the bipartisan interest that seems to be emerging. [Click here to see what the CBO has said about the bill.]

I am confident that the American people are getting sufficiently fed up with the lack of cooperation between the parties. Whoever is elected president, we have an opportunity to get a breakthrough, if we can help people understand the facts and how the system is not working. But we have to go beyond the "bipolar"—in every sense of the term—starting point and realize it is failing our workers and our economy. Whatever your ideological views are, the system is not meeting the needs of the 21st century workforce.

Having said that, at CED we have absolutely no illusions that this will be easy. We are talking about reforming 16 percent of the gross domestic product. So, when you look at all the interests and parties and dollars that are involved, change is going to be extremely difficult. But, we simply cannot afford to waste another decade, either for the people who are affected by the system or for our economy. The world of work has changed dramatically in the last 10 or 15 years. Our healthcare system has not.

Department of Self Promotion: Save the Date

Joe Mathews — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 22:21:00 -0400

Here's the link to information on a Zocalo LA panel on local ballot measures and business that I'm moderating at the Autry Museum in Griffith Park at 7:30 p.m. on May 27.

REFORM: Small Business Leaders Call for Health Reform

Elizabeth Carpenter — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:07:00 -0400

Determined to have a constructive voice in the growing national dialogue on health reform, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the nation's largest small business association, launched its new health care campaign—Solutions Start Here: When Healthcare is Fixed for Small Business its Fixed for America.

The most impressive message of the day came from Todd Stottlemyer, President and CEO of NFIB. After recalling NFIB's active opposition to the Clinton health care plan (and its employer mandate), Stottlemyer said, "In 1994 it was good enough to say no...today's situation must be different," and went on to emphasize the importance of a "diverse bipartisan conversation."

While NFIB did not introduce a specific plan, they emphasized the strong support for health care reform in the small business community. According to their recent national poll, 53% of small business voters list health care as the "most important factor" in determining their vote. Their new website, FixedforAmerica.com, did provide 10 principles of health care reform for small businesses and produced a video about the compelling stories and struggles that small-business owners in America have experienced with the rising costs of health care (below).

The employer role in health care (and health care financing) is a pivotal debate within the health reform conversation. In California, NFIB opposed reform efforts, on the basis of "pay or play" fee. Nationally, employers faced with rising health care costs are cutting back on benefits or shifting more of the health care burden onto employees. The employer health care burden is real. It threatens the competitiveness of businesses and the stability of middle class jobs. And employers (large and small) are taking notice. Reducing the health care burden for employers and workers must be central to any health reform proposal.

Business-on-Business Warfare

Joe Mathews — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:27:00 -0400

Now comes news that a second initiative on development in Bayview-Hunters Point has qualified for the city of San Francisco’s June ballot. Check out this story in the Chronicle.

Why should people outside San Francisco care? Because in California and around the country, local ballot measures have become a common instrument of business-on-business warfare. Lennar Corp, a national development company based in Florida, first qualified an initiative that would put in place its Hunters Point development plan, which would include a combination of retail, industrial and residential development along with a new 49ers Stadium. In response, a San Francisco supervisor -- with backing from other developers -- has qualified this second initiative, which would impose a mandate that half of the new homes in the Hunters Point area be sold or rented at below-market rates.

Such battles have come to dominate municipal ballots in California. Look at ballots this June. Wal-Mart takes on local business in Long Beach. A hardware store owner is battling Home Depot in Thousand Oaks. In Anaheim a fight between a developer and Disney produced two ballot measures, though those were recently removed after the developer, facing legal problems and an onslaught from the Mouse, surrendered.

Look for more on the Anaheim fight in a piece I have in April’s edition of Orange Coast magazine. And I’ll be helping put together a panel on how businesses use municipal ballots to fight each other at Zocalo in Los Angeles on May 27. More details to come on each.