Business

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The four labor initiatives being withdrawn are Amendments 53 (making executive wrongdoing a state crime), 55 (requiring employers to show cause before firing a worker), 56 (requiring most employers to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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.