Council Revising Anti-Wal-Mart Bill

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The New York Sun

The City Council is working on changes to the bill it passed in October, requiring large retailers that sell groceries to spend about $2.75 an hour on health care for employees.


The law, passed over a veto from Mayor Bloomberg, could make it more expensive for some supermarkets to operate in the city and could block Wal-Mart and other big-box stores from opening in the five boroughs. Shortly before the council voted on the measure, a group representing mid-size supermarkets said the law would be devastatingly expensive for its members.


The council is holding a hearing tomorrow and moving to pass an amended version of its bill that will change which stores will have to adhere to its law. It has until midnight Wednesday to make final changes so that the full council can vote on it December 21.


The existing Health Care Security Act has yet to go into effect, but it applies to stores that sell groceries – such as the Gourmet Garage, the Garden of Eden, or Wal-Mart – that are at least 10,000 square feet or have at least 35 employees.


The new version is still being negotiated, but the lead sponsor of the bill, Council Member Christine Quinn, told The New York Sun she has agreed to increase the employee requirement to 50 and to change the definitions of the terms “employee” and “square footage.”


The new requirements will, for example, exclude certain employees, like those who work only during the holidays, and eliminate the basement, loading docks, food preparation areas, and aisles where food is not sold from the square-footage formula.


“It makes it so that the smaller supermarkets that were perhaps inadvertently captured in the bill because of a communication problem when we originally passed it will now be fairly and appropriately exempt,” said Ms. Quinn, a leading candidate in the race to be come the next speaker of the council.


Officials at the National Supermarket Association – which represents C-Town, Met Foods, and other markets – plan to testify at the hearing tomorrow.


“This is a big problem,” the executive director of the National Supermarket Association, Luis Salcedo, said during a phone interview last week. “This is not about not wanting to provide medical insurance to workers. It’s about not being able to.”


The changes Mr. Salcedo cited were different than the changes Ms. Quinn cited, but the two sides are still in negotiations.


Mr. Salcedo said he appreciated that Ms. Quinn was listening to his concerns and negotiating with him. He said, however, that he disagreed with the larger mandate of the bill, which will require stores to pay a “prevailing health care expenditure rate,” that is pegged to the industry and estimated to be between $2.50 and $3 an hour for each employee. The Bloomberg administration is expected to fight the bill in court.


“I don’t think that it will stand up legally, but in the meantime we need to prepare for what if,” Mr. Salcedo said. “This is a matter of survival.”


Ms. Quinn has said the bill is designed to help the uninsured and to protect responsible businesses that struggle to compete. She has argued that the law will save taxpayers money because it will move more residents off public insurance programs and that it does not target Wal-Mart, which is not in this market. Opponents said it was a bad idea to set requirements for one industry and that it could keep out stores like Wal-Mart.


A professor of public and health administration at New York University, Charles Brecher, said it would put some stores at a disadvantage. “It makes the intent even more blatant,” Mr. Brecher said. “It is an effort to target and increase the operating costs of the largest class of retailers. It hurts the local economy, and it hurts consumers.”


The New York Sun

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