Legislation is now making its way through the California legislature—with the support of consumer groups, unions and, interestingly, physicians—that would levy a fine of up to $6,000 on employers like Wal-Mart for every full-time employee that ends up on the state’s Medi-Cal program—the California incarnation of Medicaid.
The amount of the fine is no coincidence.
A report released last week by the Democratic staff of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, estimates that the cost of Wal-Mart’s failure to adequately pay its employees could total about $5,815 per employee each and every year of employment.
Way to go, California. Make it so that the price of doing dirty business is MORE than the cost of doing honest and clean business that doesn't shave profits from employee paychecks. Of course, if it were up to me, the amount of the fines would assess how much profit they made by breaking the law and then multiplying that profit by 5 or 10 to get their fine. Profiting from crime should NEVER be so easy, especially not for a mega-corporation like Walmart.
And an important fact for the Tea Party knobs out there,
"Note that these are not people who rely on ‘government handouts’ because they do not wish to work. Rather, these are people who show up to do their jobs for as many hours a week as their employer will permit them to work."I hope more states start to follow California's lead in clamping on Walmart's profit maximizing by shoving costs on to taxpayers. There is, simply, no way to justify what Walmart is doing outside of runaway greed.