Nearly two dozen major corporations have joined together in recent years in an effort to gut workers’ compensation laws in the states. Walmart, Lowe’s, Macy’s, Kohl’s, Sysco Food Services and others formed the Association for Responsible Alternatives to Workers’ Compensation (ARAWC) in 2013, and the organization already has had success in Tennessee. Mother Jones takes a look at ARAWC’s methods:
Now, ARAWC wants to take the Texas and Oklahoma model nationwide. Tennessee, where Lowe’s, Walmart and Kohl’s each have about 20 locations, is the only state where the group has pushed legislation so far. But ARAWC is already considering its next targets. “ARAWC hopes to see some neighboring states take up legislation this year and we’re ready to assist those legislatures as well,” [Richard] Evans, the group’s executive director, writes in an email.
Conservative Southern states where ARAWC’s corporate funders have major operations—including Florida, Georgia and Alabama—are on the group’s short list. And ARAWC already has hired lobbyistsin North and South Carolina. The group has written model legislation, but ARAWC intends to work closely with lawmakers to adapt its model for individual states.
When ARAWC targets a state, it moves aggressively. In Tennessee, the group has spent more than $50,000 deploying lobbyists to push its legislation. Evans says that state Sen. Mark Green, who introduced the opt-out bill, was already working on the legislation before ARAWC started pushing for it. But a February blog post written by an executive at Sedgwick, an insurance company that helped found ARAWC, suggests the group played a more active role. In the post, the executive boasts that ARAWC “secured a highly respected bill sponsor”—presumably Green—to introduce the bill, which the group “assisted in drafting.”…
Green’s proposal, which supporters are calling the Tennessee Option, bears many of the hallmarks of the Texas and Oklahoma system: It allows businesses to place strict spending caps on each injured worker and to pick and choose which medical expenses to cover. “We took the best of both and put it together to make it work for Tennessee businesses,” Green told an insurance trade magazine.
The bill as introduced does not require employers to pay for artificial limbs, hearing aids, home care, funeral expenses or disability modifications to a home or a car for injured workers. All of these benefits, notes Gary Moore, president of the Tennessee AFL-CIO Labor Council, are mandated under the state’s current workers’ comp system.
“This piece of legislation is designed as a cost-saving measure for the employer,” Moore says. “Anywhere they save a dollar, it costs the employees a dollar. It’s just a shift in costs.”
This blog originally appeared on aflcio.org on March 28, 2015. Reprinted with permission.
Author’s name is Kenneth Quinnell. He is a long-time blogger, campaign staffer and political activist. Before joining the AFL-CIO in 2012, he worked as labor reporter for the blog Crooks and Liars. Previous experience includes Communications Director for the Darcy Burner for Congress Campaign and New Media Director for the Kendrick Meek for Senate Campaign, founding and serving as the primary author for the influential state blog Florida Progressive Coalition and more than 10 years as a college instructor teaching political science and American History. His writings have also appeared on Daily Kos, Alternet, the Guardian Online, Media Matters for America, Think Progress, Campaign for America’s Future and elsewhere.
