Trailing in

By Danny Westneat Seattle Times staff columnist

The pernicious thing about Wal-Mart, says Craig Cole, is if we don't change it, it'll change us. He should know. Cole runs Brown & Cole, a business founded by his grandfather in Lynden 97 years ago that consists of 29 groceries in this state. Cole, 55, can feel this family legacy slipping away. Last year he closed seven stores. The reason, he insists, is simple: He buys health insurance for his workers, and Wal-Mart largely does not. "I was raised with American values, that good companies take care of workers," Cole says. "Wal-Mart is changing the rules. We're at a crucial point where society needs to decide whether we're going to follow them on this race to the bottom, or not."

At a hearing Thursday in Olympia, Cole will urge state legislators to require that Wal-Mart buy more health coverage for its workers. A similar measure just passed in Maryland.

Wal-Mart says government shouldn't meddle so directly in business. And that the retailer is nowhere near as stingy as critics suggest. Maybe so, but comparisons with Cole's Bellingham-based business sure aren't flattering. Cole buys health insurance for 95 percent of his 1,500 workers, including any who work 20 hours per week. He also insures their families.

Wal-Mart, Cole's direct competitor, insures 45 percent of its workers. A Wal-Mart memo leaked in October revealed that half of the children of its employees are either uninsured or on the government's Medicaid program for the poor. Who pays when these children go to the doctor? We do, says Cole.

"That's the real problem here — the public is picking up the tab for what should be Wal-Mart's responsibility," he says. It's the impetus for a union-backed bill that would require companies with more than 5,000 employees to pay at least 9 percent of payroll costs toward health care. Almost all larger companies pay much more than that already. Brown & Cole pays 27 percent.

Not all agree Wal-Mart is responsible to pay a dime for health care. The Wall Street Journal called the bill "an attempt to pass the runaway burdens of the welfare state onto private American employers." That's the crux of the issue. Whose job is it to insure American workers, anyway? We can't make up our minds. We don't trust government to do it. And we don't want to force businesses to do it, even huge ones with multibillion-dollar profits.

I'm leery of this law. I don't like government telling businesses how to spend money.

But consider Cole's predicament. His company does right by its workers. The way he can see to compete now with Wal-Mart is to do wrong by his employees. To mimic Wal-Mart.

In the end, won't that cost us more?

"Wal-Mart is like a form of social pollution," Cole says. "If we let an oil company dump waste into Puget Sound, it could make cheaper gas. But we don't let them, because it degrades the environment.

"Well, what Wal-Mart is doing degrades American workers. And not just their own."

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