PAGE 12 | April 17, 2015 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Shadowy corporate group fighting to gut workers’ comp laws
By Kenneth Quinnell
AFL-CIO NOW blog
Nearly two dozen major corpo-
rations 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 Al-
ternatives to Workers’ Compen-
sation (ARAWC) in 2013, and
the organization already has had
a bill introduced in Tennessee.
The bill would let employers
opt out of the state’s workers’
compensation program and al-
low them to set up their own
plan, as long as it met minimum
requirements.
Mother Jones magazine 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 loca-
tions, is the only state where the
group has pushed legislation so
far. But ARAWC is already con-
sidering its next targets.
“ARAWC hopes to see some
neighboring states take up legis-
lation 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 fun-
ders have major operations—in-
cluding Florida, Georgia and Al-
abama—are on the group’s
short list. And ARAWC already
has hired lobbyists in 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 senator
Mark Green, who introduced
the opt-out bill, was already
working on the legislation be-
fore ARAWC started pushing
for it. But a February blog post
written by an executive at Sedg-
wick, 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 sup-
porters are calling the Tennessee
Option, bears many of the hall-
marks of the Texas and Okla-
Trumka to attend
organizing summit
in Vancouver May 19
National AFL-CIO President
Richard Trumka will join some
of the most talented union or-
ganizers across the country in
Vancouver, Wash., Tuesday,
May 19, for the 2015 Organiz-
ing Summit.
The summit, presented by the
Oregon AFL-CIO, also will fea-
ture national AFL-CIO Organiz-
ing Director Elizabeth Bunn. It
Particiants will learn about
the state labor federation’s col-
laborative approach to building
worker power.
The summit will be held at
the Vancouver Hilton from 10
a.m. to 4 p.m. Registration is
$25. For more information, go
to www.oraflcio.org/organizing-
summit/.
homa system: It allows busi-
nesses to place strict spending
caps on each injured worker and
to pick and choose which med-
ical 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 ex-
penses or disability modifica-
tions to a home or a car for in-
jured workers. All of these ben-
efits, notes Gary Moore, presi-
dent of the Tennessee AFL-CIO
Labor Council, are mandated
under the state’s current work-
ers’ comp system. “This piece of
legislation is designed as a cost-
saving measure for the em-
ployer,” Moore says. “Any-
where they save a dollar, it costs
the employees a dollar. It’s just
a shift in costs.”
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