wal-mart expands health care programs

although the ap still manages to make the story look negative, i think. oh well. by next year, wal-mart plans to make $11 dollar monthly insurance premiums available to half it's US workers, or roughly 650,000 people. their enemies--in this case, the folks at wake up wal-mart--say that it's basically just a PR stunt. but that's less than my monthly premiums, and i work for a bank. wal-mart is also reducing the amount of time before the part-time employees can access their benefits, though they're not sure how long yet. which is also fairly impressive. i'm pretty sure that the bank i work at has benefits for the part time workers (all two of them), but i know that i didn't when i was originally hired for a seasonal position.

on a sort of side note, at least one other blog that posted that internal wal-mart memo i put up a few days back actually heard from the new york times about it. apparently my 5-10 hits a day--several of which come from myself--weren't enough to warrant the NYT's attention. but i still find the situation fairly humorous.