Posted on 11/10/2012 2:58:24 PM PST by grundle
Some low-wage employers are moving toward hiring part-time workers instead of full-time ones to mitigate the health-care overhaul's requirement that large companies provide health insurance for full-time workers or pay a fee.
Several restaurants, hotels and retailers have started or are preparing to limit schedules of hourly workers to below 30 hours a week. That is the threshold at which large employers in 2014 would have to offer workers a minimum level of insurance or pay a penalty starting at $2,000 for each worker.
Pillar Hotels & Resorts this summer began to focus more on hiring part-time workers among its 5,500 employees, said Chief Executive Chris Russell. The company has 210 franchise hotels, under the Sheraton, Fairfield Inns, Hampton Inns and Holiday Inns brands.
"The tendency is to say, 'Let me fill this position with a 40-hour-a-week employee.' "Mr. Russell said. "I think we have to think differently."
Pillar offers health insurance to employees who work 32 hours a week or more, but only half take it, and Mr. Russell wants to limit his exposure to rising health-care costs. He said he planned to pursue new segments of the population, such as senior citizens, to find workers willing to accept part-time employment.
CKE Restaurants Inc., parent of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's burger chains, began two months ago to hire part-time workers to replace full-time employees who left, said Andy Puzder, CEO of the Carpinteria, Calif., company. CKE, which is owned by private-equity firm Apollo Management LP, offers limited-benefit plans to all restaurant employees, but the federal government won't allow those policies to be sold starting in 2014 because of low caps on payouts.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services said the administration didn't believe the law would substantially affect employment
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
“I am guessing the people who now can’t get insurance through their employer will now have to go to a state exchange ?”
Many states refuse to do an exchange and have passed laws against it.
Obamacare was a poisoned pill. It’s meant to be SO awful that people will just say screw it and go on to the real goal, single payer government healthcare....
A lot of states are opting out of the exchange, so it will drive people right to the federal exchange - just as Obama envisioned.
This is a welcome development to the regime.
Most likely it won't...
Dropping a 40hr to 2 20hr = 2 jobs....+1
The +1 helps the layoff numbers - filling in the viods
The key indicator to watch is hours worked dropping
(just think of all the free time to go biking with the kids so they won't get fat - ugh
Converting all the employees to 1099 would be the best thing that ever happened, and the greatest way to go Galt. If a person is a 1099 employee, they are an independant contractor who has to file their own social security, own withholdings, their own taxes, and their own healthcare. They become independent capitalists. Then they will really learn what it takes to run a business, and it isn't unicorns and skittles. This would be a mass conversion to fiscal conservatism.
One was saying he has a business that employees 18 people and he has already told them that as of March they would all be fired and would become “1099s”.
This is very real. Ask any CPA who advises small businesses and you will hear bone chilling stories of what is to come. Obamacare is going to hammer a weak economy. Naturally the marxists will want to amend o-care because it is going to blow a huge hole in the “budget”. We will be back to trillion dollar deficits even after cutting defense and raising taxes.
This frustrating thing is this story broke a couple weeks ago.
It was a major fumble by Romney not putting the Olive Garden cutting hours story front and center in his campaign. The sick part is the Olive Garden CEO is a black guy who is a big Obama donor.
It all dovetailed perfectly to hammer the kenyan with and they didn’t use it.
Source?
That's going to come back and bite him hard if he does that. It will cost him more in penalties and payroll taxes if they turn him in to the IRS.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but he would fundamentally have to change his business structure to make it work and avoid the very real possibility that the government would crack down on him with huge financial hits.
The definition of a 1099 contractor is that they can work for as many clients as they wish, and the client can only tell them what the project completed needs to be, and it is up to the 1099 to figure out how, when, how long the project will take. The business cannot give them any directions, or demand when and where to show up to work, and also the 1099 cannot be in supervisory roles or signers of any company documents.
Also, if he (the business man) gives them one, single, solitary thing (pen, paper, business cards, etc) it shows the 1099 is really a W2 employee and then things really get ugly. He would have to write-write all agreements with his former employees to show that they are 1099, and that is usually at a flat hourly rate (or project rate). They would get paid out of A/P, and the 1099s are responsible for all of their own commercial insurance (specifically workers comp, and E&O liability), as well as reporting, and paying of all of their various federal taxes to the government.
And believe me, my company, we completely feel his pain, we are grandfathered in to our insurance, we can't change it, because then we would not be in compliance with the various laws, we're right at 20 employees ourselves, so we really can't grow, because then we're forced into the insurance and fines by the government if our employees decline our coverage.
We were in mourning last week, it's criminal what they are doing to small businesses, we used to be the backbone of the economy, now we're pariahs being taxes and regulated to death.
Exactly! And to be sure there will be a cottage industry of lawyers springing up overnight to sue for retroactive workers comp coverage, overtime, etc.
More likely they would have to go to the federal exchange. A lot of states can't fund a state exchange. Also the people will need to be told that it is up to them to find coverage, if they chose not to, and believe me some will, thinking that the tax fine will be less than the coverage, that will only be the first year. For every year you don't have insurance the fine rises substantially.
IIRC, the last training session I had on this was that for a family of 4, who makes 20k annually (poverty level) they have to pay nothing for the annual premiums, it's all funded by the employer/govt.
If the family of 4 makes 40K annually, they have to pay (I think it is 6% of what the annual premiums would be - but don't quote me on that) and they employer/govt would have to pay the rest of the premium.
And if the family of 4 makes 80K annually, they would pay 9.7% and the employer/govt would pay the rest of the annual premiums.
I have the actually numbers at work, not at the house. If you send me a FRmail, I will remember to look them up for you on Monday.
Now all of this is moot, if you have group insurance and you are under 50 eligible employees (people working 30 hours or more a week) and you haven't had 50 eligible employees working for you at any time during the last 12 months.
It's a freaking nightmare.
I know some insurance companies that are trying to get a "concierge" service for various industries. That way the the doctors/hospitals would work for the industry, and you would pay an annual premium (staggered based on comprehensiveness of the plan most likely) that would be cheaper to utilize. This idea is not currently illegal under the disaster that is Obamacare.
Make sure that you deduct all that you can legally deduct.
Oh yeah. I shudder at the thought of it all. I did hear one interesting tidbit about the possibilities of have HSA (Health Savings Accounts) and using them instead of insurance. Currently that hasn't been outlawed yet, but it would require that an employee take the initiative and have money put in towards it for future emergencies, and they can earn interest. The downside is that they are talking about capping how much money you can have in the account.
It's certainly caused no end of headaches when you try to figure it out... and perhaps a need to invest in spirits and fine wines. :-)
First you lose hours and are now a part-time employee, with less pay coming in! Second, you have to either pay for medical insurance out of your own pocket, or pay a $2,000 fine, which you cannot afford either! How that change working out for you obamma lovers?!
That’s what I’m afraid will happen to my family. My husband works for a hotel/resort. The insurance is soo good, but sooo pricey! It is expected to go up so high we can’t afford it. The idea of having to go on Obamacare is unbelievable. I think I’d rather die then do that.
LOL. Now these Obamugabe supporters are getting their hours cut....
There are plenty of these cultists working where I do. Tons of Holder’s “people”.
I will be smiling big time if our boss decides to cut them all to 20 hours a week.
Yes, well, a lot of us are going to stop spending money in order to try and starve the Obamugabe Government Beast.
So maybe there won’t be a whole lot of hiring going on at all...legal or illegal.
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