Now States Cutting Employee Hours to Avoid Obamacare Costs

The costs of Obamacare are not just hitting businesses this year--they are also hitting the government, and public employees as well. Virginia, for example, is about to limit part-time employees to 29 hours per week in order to avoid triggering Obamacare’s requirement that employers provide health insurance to those working 30 hours per week or more. The state cannot afford the $110 million annual cost of insurance.

Elsewhere, public institutions are taking similar steps to limit part-time work. In Ohio, Youngstown State University recently announced a 29-hour-per-week part-time limit, and placed employees on notice that they would be fired if they worked more than the maximum. Other public universities are doing the same across the nation, just as their private-sector counterparts are limiting part-time hours to avoid the Obamacare rule.

In addition to limiting part-time hours, many institutions--public and private--are moving employees from full-time to part-time status to avoid Obamacare requirements. Doing so means facing the ire of left-wing institutions such as John Podesta’s Think Progress, which recently castigated a Wendy’s franchise for cutting employees’ hours. Yet there is little most businesses can do--they are merely responding to incentives written into law.

As the economic reality of Obamacare begins to bite, Democrats are uneasy with the legislation they forced through Congress in 2010, and which survived at the Supreme Court only because Chief Justice John Roberts saw fit to rewrite it. At a recent retreat for House Democrats, former President Bill Clinton advised his party to lead the way in pushing for changes to Obamacare, so they could “[p]rove that we were right to do it.”

The fun comes when temporary/part-time employees are asked to work off the clock, adjust written time cards by shifting hours worked, etc. and the auditor has to go in and deal with the mess after a “disgruntled employee” reports it.

Of course any employer who gets caught doing that is in a world of hurt with the DOL.

I had a situation when we had to shut down operations on a Friday because of a tropical storm and severe flooding in here in central PA and some flooding in our building. Employees could take PTO for the day we were closed, and we were willing to allow employees with less than 8 hours in their PTO bank to get an advance on their PTO, but my hourly 1st shift production workers and their supervisor came up with the idea that they, instead of using their PTO, would just come in and work that Sunday to make up the time.

But because Sunday was the first day of the next workweek, that would mean for that two week pay period, they’d get 8 hours of OT (32 hours worked for the first week and 48 hours worked the next to make up their 80 hours but legally the 8 hours worked over 40 during the second work week would be OT), and we as a company were not willing to pay 8 hours of OT for the entire 1st shift. The employees and their supervisor said, “Just pay us straight time, it’s OK, we’ll even sign a document to say it’s OK with us to be paid straight time.” Au Contraire, I had to tell them. While I sympathized with them wanting to make the time up and not dip into their PTO bank, I had to quote DOL rules regarding OT and how employees, even if “voluntarily” cannot waive their rights to OT and how the employer is always responsible.

I’m sure some employers play fast and loose with falsifying time cards, having employees work off the clock and shifting hours worked from one work week to the next, but I will not allow it where I work – the risks and potential fines and penalties are just too great not to mention that an employee could sign a document and then later come back and make a DOL complaint that they were coerced into to do so.

The agency specified that employers could still fall under the mandate if they employ enough part-time workers to equal 50 full-time workers. For example, if an employer has 40 full-time workers and 20 part-time workers, that employer would be considered by the government to have 50 full-time workers and would be subject to the mandate because the 20 part-time workers average to 10 full-time workers – meeting the 50 full-time-worker threshold.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/irs-warns-employers-do-not-try-avoid-obamacare-insurance-mandate

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.