Posted on 11/12/2012 12:05:46 PM PST by tobyhill
Operative Faith reveals that Kroger will soon join the ranks of Durden Restaurants and slash the hours of its non-exempt (hourly) workers to avoid millions in Obamacare penalties.
To give you a sense of Kroger’s size and importance, its sales last year were $90 billion and it employs nearly 350,000 people. Most of its jobs are hourly and the vast majority of workers are neither millionaires or billionaires.
Faith is a mid-level manager at Kroger and reports the dire news:
Last week we found out that, beginning in January, any employee who is not full-time at that point,will be limited to 28 hours per week and all new hires will be subject to the same policy.
Currently, part-time employees can work as many hours as needed.
Many Kroger employees, I believe, will be shocked to find out about this new policy.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net ...
“Disagree... If an employer has X number of hours of work to be done but has to limit each employee to less than is needed, the only other option they have is to hire more workers. A larger number of workers doing less work essentially accomplish the same amount of work.”
There are other options. There’s no reason your friendly neighborhood grocery store couldn’t cut their hours of operation by a few hours a day. Don’t need as many union thug employees that way.
When I was growing up in a small town, stores were open from 9 to 5. The bigger of the 2 grocery stores stayed open until 6 during the summer months.
No need to have quite as many stores either, nor quite so many square feet in each store. Unemployed food-stampers have lots of extra time, let them ride the socialist bus to the other end of the city to find a store that’s still operating. At least, when the bus driver union thugs aren’t on strike.
Fewer people will be buying the high-margin speciality foods. Some “hypermarkets” will gradually become “supermarkets”, supermarkets will become grocery stores, grocery stores will become dry goods stores. Maybe a blacksmith in the back if 0bama gets his wish on fuel prices.
One doesn’t have to go Galt all at once. There are many ways, large and small.
Wegman’s. It’s the best. We shopped there when we lived in Corning, NY. Until then, my fave was Carr’s in Alaska.
This new working schedule will take sometime to work itself out but many compaines will be doing the same. Thus an employee will work 28 or less hours at one company and pick up additional hours at another.
The Walmart I use has reduced the number of checkers both full lane and 15 items or less and forcing more people to use the self scan lanes or stand in line longer for a checker.
Krogers is constantly redesigning their checkout approaches so no doubt they are already in the process of organizing a special solution for this challenge. The bright side is no healthcare or benefits are going to be lost since I don’t know any retail chains that offer more than 30-35 hours a week (or 15-20) even now.
I believe the numbers that occurred just before the election were in the neighborhood of 300 - 500 (could be higher than that), but I can’t be sure of internals. They also closed a plant in MN and combined parts of it with another in MN during this chunk of the layoff to the best of my knowledge.
I’ve seen the numbers you posted quoted by other FReepers (not necessarily quoting from you in any way), so I wanted to set the record straight.
This new working schedule will take sometime to work itself out but many compaines will be doing the same. Thus an employee will work 28 or less hours at one company and pick up additional hours at another.
Just because it is only 28 hours does not mean it won’t be a 5 day a week job. Employers want full availability. Finding 2 compatible part time jobs can be difficult especially in the service industries.
Two workers doing 20 hours per week instead of one worker doing 40 hours.
It is a job-stimulus plan!
I said Obamacare would destroy America and Ii begged people to vote for Romney so we could repeal Obamacare.
Nope! Millions of conservatives again refused to vote for the RINO.
Now it is too late and America is doomed. These same conservatives talk about 2016 as if anything we could do in 2016 would stave off the collapse.
We are getting what we deserve.
That’s a dirty little secret about Obamacare. Expect a lot of people to suddenly be part-time or independent contractors.
I think they are doing this on purpose...
They did this in France in order to have more people “employed”.
That is really sad. Krogers (King Soopers here) gave my daughter her first job and are known for giving teens jobs when so many other places can’t or won’t.
“Many Kroger employees, I believe, will be shocked to find out about this new policy.”
Many of them voted for Obama, and will be astounded by this. They simply aren’t educated enough in business ways to know this would happen.
However, they will know all about the endangered birds in the rainforest canopy. And they will wrack their brains over how those republicans can be so petty as to simply want to punish them like this. So sad.
Yeah, that’s why is vital the numbers be accurate, and why I appreciate you pitching in.
Here, King Soopers (Krogers) is only partially unionized, deli workers, butchers, I think.
He won't think that if his Dad works at Krogers...:>)
No reason to think Wegmans will be any different unless it wants to go the way of K-Mart, J. C. Penney, and Kodak by espousing liberal-friendly policies even if the policies kill the business.
My son works for Walmart, full time, has for 3.5 years, with his coworkers.
It’ll take some working out but many people work a couple of jobs now. With many companies rescheduling their workers time to max out at 28 hours/week there will opps for working two jobs. Ingenuity will show itself over time.
PICNIC - Previous Internal Contributor, Now Independent Contractor
PENISES - Prior Employees Now Independent Self-Employed Staff
or
LUNATIC - Laid-off Unemployed Now A Temporary Independent Contractor
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