President Obama signs the Democrats’ health care bill into law in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday, March 23, 2010.
Posted on 10/23/2012 3:11:31 PM PDT by NYer
President Obama signs the Democrats’ health care bill into law in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday, March 23, 2010.
CNSNews.com) – A little-known section in the Obamacare health reform law defines “full-time” work as averaging only 30 hours per week, a definition that will affect some employers who utilize part-time workers to trim the cost of complying with the Obamacare rule that says businesses with 50 or more workers must provide health insurance or pay a fine.
“The term ‘full-time employee’ means, with respect to any month, an employee who is employed on average at least 30 hours of service per week,” section 1513 of the law reads. (Scroll down to section 4, paragraph A.)
That section, known as the employer mandate, requires any business with 50 or more full-time employees to provide at least the minimum level of government-defined health coverage to those employees.
In other words, a business must provide insurance if it has 50 or more employees working an average of just 30 hours per week, which is 10 hours per week fewer than the traditional 40-hour work week.
If an employer has 50 or more "full-time employees" and does not offer health insurance, it must pay a penalty per employee for each month it does not offer coverage.
The obscure provision recently reemerged in regulations issued by the IRS for how employers must account for which workers are full-time and which ones are not.
(AP Photo/Mark Duncan, File)
Under these standards, published in September, employers can choose a “look-back” period of between 3 and 12 months to measure if an employee has worked an average of 30 hours per week.
If an employee has worked 30 hours per week during this time, the person would count as a full-time employee for at least the next six months, regardless of how much they work, thus preventing employers from cutting hours to avoid the mandate.
In other words, an employer calculates the hours an employee works during at least a three-month period, determining if they employee has worked 30 hours or more per week on average.
If the employee meets the 30-hour threshold, they are counted as full-time for at least six months. If the employer has at least 50 such employees, he must provide them with health insurance or pay a fine.
The IRS regulations do not apply to seasonal or temporary workers, only to regular employees.
Then companies will downsize to 28 hours a week.
Vive La France. Now more people will be out of work. Probably mostly women...many who prefer to work less hours to have more time with their kids.
Its going to be hard to find a job with more than 28 hours a week.... I guess this is the jobs s plan of Obama, job sharing?
6 hours a day is full time? As a 69 year old, that grates. 50 to 60 hours were standard back in the day and rarely did anyone complain. No overtime (nobody knew what that was) and we were “unaware that we were being taken advantage of” by our employers. It seems our government has lost sight of what used to be called a work ethic.
Lefties just don’t get it, do they?
People are not chess pieces and they WILL change their behaviors and actions in order to avoid the pain of liberal policies.
Obama will just keep going until 16 hours a week is considered full time to achieve his agenda. I’ve never such lack of common sense in the liberal idiots we see today. I think they are going to have to have their world implode into itself and they are going to have go through omecreal hard times until they figure out Obma is using them as pawns and doesn’t give a $hit aboutvthem at all.
Unions have been shooting for this for years. Now, they can push for overtime for anything over 30hrs
Indeed.
Correct.
jeez, have the new head of the HHS just change the mandate!
What the naive and gullible liberals haven’t figured yet is that Obama is not their sugar daddy but their pimp and he is going to ride them hard later to suck as much out of them as he does the middle class. It ain’t going to be perty...
Solve the Problem.
Big Company X decides to get out of the HR business and only owns buildings, tools and implements to conduct business. They use multiple “employment contractors” who all hire the same individuals but the individuals work for one company at a time. So they go clock in on Monday an 9am working for Employment Company A, clock out at 12:00. Then clock back in at 1pm for Employment Company B and work until 5pm. They officially only work 20 hours a week for two different companies thereby skirting the law.
Okay, I just figured out how to trick Obamacare so pay me a million dollars.
Thanks BO.
Just received notice that I was cut, too.
My exact sentiments... thanks BO.
So, hiring a lot of part-time workers would not mitigate the ObamaCare employment rates if this change were to be matched to existing tax code. Anybody care to challenge that an intrusive government would not take such a path?
Nothing new. 4 years ago when I was transitioning to retirement I was kept on for an additional 5 months, 30 hrs per week so I would have benefits.
Yep, they’ll just hire ‘seasonals’, and ‘part-timers’. They’ll work us for 40 hours a week for 9 months and then give us 14 weeks off every year.
Already been doing this for years until I got my present position, which is also not full time but isn’t seasonal.
Thanks Obama for making life suck even harder for young people.
Another "Pass it so we can read it" moment.
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