Posted on 11/11/2012 8:03:51 AM PST by Renfield
Businesses with 50 or more employees who average at least 30 hours of work a week will be subject to the Obamacare insurance coverage mandate.
Companies are reportedly planning large layoffs due to the implementation of Obamacare.
But, companies can potentially avoid being subject to Obamacare's insurance requirements by limiting employees’ weekly hours to less than the 30 hour level defined by Obamacare as “full-time.”
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 full-time 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.
Thus, by cutting employees’ hours to ensure they average less than the 30 per week, employers could potentially avoid the cost of providing the minimum insurance levels mandated by Obamacare.
Obama will simply change the rules in flight.
It will be called “full employment sharing”
By halving the number of regular full time workers, businesses will have to hire an equal number of part-time workers to take up the slack.
Unemployment will drop drastically as the economy changes to a “fair share” workforce
Personally, I’d like to share a CEO job or a hedge fund manager rather than share a burger-flipper job, but I’m sure the government will have a fair-share answer: “From each according to his talent, to each according to his need.”
I’m not sure I can think of a worse scenario than what we have right now. Evidently you can.
Tell me what nightmare you can see that is worse than what has happened to our nation over the last twenty years.
Take a good look at our employment situation. We have 22+ million people that can’t find work, and millions more making far less than they did five years ago. And benefits? What benefits?
Tens of millions of our citizens have lost their homes. Those that did retain them are under water. We are actually bulldozing neighborhoods.
And now, with Obamacare coming on board, the next few years are guaranteed to make matters even worse.
Worse than the disease? ROTFLMAO
How much of those employment losses are due to technology and robotics?
We grow a lot more food today than a hundred years ago, with a fraction of the agricultural workforce that was in place back then.
Well there you have it. Outsourcing wasn’t a problem after all.
Thanks. What a relief.
Did I say that?
If companies didn’t save costs by outsourcing, how many would have gone under taking all of the employees with them?
This nation became the greatest nation on earth without outsourcing.
Now all of a sudden, our companies can only go out of business if they don’t outsource? Oh really?
Companies sell products. You tell me. Is it easier to sell those products with 22+ million people out of work, and tens of millions more working for 50 to 75% of what they were five years ago?
In a thriving economy, it take purchasers to drive things. How is it working now that we’ve tossed jobs overboard by the bucket-full?
Companies do not drive things. The consumer drives things. And when you destroy your consumer base, what happens?
Well, what has happened?
I doubt many know all the details of Obamacare yet, but there is probably a point at which part-time workers who are provided no employer health insurance will qualify for Medicaid, and not be required to buy their own insurance.
The old saying “you can’t get blood out of a turnip” will inevitable come into play at some point. What sort of insurance can someone working around 1,600 hours per year at $10.00 per hour afford?
I think there is a fortune waiting to be made for smart, astute people with a decent understanding of tax law, accounting and other matters. The U.S. business community is just dying to hire you to come in and show them how to circumvent these stupid rules ... in perfectly legal ways that meet the letter of the law.
The "29-hour work week" is an obvious one, but how about another alternative that would enable employers to keep people on for 40-hour weeks without having to deal with this nonsense? How about breaking your company into two different companies, and having your employees work 20 hours per week for each company -- doing the exact same work every day? If the IRS gives you any grief, just set up in two different locations in the same building. For 20 hours, I can go to work for Acme Engineering & Architecture in my building ... then for 20 hours I can go to work for Emca Architecture & Engineering right down the hall.
And, we have 22 million who can’t find work, at the same time we have somewhere between 10 and 20 million illegal aliens in this country, many of who have jobs which theoretically the 22 million out of work could be doing.
America may yet devolve into a 3rd world country. A lot of things hang in the balance.
If you have work that typically requires a professional staff to spend 120 per week getting the job done, you're better off hiring two employees and having them work 60-hour weeks than three employees with 40-hour weeks. You end up saving money even if you pay the two employees 50% more to compensate them for the extra time they work. For one thing, most employee benefits (sick time, vacation time, medical insurance (think about this in the context of Obamacare), etc.) are fixed costs regardless of how many hours someone works. Secondly, having two employees instead of three means you can get away with one-third less office space for the work.
Heck, I could do my job from home. I suspect we’ll see that more and more as companies try to save money on office space.
I remember back in the Clinton era a Dem proposing short work-weeks to reduce unemployment.
Unfortunately for hourly employees that means less $$$.
My company has tried that, and I’ve talked them out of it ... mainly by pointing out that even in very expensive commercial real estate markets the cost of office space isn’t very high compared to all of the other costs of running the business. In fact, at some point in the last decade we’ve reached the point where medical coverage for an employee costs more than the real estate they occupy and the office furniture, computer and telecommunications equipment they use.
Which is why companies are on board with ObamaCare, and frankly I understand it. Why should a company be in the business of providing health insurance for their employees when those resources could be put to better use? They don’t have to worry about providing health insurance for outsourced workers, so it immediately puts the American worker at a distinct disadvantage.
Complaining is the least of the problems with the modern workforce. Lawsuits, absenteeism, sick leave, workers comp, unemployment insurance, recordkeeping, OSHA, slackerism, theft of service and goods, going postal, security, et al.
Once all of the provisions of Obamacare kick in, there is going to be a huge cohort of people who will suddenly become valuable, highly prized employees in any industry: prospective employees who don't need employer-paid medical coverage because they can demonstrate that they have coverage through other means. This can be a spouse's employer-paid insurance plan or a government plan (I'd love to be hiring older employees on Medicare right now).
In my company, if you cover a spouse that is eligible to be covered under their company’s medical plan, that will cost an additional $150/month to cover them.
That’s $1,800 per year. If you worked for me and your spouse had this kind of provision in his/her insurance plan, I’d gladly write you a check for $1,800 to cover that additional expense for you.
Productivity gains through adoption of new and advanced technology is a rather slow and gradual process. Productivity gains are the ONLY way we can increase the overall wealth of society.
What you are seeing now are the SUDDEN impacts of government meddling in an industry. It certainly wasn’t a free market before given the myriad millions of regulations imposed on insurance by government at all levels. But now the very heavy hand of central planning if making a bad situation MUCH MUCH worse. The huge shifts in labor patterns are not caused by productivity increases or changes but are entirely due to government fouling everything up.
Right on schedule, completely as predicted, and bound to get MUCH worse as the onerous regs now kick in. People were happy in early 2012 because their kids could stay on their insurance plan and pre-existing conditions were covered. But the piper wants his due starting January 1.
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