Posted on 01/09/2015 8:35:13 AM PST by george76
One of the first agenda items on the to-do list for the new Congress is redefining the definition of full-time work under Obamacare's employer mandate, which goes into effect this year. Under the healthcare law, companies have cut hours in order to avoid reaching the Obamacare threshold requiring businesses to provide health insurance if they employ more than 50 full-time workers at 30-hours per week. As a result, the economy is seeing an substantial shift from full-time to part-time workers with fewer benefits as a result of the law.
Republicans have long expressed the need to re-establish the definition of full-time in Obamacare and they've found an unlikely ally on the topic in labor unions. Leading unions bosses, including those who have supported President Obama and Obamacare in the past, have been furious for years about the health legislation's devastating effect on working Americans. In 2013 Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, UFCW President Joseph Hansen and UNITE-HERE President D. Taylor sent a scathing letter directly to President Obama and Democrats demanding a fix.
...
resident Obama issued a veto threat earlier this week, saying through his press secretary Josh Earnest that if Congress were to pass legislation re-defining "full-time" under Obamacare he would reject it, further putting him at odds with Republicans, Democrats, his rhetoric about supporting the middle class, the vast majority of the American people and the labor unions who have given him and his party unwavering political support.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
“...............and they’ve found an unlikely ally on the topic in labor unions. Leading unions bosses, including those who have supported President Obama and Obamacare in the past, have been furious for years about the health legislation’s devastating effect on working Americans.”
Hmmmmmmmmmm...lessee here....IF the workers make less, the union gets less...IS THAT RIGHT?
Make him veto all this stuff so that it will be on the Democrat record for 2016.
The 30 hour threshold has been the standard definition for full time work for decades. This is nothing new, and nothing to do with Obama care.
If the Congress Critters think this is a recent change, they are dumber than I thought.
When you change this rule, millions of people who otherwise had full time benefits (not just health care) are going to be kicked to the curb.
I don’t think they have thought that particular item through or have done any homework. It is just another example of how these guys have no idea of how the real world works.
Obamacare was designed to destroy the incomes of middle class Americans by forcing employers to convert full time workers to part time workers in order to stay in business and avoid ObamaCare induced bankruptcy.
The Democrats can thus blame “greedy companies” for heartlessly shifting workers to part time status and use ObamaCare as a tool generate labor strife and to drive a wedge between companies and employees that could be exploited by the Democrats and their friends in the Labor Unions
When their stated goals could have been easily accomplished without the devastating damages that their proposed solution imposes,
the conclusion you must reach is that the stated goals were not the actual goals,
and the devastating damage was truly the real goal.
Marxism does not work with a healthy middle class. It needs an Inner Circle and an easily fooled poverty class.
Pray America is waking
Could be, and there are those who think that is exactly what Obama and the Lefties want so they can come back and say that half-measures like Obamacare didn’t work, so government must simply take over healthcare.
The answer, is unequivocally rejecting socialized medicine in any form because 1) it’s unconstitutional and 2) health care on the free market is and always has been, the best in the world.
Nine TEN! Questions on the House Vote to Tweak ObamaCare’s Employer Mandate
As it stands now, the employer mandate only kicks in if the employee is working at least 30 hours. This would change that threshold to 40 hours.
Either way, the employee is falling under one of the Obamacare requirements, but the difference is whether we force the employers to cover them, or whether the employee has to get his own coverage under the exchanges. The main result will be that employers can give employees more hours without being forced to cover them, as right now most businesses are holding their employees to 28 hours a week or so to avoid the mandate.
“When you change this rule, millions of people who otherwise had full time benefits (not just health care) are going to be kicked to the curb.”
Those benefits you talk about are provided voluntarily by the employers, they are not mandated by the government. So changing the Obamacare definition of “full time”, as regards the employer mandate, doesn’t do anything to change when employers decide to voluntarily offer benefits to their workers.
If anything, it allows more employees to get past the threshold on those types of benefits, because their employers can now give them 30 hours a week without being subject to the Obamacare mandate.
It certainly won't help small business owners and the self employed.
“Sure they would be getting more money but still no full time benefits.”
Full time benefits (beside the Obamacare mandate) are entirely at the employer’s discretion anyway (unless its a union shop). So, this really doesn’t have any effect on that. If the employer wants to say you get full-time benefits at 35 hours a week, but nobody can work more than 39 (to avoid the Obamacare mandate), then they are free to do that, and a lot of them probably will.
so I can then work you 39 hrs per week and not have to pay health insurance for you.
Does anyone have any DOUBT that Obozo’s number one agenda and goal is to destroy America?
You are missing my point.
Millions of happy workers are already working their 34 hours, getting pro-rated full time benefits. Most of them are already getting insurance.
If they change this, those companies will jump at the chance to cut them down to part time benefits and blame the government.
Thinking large companies are going to continue offering retirement and others benefits when they don’t have to, then you are not aware of how these decisions are made in larger companies.
Some CFO will jump at the chance to improve profitability.
They don’t do it today out of the goodness of their hearts. Ever since I began in management we would try hard to get as much done with 25 hour employees as with 30’s. We never, in 25 years, restricted full time to 40 hours.
So, these fools pass this bill, thinking they are doing something and it will slam back into them like a wall of bricks.
The Republicans are fools who think we will blindly think what they are doing is chopping down O Care. The millions affected will not see it that way.
Anyone who actually ran a business would know this stuff. Rich lawyers and political hacks have no idea how the rules are actually set, and how businesses change their policies to meet the laws exactly.
Actually, you are incorrect in many places. In non union shops many states require that benefits be distributed to employees working “full time.” In the six states I worked in, that was anyone with more than 30 hours a week, averaged over the previous quarter.
For those under 40 hours, the benefits were prorated down to 30 hours.
So, if the rules are changed companies could use these rules to dump those expensive benefits. Companies will do it to save expenses. Don’t kid yourself that there are many companies who continue to pay them. Those will be the exceptions, not the majority.
The Republicans are trying to be fancy because they don’t have the guts to do what is right. This is a half measure that will come back to hurt them in ways they have not thought through.
This is why we need to get leaders who have actually worked in a business with employees. Not lawyers, hacks, or third generation rich kids.
I think that’s the point I made. Businesses will simply raise the hours to 39 per week. This will give those people who ordinarily did already receive health benefits to work more hours per week.
What part of ‘financial terrorism’ do the Middle Class in America not understand? Where are the other two branches of government on this?
Yes. It will actually strip millions of people of health benefits. Walmart's many folks work 35-37 hours a week to control overtime, and those people would now be eligible to be dropped from insurance.
On the other hand, it eliminates the penalty to the employer for not providing insurance to 30-39 hour/week employees.
So, workers lose employer-provided insurance and employers lose the penalties, which is OK to unions and the Chambers of Commerce (who love amnesty) - something sounds a bit fishy, yes?
“In non union shops many states require...”
Well, those are state laws, I was only talking about federal laws. Do states really mandate benefits? I have never heard of that.
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.