The End of Full-Time Work in the American Retail Service Sector

http://www.forbes.com ^ | april 17, 2013 | Warren Meyer

[lowbridge]

I don’t generally publish end-of-year predictions, mainly because I usually am wrong (a failing that does not seem to prevent any number of others from doing so, however). But last year I made an exception when I predicted that the biggest economic story of 2013 would be the death of the full-time job in the American retail service sector.

But this was not really an exception to my rule about predictions, because this was not really a prediction at all, at least in the sense that a “prediction” is an educated guess of some future uncertain event occurring. Late last year, within the service world, this change was already occurring – at restaurants, at hotels, and in retail stores, managers were already formulating plans. In a large sense, by making this prediction, I was betting on the score of a game that had already been played — all we are doing now is waiting for the media to catch up and report the results to the public at large.

Slowly, the story is starting to emerge in the general media. Fox News reported on Monday:

The nation’s largest movie theater chain has cut the hours of thousands of employees, saying in a company memo that ObamaCare requirements are to blame.

Regal Entertainment Group, which operates more than 500 theaters in 38 states, last month rolled back shifts for non-salaried workers to 30 hours per week, putting them under the threshold at which employers are required to provide health insurance. The Nashville-based company said in a letter to managers that the move was a direct result of ObamaCare.

This is not an isolated incident at this one company — it is already happening everywhere in the service business.

[Truth29]

This is actually another success from Obama’s point of view. It causes more dependency, makes it more difficult for people to advance and turns low wage employees to the alphabet soup of government support programs that ties them to the Democrat vote machine.

[Cyclone59]

BINGO!

[bert]

No problem.......

Twenty hours at McDonalsds, 20 hours at Walmart

[Craftmore]

The only possible solution would be to raise the minumum wage,,”sarcasm”

[re_nortex]

The nation’s largest movie theater chain has cut the hours of thousands of employees, saying in a company memo that ObamaCare requirements are to blame.

Obama's socialist health "care" program certainly is responsible for this. But, perhaps even more Satanic than Obama, is a woman whose birthday was a few days ago. That, of course, is Frances Perkins.

The shifty evil in her eyes is readily apparent as she pushed through programs under the Franklin Diablo Roosevelt regime that have destroyed liberty and free enterprise:

1). The minimum wage.

2). Granting unprecedented power to union thugs.

So much of what's now wrong with America, once the economic envy of the world, can be traced to this vile woman.

[JohnBovenmyer]

Convert everyone working one 40 hour job to working two part time jobs, respectively 30 and 10 hours, and Obama has magically created a whole lot of ‘new jobs’ he can brag about. When the fools backing him start to realize they aren’t getting anywhere despite working 1.3 ‘Obama jobs’ he’ll dip back into the playbook and start whining about needing ‘living wages’ again, but now based on a 30 hour work week.

[P-Marlowe]

The problem is that YOU have to buy your own insurance or pay a fine.

And if you are working 40 hours at two jobs, you probably won’t qualify for any discount or subsidy.

Not only are these people going to make less money, but the government is going to take more.

[Secret Agent Man]

gee who could have forseen this unexpected consequence...

[Secret Agent Man]

what bama does usually furthers more than one goal.

[JCBreckenridge]

Which is what we’ll see soon enough. ;)

[Mastador1]

This is Obama’s jobs plan plain and simple. Less full time jobs equal more part time jobs, more part time jobs equal more people employed, more people employed equal lower unemployment! See he is a genius, he just doesn’t give a rats a** if you can survive. He’s got his lifestyle assured, the rest of us be damned.

[VerySadAmerican]

So, I wonder what the SEIU members think about this.

[nascarnation]

And as more “29ers” are hired to pick up the shortfall from the “29ers” who used to be “full timers”, more people at work and the unemployment stats improve.

The Baraqqi “new normal”, heaven on earth.....

[llevrok]

So, I wonder what the SEIU members think about this.

I suspect they want to unionize all those jobs (like they are wanting to do to WalMart) then put every one on strike until they are paid 40 bucks an hour.

Yup. That'll fix it!

[Joe Bfstplk]

If there were 30 million uninsured citizens, we could have given each one a million dollars to cover their health care. Thirty million dollars versus the trillions Barack’s turd is going to cost.

[willgolfforfood]

Yeah........ but check that math.

[The Antiyuppie]

More people working harder and paying more taxes for less take-home pay. And, you get a shorter work week and more jobs out of it. Sounds like a win-win-win-win-win for Obama!

[factoryrat]

It’s a win for government, and a win for business. The government gets to fine people for not buying health insurance, and business wins because they no longer have to pay into health insurance, AND, they no longer have to pay for overtime.

[Zhang Fei]

If there were 30 million uninsured citizens, we could have given each one a million dollars to cover their health care. Thirty million dollars versus the trillions Barack’s turd is going to cost.

That adds up to 30 trillion dollars.