Previous news over the last month has shown many companies and business owners taking preemptive action to protect themselves from Obamacare rules, taxes, and regulations, by laying off workers, cutting hours and/or cutting health care benefits.
Over the past week, more are joining the race to protect their schools, cities and companies from Obamacare.
Pennsylvania- Community College of Allegheny slashing hours of 400 workers
Pennsylvania's Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) is slashing the hours of 400 adjunct instructors, support staff, and part-time instructors to dodge paying for Obamacare.
"It's kind of a double whammy for us because we are facing a legal requirement [under the new law] to get health care and if the college is reducing our hours, we don't have the money to pay for it," said adjunct biology professor Adam Davis.
On Tuesday, CCAC employees were notified that Obamacare defines full-time employees as those working 30 hours or more per week and that on Dec. 31 temporary part-time employees will be cut back to 25 hours. The move will save an estimated $6 million.
Ohio- Youngstown State University Limits Part-Time Hours To Avoid Obamacare Rule
Youngstown State University will limit the hours of non-union part-time employees to ensure that the university is not required to provide them with health insurance coverage under Obamacare.
YSU, a public institution in eastern Ohio, announced to employees earlier this month that it is restricting part-time employees, including adjunct professors and lecturers, to 29 hours a week or less. Under the Affordable Care Act, the university will have to provide health insurance to full-time employees, classified as anyone working 30 hours or more per week.
According to an email sent to English department employees, which was obtained by The Huffington Post, anyone who violates the new hourly limit will be fired:
It's crucial that you be vigilant about this cap as you consider additional teaching or tutoring assignments. If you exceed the maximum hours, YSU will not employ you the following year. We will have no recourse.If you teach or work in another department part-time, it will be the TOTAL number of hours. If you teach in American Studies for six hours, you can teach a maximum of twelve semester-hours here over a year. If you work as a tutor, those hours are also important. Same issue: you cannot go beyond twenty-nine work hours a week.
Iowa- Cedar Falls Cutting City Worker Hours in Anticipation of Obamacare Health Insurance Costs
The City of Cedar Falls is cutting the hours of 59 part-time employees in order to avoid having to pay for their health insurance after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - commonly known as Obamacare - goes into effect in January 2014.
The 59 employees, who currently work 32 hours per week, will now work 29 hours per week, starting Dec. 1. Under the Affordable Care Act, employers must provide health insurance to employees who work 30 or more hours per week. The hourly cuts are being made now so that a "look-back" period won't include those employees when the law does go into effect just over a year from now.
City attorney Tom Meyer told KWWL providing insurance for those 59 workers could cost the city $850,000 per year. Cedar Falls Administrative Services Director Richard McAlister told the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier spending that amount that could potentially result in having to lay off 25-30 people.
Wal-Mart- Ends Insurance For New Hires
And so the government takeover of our health care system begins:
Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, plans to begin denying health insurance to newly hired employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week, according to a copy of the company’s policy obtained by The Huffington Post.
Side note- Wal-Mart employs over 2 million people nationwide.
Related: Obamacare transforming America into a part-time nation.
Here is what is going to happen, in a nutshell.
More people are going to be working, unemployment may even start going down, but those workers will not have enough hours at their jobs to support themselves and/or their families, which means food stamp usage which is already at historic highs, will surge even higher, poverty levels will also surge and median income which has just hit 43 year lows, is going to plunge even more.
Last but not least, families will have less money to live on, therefore less money to pump into the economy, and GDP growth which is already at sustained lows, will stay low and possibly slow down even more.
Welcome to Obama's Economy.