Management twerps have decided to cut the hours of their employees to 25 - at least in the local store. Specifically to avoid the requirement that they provide health insurance.
This law will result in a significant bump to their profits, since they’re decreasing costs this way with absolutely zero negative for them.
I’m not sure if I should be angry with the leaders of Red Robin for being so prickish…or the fools who overlooked this aspect of the law before signing it.
Now the employees will be working too little to be able to afford health insurance on their own, due to decreased wages. The haphazard schedule of a restaurant means they will have a hard time finding a job to fill in their newly found days off with work. Work which will not be full time, and not provide insurance.
So they’ll be likely working either 25 hrs a week, and not making enough.
Or they’ll be working 50+ hrs a week to afford insurance, and earning zero overtime dollars.
Rat bastard sons of bitches. Capitalist pig-dogs. Scum sucking bottom feeders. Taint-sniffing balls of infected earwax. May they all have their dogs burned.
I will continue my policy of not patronizing Red Robin, which previously was because there weren’t any on any of my usual routes, but now will be because they’re bastages.
I have a feeling I’m going to end up having to boycott most low-end chain restaurants in the very near future, however.
It wasn’t overlooked, it’s part of the process. Companies think they can save money this way. But it takes quality workers to make a profit, you really can’t run a good store if you have high employee turnover. So sooner or later one chain will start re-hiring at full time hours and with benefits, and once they do other places will match them to try to keep up. Of course there’s a downside: wages will stay flat for a while. But even that will bubble up through the process and we’ll come out of this (ACA) better off than we were going in. (Is my sincere opinion.)
This increased profit with no negative impacts is not self-evident to me. Do they currently provide health insurance to employees who work 40 hours? Are their employees totally fungible, meaning that nothing an individual does can improve the profits of the restaurant? I think that for most employees whose income is significantly dependent on a variable weekly schedule, “how many hours will I get?” is a question that is asked in the interview, and a negative change in hours is a primary reason for jumping ship. This policy will almost certainly have a negative impact on the restaurant.
You’re going to see a lot of sub 30 hour weeks for national chains in the future. On one hand, it offers jobs for more people, on the other hand, most will have to have 2 jobs to survive.
Obamacare has thorns people are beginning to see now.
We were seeing a lot of sub 30 hour jobs before Obamacare was passed, i.e. when the recession hit and after.
Employers will point to any plausible factor to shift blame for their own decisions.
Some of those reasons may have merit. Some are BS.
But just accepting the word of the local business at face value is extremely naive in any case. But I do understand the motivation to do this if it provides a simple (and intellectually lazy) way to attack a program you don’t like.
Yet another reason I’d have preferred a true single-payer healthcare system. No incentive to be even bigger dicks to your employees than you were already being. Hopefully, the rest of the ACA’s provisions will mean that these folks can still get some kind of insurance, and in time competition will force the owners to un-fuck their shit.
Hmm. In practice, I wonder if it’ll shake out like this: Red Robin could hire Server A for 40-hour weeks, and, say, Applebee’s could hire Server B for 40-hour weeks. But now Red Robin hires Server A for 20-hour weeks, and Server B for 20-hour weeks – and A and B both take a second 20-hour-a-week job at Applebee’s.
This is a natural extension of the law, and was predicted when it was passed. The law creates an economic incentive for companies to cut hours. In those situations where employees are an easily replaceable resource - like fast food, retail and quick service restaurants - this is going to happen.
It will also help keep a lid on overtime costs as well. Even if you pick up an additional shift, you end up being below the 40 hour work week.
The employee can get their health care from the exchange, the employer increases their hiring/training costs a bit while avoiding paying for health care.
At the same time, the idea that we could eliminate or federalize all private health insurance was a non-starter. Compromise was the only way to make any progress at all.
Except the “natural extension of the law” may not be as predictable as once thought. Wal-Mart, for one, has decided to offer full-time hours (and benefits) to 35,000 employees. It turns out that the public doesn’t much care for companies who put profits over treating their employees as human beings.