Uncertainty with ACA is causing panic and exploitation
I just was informed by my employer that all part time associates can not work over 25 hours due to Obamacare. However, I tried to explain to upper management, and even corporate, that the ACA portion for businesses that requires compliance has been pushed back a year. With that said, my employer is forging forward with this draconian policy. I believe they are using this as an excuse to normalize part time worker hours across the board, and to increase the pool of workers working at store location. As a result, the expectation is you have large availability and yet they only will give 25 hours per week maximum to part time workers. For workers that were working 30, 35, 39 hours per week, not full time...it is a massive blow. A worker that averages 25 hours per week at min wage is pretty much below the poverty line.
In speaking with my co-workers their morale is low, and productivity seems to have dropped as a result. As soon as the customers have learned of this policy a lot of them have left and decided not to do business with the company ever again. So, in reality when all is said and done, especially since it is the slow summer, the average hours per week most part time workers will now receive is 20 hours. In other words, half of the part time workers on payroll will be 25 hours per week and the other half will be 15 hours per week give or take. All remaining full time workers have been forced to "retire" or to become part time workers now. Exception being assistants to managers but that may change as well.
I try to discourage many of the younger workers considering the military, but given the lucrative signing bonuses and how part time workers are being treated it seems that they are being funneled into a potential meat grinder straight out of high school. Young, intelligent, adult men and women just out of high school with a future that seems bleak as tuition costs rise, while pay and hours obtained continue to sink at a faster rate in the work force.
My heart sank even more when I was talking with one of the kids that was visiting as he graduated infantry school and he said he was a front line infantrymen for the Army. He said he was glad he left the company given the new rules in place for part time workers. It seems to me we have put the younger generations in a lose lose situation with little hope for the future. I just didn't have the heart to tell him that his choice is potentially worse, but I didn't want to rain on the parade so to say.
From what I gather the Obama administration needs to have a ground game to explain to the American public how the ACA is going to work because the confusion, anger, disbelief, mischief, shenanigans, and distrust has started. The Obama administration needs to push back with facts, but the problem is that it seems like they have been caught flat footed. I hope I am wrong, but this is setting up to be a major catastrophe, and the so called recovery is anything but that at this point.
On a final note, I do not understand how the big wigs in these corporations can see this type of trajectory being sustainable for the future, because workers without adequate pay AND hours simply will grind the service sector economy (U.S. is the largest in the world) to a halt. Most people can deal with being paid a low wage, but without the hours you are dead in the water.
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