Trader Joe's strips all part-time workers of health care in yet another Obamacare rollout fiasco

Wednesday, September 18, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: Trader Joe''s, part-time workers, Obamacare

(NaturalNews) The closer we get to the "official" roll-out of Obamacare, the more we are finding out, in the words of Nancy Pelosi, what's in the law.

Some of the worst predictions about it have already come true. Premiums for millions of Americans will not go down, but will go up instead. Many won't be able to keep their doctors. Millions still won't have coverage. And the law is severely affecting employment, in terms of stunting company expansion and reducing the number of hours employees are getting.

Per Breitbart News:

Because ObamaCare is nothing more than a wealth redistribution policy that forces the productive to pay for the non-productives' Cadillac health plans (which include birth control), costs are about to explode. As a result, employers are desperate to cut the burden of their health care costs, which is why our economy is hardly creating any full-time jobs, and the part-time employees at Trader Joe's just lost their health insurance benefits.

Adds The Huffington Post:

After extending health care coverage to many of its part-time employees for years, Trader Joe's has told workers who log fewer than 30 hours a week that they will need to find insurance on the Obamacare exchanges next year, according to a confidential memo from the grocer's chief executive.

Like other companies, Trader Joe's will dump employees onto the public dole

The full weight of the law has yet to kick in, but already employers are bracing for its impact. They know, for instance, that they will be on the hook for tens of thousands - in some cases hundreds of thousands - of dollars' worth of additional health care coverage costs for their full-time staff, so to head off an expense that many small-to-mid-sized business can't afford, they have no choice but to reduce employment and cut back on hiring.

Trader Joe's is only the most recent corporation to make the decision.

In a memo to staff dated August 30, Dan Bane, the company's CEO, said Trader Joe's will issue a $500 check to part-timers in January, to "help guide them toward finding a new plan under the Affordable Care Act," HuffPo reported. He added that the company still plans to continue providing health insurance coverage to employees who work an average of 30 or more hours each week.

Under the law, companies with 50 or more employees must offer health insurance coverage to full-time staffers, though Obama has unilaterally - and unconstitutionally - postponed that so-called "employer mandate" for a year.

Where the company once could offer health coverage, now it can't - thanks to Obamacare

One thing that once worked in Trader Joe's favor, at least with the political left: The company once earned kudos for offering health, dental and vision plans to its part-time employees, which was rare for an industry that does not offer huge pay and benefits. But now that lower-wage workers will be eligible for taxpayer-subsidized health insurance in 2014, the company's management team must have figured out that offering coverage to part-timers who work less than 18 hours was going to be too expensive.

"Depending on income you may earn outside of Trader Joe's," as in another job, "we believe that with the $500 from Trader Joe's and the tax credits available under the ACA, many of you should be able to obtain health care coverage at very little if any net cost to you," Bane wrote in the memo.

"The company told HuffPost it would not confirm or deny the existence of the memo," the website reported.

In a statement, a spokeswoman said, 'We have made some changes to our healthcare coverage that we believe will be a benefit to all Crew Members working in our stores. We are committed to providing all our Crew Members with benefits that are among the best in our industry."

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

http://www.breitbart.com

http://www.nationaljournal.com