Hate to say “I told you so”, but we officially have our first major retail company cutting its employee hours in order to avoid paying for health care. Our concerns about the Affordable Care Act seem to finally be materializing. Forever 21, a popular clothing company, is now demoting full-time employees to part-time positions.
The non-management level employees will now be limited to 29.5 hours each week, which falls just below the 30-hour minimum that ObamaCare deems as full-time work. Well gee, what a coincidence!
In a message to their employees, Associate Director of Human Resources Carla Macias wrote that the company “recently audited its staffing levels, staffing needs, and payroll in conjunction with reviewing its overall operating budget”. It went on to say that these full-time employees will no longer be full-time effective August 31.
This is simply the first tangible example of ObamaCare hurting employees. This move will not only hurt the company’s reputation, but it will also put the economic circumstances of its employees in danger. Although it’s hard to see this decision made, it is not really a surprise. Many skeptics of the Affordable Care Act worried that employers would need to make this same move in order to sustain their business’ success rate.
Forever 21 is known for being a retailer with regularly low prices and many sales. In order to maintain this business model the company has had to keep its manufacturing and operational costs down. And it’s no surprise that now with ObamaCare the only way to keep operational costs down is to cut its employees’ hours.
With health care costs continually staying high, many American companies will most likely have to cut employee hours because they can’t afford their employees’ health insurance. When will the Democrats and President Obama realize how much they are hurting our capitalist society when they choose to implement this new policy? They are now making our business owners out to be the bad guys. Forever 21 is most likely just one of many companies we will see making these changes.