Another provision has been added on the Affordable Care Act effective Jan. 1, 2014. In line with this, employers are now considering letting go most of their part-time workers.
The new provision aims to provide health coverage for employees working at least 30 hours a week and failure to comply will penalize the employers. This pushed the employers to reduce either the number of work hours for the part-timers to less than 30 hours a week or let go of a few of them.
Long Beach city director of government affairs Tom Modica announced in the Signal Tribune Newspaper the situation in his area. Long Beach employs a total of 5,657 with 28 percent of it as part-timers. The seasonal employees work as lifeguards, library staff, supplemental refuse workers and recreational staff which accounts to 1,465 people out of the 1,593 total of part-timers.
This leaves about 200 part-time workers that will benefit from the new provision of Obamacare. However, it is only possible if the city will not reduce their working their hours to avoid paying an additional $2 million per year for their inclusion in the healthcare program. Layoffs are also possible which will be the worst scenario.
Non-compliance to the new provision will require a penalty payment from the company which is $2,000 for every full-time employee. For Long Beach, this means millions of dollars. The city is now studying how they can best allocate the budget and the options available to avoid layoffs. The budget is expected to be finalized by September.
Meanwhile, some cities don't see the provision directly affecting their finances since they don't have a lot of part-timers such as the case of the City of Signal Hill which has only about 30 part-timers.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a part-timer is a person who works at a maximum of 35 hours per week. Last 2012, the U.S has about 8 million part-time workers.
