Pirate's Cove

This has made most Democrats very unhappy. Obama has already threatened to veto it, and other Democrats are upset that workers might be allowed to work more than 30 hours. No. Seriously

(The Hill) The House on Thursday in a 252-172 vote approved legislation that would waive fees on businesses that do not offer health insurance to employees working fewer than 40 hours per week.

The legislation – which has been at the center of a heavy corporate lobbying campaign – only received 12 Democratic votes. Eighteen Democrats backed the bill during a House vote on the same issue last spring.

No Republicans opposed the measure.

Personally, I’m not so sure 40 is the number. 37 or 38 might make a bit more sense. From a payroll and monitoring point of view, it is much easier to deal with hours numbers like 30, 35, 40, etc. Anyone who has run payroll and had to monitor employee hours knows this, and many also watch hard to make sure that employees do not break the 40 hour mark in order to limit overtime pay. Hence, many keep full timers to 38-39 hours a week. Even considering a number like 35 would work, particularly since most companies consider people who work more than 30 hours a week averaged over some time period, often over 3 months, to be full time.

Of course, one point of the legislation is to limit fines, and most of the large corporations are going to offer health insurance regardless, and a goodly chunk of those with 50-99 employees will, as well. The other point is to eliminate the incentive to limit worker hours to no more than 29 hours, created by Team Obama and Democrats.

The White House has threatened to veto the bill, which strikes at the healthcare law’s mandate that businesses provide insurance.

Except, the actual PPACA law makes no mention as to what the definition of full time for Ocare purposes is. This was a rule made up by Health and Human Services. Perhaps Mr. Obama could have picked up his so-called phone and tried to come to agreement. Heck, he could even offer a rational for why it should be 30 hours, which has never been done.

But Democrats argued that increasing the healthcare law’s definition of a full-time workweek would result in more employees being forced to work more hours and still not be eligible for insurance.

“This bill will allow you to work 10 more hours without health care. Isn’t that wonderful?” said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).

“I’m sure every American worker is saying, ‘Thank God the Republicans are going to have me work 10 more hours before I can get health insurance. Aren’t you generous,’” Hoyer added.

Yes, many of them will say “Thank God the Republicans want to make sure that people are going to be able to work full time hours and make a full time job wage, with all the other perks that come with being full time employees”. Leave it to Democrats for wanting to make sure that employees are restricted on their hours.