Typical Walmart actions

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Walmart officials must have been rubbing their hands in glee at this convenient hook for enhancing their part time policies.
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Obamacare Is Turning Walmart Workers Into Temps
By Laura Heller, June 14, 2013

Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) opponents warned it would happen, but now there’s mounting proof that full-time employees are being replaced with part-timers, at least in the retail industry where Walmart is focused on keeping the majority of workers to part-time hours only.

A new hiring policy uncovered by Reuters shows that nearly half of its stores are only hiring part-time employees, thus avoiding the mandate to provide health care or pay a fine.

A Reuters survey of 52 stores run by the largest U.S. private employer in the past month, including one in every U.S. state, showed that 27 were hiring only temps, 20 were hiring a combination of regular full, part-time and temp jobs, and five were not hiring at all.

It’s company directive, according to sources interviewed by Reuters who asked to remain anonymous.

“Full-time people are getting slimmer and slimmer,” said a supervisor at a store in North Carolina, who asked not to be named, as did other store-level employees who were interviewed for this story, because she is not authorized to talk to the media.

She said that the five new employees hired this year at the store are all temps and hours of existing employees are being cut.

“Everybody who comes through the door I hire as a temporary associate,” said a store manager in Alaska, who asked not to be identified. “It’s a company direction at the present time.”

Walmart was a proponent of Obamacare and its increasingly clear why, the retailer is shifting health care costs and responsibility to the state. It’s creepy move that has a lot of people upset, but it’s not illegal.

But it very well could backfire.

I don’t cover healthcare, but I know retail. Benefits and pay are moving targets and payroll gets manipulated depending on the weather (as weather actually impacts sales). In 2005, Walmart was pressured to provide health benefits to part-time workers and its closest competitor Target quickly followed suit.

In December, after backing Obamacare, Walmart announced it would no longer insure part time workers (Target still does). Since then, its part-time ranks have swelled, according to reports.

But so too have complaints about understaffed stores with empty shelves and inventory piling up in warehouses and back rooms. It seems even Walmart can’t operate on such a lean staff. Dirty stores, parking lots in disarray and out-of stocks don’t bode well for sales and stores can’t operate that way for long periods.

Walmart doesn’t easily give in to pressure, but it does give in to market forces. A direct hit to its top line could change this policy.

The recovering economy could also help force Walmart, and other like-minded employers, to back off this policy and hire full-time workers with benefits. A dwindling labor pool and competition for employees does wonders for worker’s rights.

Market forces at work could work in employees favor, but in the meantime it’s a disturbing trend. One designed to shirk an employers responsibility under the very healthcare act it advocated for.
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