Clickbait website Buzzfeed recently sat down with the president about a number of topics, one of them was about how the office supply store Staples Inc. limits its part-time employees to 25 hours a week to avoid working a long week and passing the threshold where full-time benefits kick in.
Obama was told that those employees are having their hours limited to avoid having to provide health insurance as a result of the Affordable Care Act. Staples Inc. has since said that was wrong and the policy is actually a decade old and unrelated to the Affordable Care Act. However, look at the position the president took when presented with the scenario that his policy has given companies an incentive to cut workers hours instead of paying the high costs of the benefits:
...There is no reason for an employer who is not currently providing health care to their workers to discourage them from either getting health insurance on the job or being able to avail themselves of the Affordable Care Act. I haven’t looked at Staples stock lately or what the compensation of the CEO is, but I suspect that they could well afford to treat their workers favorably and give them some basic financial security, and if they can’t, then they should be willing to allow those workers to get the Affordable Care Act without cutting wages. This is the same argument that I’ve made with respect to something like paid sick leave. We have 43 million Americans who, if they get sick or their child gets sick, are looking at either losing their paycheck or going to the job sick or leaving their child at home sick. It’s one thing when you’ve got a mom-and-pop store who can’t afford to provide paid sick leave or health insurance or minimum wage to workers — even though a large percentage of those small businesses do it because they know it’s the right thing to do — but when I hear large corporations that make billions of dollars in profits trying to blame our interest in providing health insurance as an excuse for cutting back workers’ wages, shame on them.
This is a very telling answer, and it tells me above all else that the president is not a moderate, nor does he seem to understand that business owners who provide health insurance aren't giving their employees a gift. No, employers provide health insurance as a form of payment. They don't do so "because it's the right thing to do" but because they have to compete with other employers.
Maybe the president's brain just can't grasp economic reasoning, and if so he's far from alone, but let's be honest, his ignorance is left-wing ignorance, not moderate ignorance. Just look at the cliche he ended his statement with:
...But when I hear large corporations that make billions of dollars in profits trying to blame our interest in providing health insurance as an excuse for cutting back workers’ wages, shame on them.
The president is evoking the concept of infinite wealth, that a company that makes a large amount in profits should be able to provide unlimited expensive benefits to every one of its employees. However, most of those companies have huge labor forces and those expensive health insurance plans add up. It's telling that people making this argument don't list the actual cost of this course of action.
For what it's worth, Staples Inc. reported a net profit of $707 million in 2014, not actual billions like the president said, and actually lost money in 2013. I can't see a number of how many part-time employees it had, but total employees in 2013 are listed on Wikipedia as 83,000 people.
The president has made it more expensive for businesses to have full-time employees, and when told that businesses are responding the way conservatives predicted they would, his response is to blame the companies? Shame on them? No, shame on him and his infamous audacity.
This is a good start, attempting to assign a value in dollars to value given by employees and value generated by company. Out of curiosity, if it were found that a company was grossly exploiting its workers, taking much more in value than it paid in wages, would you side with the worker?
ReplyDeleteBooya,
ReplyDeleteI'm curious, in an open labor market, where employees are free to change jobs at will, what does "grossly exploiting its workers" mean to you?
Couldn't have said it better, myself, JMV. How does one exploit those who are free to leave?
ReplyDeleteThat is Marxist reasoning, and I mean that as a factual statement. Wages and other forms of compensation are determined by the labor market, not by the value of what those workers produce.
ReplyDelete