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Post Info TOPIC: Walmart says it plans to eliminate health insurance coverage for most of its part-time US employees:
FrontEndSlave


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Walmart says it plans to eliminate health insurance coverage for most of its part-time US employees:
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http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/wal-mart-cuts-health-benefits-part-timers-26015112

 

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to eliminate health insurance coverage for some of its part-time U.S. employees in a move aimed at controlling rising health care costs of the nation's largest private employer.

Starting Jan. 1, Wal-Mart told The Associated Press that it will no longer offer health insurance to employees who work less than an average of 30 hours a week. The move, which would affect 30,000 employees, follows similar decisions by Target, Home Depot and others to eliminate health insurance benefits for part-time employees.

"We had to make some tough decisions," Sally Wellborn, Wal-Mart's senior vice president of benefits, told The Associated Press.

Wellborn says the company will use a third-party organization to help part-time workers find insurance alternatives: "We are trying to balance the needs of (workers) as well as the costs of (workers) as well as the cost to Wal-Mart."

The announcement comes after Wal-Mart said far more U.S. employees and their families are enrolling in its health care plans than it had expected following rollout of the Affordable Care Act. Wal-Mart, which employs about 1.4 million full- and part-time U.S. workers, says about 1.2 million Wal-Mart workers and family members combined now participate in its health care plan.

That has had an impact on Wal-Mart's bottom line. Wal-Mart now expects the impact of higher health care costs to be about $500 million for the current fiscal year, or about $170 million higher than the original estimate of about $330 million that it gave in February.

But Wal-Mart is among the last of its peers to cut health insurance for some part-time workers. In 2013, 62 percent of large retail chains didn't offer health care benefits to any of its part-time workers, according to Mercer, a global consulting company. That's up from 56 percent in 2009.

"Retailers who offer part-time benefits are more of an exception than the rule," says Beth Umland, director of research for health and benefits at Mercer.

Wal-Mart has been scaling back eligibility for part-time workers over the past few years, though. In 2011, Wal-Mart said it was cutting backing eligibility of its coverage of part-time workers working less than 24 hours a week. And then in 2013, it announced a threshold of 30 hours or under.

Wal-Mart, like most big companies, also is increasing premiums, or out-of-pocket costs that employees pay, to counter rising health care costs. Wal-Mart told The Associated Press that it's raising premiums for all of its full-time workers: For a basic plan, of which 40 percent of its workers are enrolled, the premiums will go up to $21.90 per pay period, up from $18.40, starting Jan. 1.

Wal-Mart also said that changes in the co-insurance, or the percentage workers pay before coverage kicks in, for the health reimbursement accounts and the health savings accounts will result in the company paying 75 percent of the eligible costs of doctor visits, tests, hospitalization and other services within the network after employees meet their deductible. That's down from 80 percent.

 


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mega-kitteh


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"We had to make some tough decisions," Sally Wellborn, Wal-Mart's senior vice president of benefits, told The Associated Press.

Translation: we are running low on cash for UNNECESSARY bonuses and RIDICULOUS 'programs'

BS!! Everyone deserves healthcare REGARDLESS of being full time or part time.


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Anonymous

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kroger can use this as an excuse to cut our benefits even more.  I suspect wal mart insurance is a bad joke to begin with, but it still sucks. 



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Anonymous

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As the largest employer in their industry, they set the prevailing conditions. this could make it harder to fight for insurance for part timers when negotiating contracts.



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GenesisOne


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Anonymous wrote:

kroger can use this as an excuse to cut our benefits even more.  I suspect wal mart insurance is a bad joke to begin with, but it still sucks. 

Yep... expect to see "Kroger" replace "Walmart" in a similar headline, down the road. Kroger has already been scaling back the benefits in recent years, and in order to remain "competitive" with Walmart, Kroger will argue that the company health insurance will need to be "restructured"or some other BS like that. Obviously, the REAL reason is, the executives don't want to take a hit in their bonuses/salaries, even though such a hit would be very minor to them as they are already taking home a great deal of money. The executives would rather the employees take the hit, and for the employees, any hit is a major one considering the already-poor pay. 



-- Edited by GenesisOne on Tuesday 7th of October 2014 11:52:24 AM

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mega-kitteh


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True. The Executives will have a cry baby bitch fit if their precious bonus is short by one cent. And what's even more crappy? My friend who works in another Kroger bitched to corporate about low pay and whatnot, and guess what? He's seeking employment elsewhere. As they "laid him off" indefinitely.

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Anonymous

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GenesisOne wrote:
Anonymous wrote:

kroger can use this as an excuse to cut our benefits even more.  I suspect wal mart insurance is a bad joke to begin with, but it still sucks. 

Yep... expect to see "Kroger" replace "Walmart" in a similar headline, down the road. Kroger has already been scaling back the benefits in recent years, and in order to remain "competitive" with Walmart, Kroger will argue that the company health insurance will need to be "restructured"or some other BS like that. Obviously, the REAL reason is, the executives don't want to take a hit in their bonuses/salaries, even though such a hit would be very minor to them as they are already taking home a great deal of money. The executives would rather the employees take the hit, and for the employees, any hit is a major one considering the already-poor pay. 



-- Edited by GenesisOne on Tuesday 7th of October 2014 11:52:24 AM

 The shareholders are the people who end up pushing this action.  A 200 million increase in cost is not going to go over well.  An executive pushes this because they'll be out of a job if they don't. 

I think what will happen is the union will simply give up raises and let them them raise the deductible and lower the co insurance and keep the part timers insured.  If they loose that the union will simply get voted out, its only a matter of time.



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Anonymous

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Anonymous wrote:
GenesisOne wrote:
Anonymous wrote:

kroger can use this as an excuse to cut our benefits even more.  I suspect wal mart insurance is a bad joke to begin with, but it still sucks. 

Yep... expect to see "Kroger" replace "Walmart" in a similar headline, down the road. Kroger has already been scaling back the benefits in recent years, and in order to remain "competitive" with Walmart, Kroger will argue that the company health insurance will need to be "restructured"or some other BS like that. Obviously, the REAL reason is, the executives don't want to take a hit in their bonuses/salaries, even though such a hit would be very minor to them as they are already taking home a great deal of money. The executives would rather the employees take the hit, and for the employees, any hit is a major one considering the already-poor pay. 



-- Edited by GenesisOne on Tuesday 7th of October 2014 11:52:24 AM

 The shareholders are the people who end up pushing this action.  A 200 million increase in cost is not going to go over well.  An executive pushes this because they'll be out of a job if they don't. 

I think what will happen is the union will simply give up raises and let them them raise the deductible and lower the co insurance and keep the part timers insured.  If they loose that the union will simply get voted out, its only a matter of time.

 You are correct. Shareholders expect growth. When you can't post profit growth because of expansion or new investments, you make cuts.

people don't understand the bargaining process, though. If you have low participation and people don't get involved in the process (or they opt out in right to work for less states), you don't have much leverage to negotiate with. And when you are bargaining and mediators are involved, they're going to side with the company if they can correctly argue that they need to make cuts to stay competitive.



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Lord_Uboat


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I guess nobody else read that Vox article about how Walmart was supposedly helping their employees by dropping health insurance. Apparently if you are not offered any health insurance by your employee, the government will give you subsidies to insure you for a very cheap price. The problem I see with this though is that these subsidies will shrink or taxes will get even worse when everyone signs up for them. So for a very limited amount of time, companies can guiltlessly drop health insurance and look like they're rescuing employees when the truth is that this money for health insurance doesn't come out of nowhere.



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Anonymous

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That could very well be true. One of the major problems with the ACA is that it incentivized that very behavior.

 

Here in Michigan, we're better off stocking with our plans than what the ACA seems to offer. I'm not sure that is true throughout Kroger, though.



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Anonymous

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Our contract is beginning negotiations and a little birdy told me that they are pushing to remove the spousal coverage option altogether.  I have no doubt this will pass, and  I have a feeling part time employees will be next.    



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Lord_Uboat


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Anonymous wrote:

Our contract is beginning negotiations and a little birdy told me that they are pushing to remove the spousal coverage option altogether.  I have no doubt this will pass, and  I have a feeling part time employees will be next.    

 If you realistically think it will pass, then get out of the union if you're in a right-to-work state. Because when a union continually gets weaker, there's no point in shelling out an hour's wage every week to be in it.



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Anonymous

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Of course, the more people bail, the weaker it will get.



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Kii


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I'm at a non-union Fred Meyer location, so I don't know if this applies to everyone else, but I was looking through the health care changes and noticed that they've dropped retirement health care benefits for all new hires as of Jan. 1st. 2015.

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Anonymous

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Michigan just added retiree benefits at Kroger stores.



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