
Whole Foods Will Cut Health-Care Benefits for Nearly 2k Employees - howard941
http://www.grubstreet.com/2019/09/whole-foods-cuts-health-care-part-time-employees.html
======
tdurden
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20958631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20958631)

------
wonderwonder
'As for the affected employees, they will be provided “with resources to find
alternative healthcare coverage options, or to explore full-time, healthcare-
eligible positions starting at 30 hours per week,” the representative added'

If those resources are not money, then the employee is really out of luck as
they likely will not be able to afford whatever those alternatives are. In
addition, there is no way you can take a bunch of people that work 20 hours
per week and let them work 30, no need for that many scheduled hours, just
fancy corporate communications.

Amazon has the right to do whatever they want to increase Shareholder value;
however, shareholder value is the root of the modern trend of devaluing people
and treating them as line items in an expense report. Many of these people
likely have this job primarily for the health insurance it provides.

I think it is time for the US to switch to a universal healthcare system.
Removing the responsibility of corporations to manage health care would free
up a large amount of resources they could invest in expansions, wage increases
(likely c-suite bonuses). In addition it would allow individuals, especially
working parents to more freely make employment decisions and find careers that
are both financially but also emotionally rewarding. I think it would have a
major impact on the working structure of this country. Not to mention it would
allow people to actually go to the doctor when they need to.

~~~
tyingq
If you have a family, my rough experience is that a good, medium deductible,
decent percentage coverage healthcare plan is about $400-500/month if it's
employer subsidized. But anywhere from $1300 to $2k+/month if it isn't.

It's a pretty terrible market out there if you don't have an employer
subsidizing it and using their size for negotiation leverage.

~~~
wonderwonder
I agree. My wife's company offers better insurance than mine so I had always
been on hers and declined the insurance offered by my company. Her company
just implemented a policy stating that if the spouse is eligible for insurance
through their own employer there would be a $200 per month surcharge for them
electing to use her companies. I understand where her company is coming from
but I think we as a nation (US) can do better.

~~~
kmlx
"declined the insurance offered by my company."

don't know how it is in the US, so this may look uninformed, but are you
getting extra $$$ added to your salary, equivalent to what the employer was
paying for the insurance?

~~~
moate
Not typically, but it's possible that someone might be able to negotiate this
with their bosses.

Typically people opt out of company insurance because of one of the following
reasons: It's cheaper for them to find services through the marketplace
(extremely uncommon, but possible), They have superior insurance through a
spouse or family member, they feel that the insurance they're provided with
isn't sufficient and they would prefer to purchase better insurance
themselves.

------
vnchr
Would it be fair to say, "Amazon Will Cut Health-Care Benefits for Nearly 2k
Employees Of Whole Foods Division"?

~~~
inlined
Absolutely. The headline does Amazon a favor by distancing corporate greed
from their actual brand. E.g. this brutality would make me think twice about
working as a SWE there.

------
tombert
My brother in law works at Taco Bell and faces a similar problem. He works
between 15-25 hours a week at a franchise, and apparently he needs at least 30
hours consistently to be eligible for insurance. He has asked multiple times
to have his hours increased, but they have repeatedly denied him. He can't
afford to pay for a plan (which start at around $400/month in NYC), and since
he got his green card only two years ago, he can't apply for any kind of
government assistance on this.

The really frustrating part of this also comes with the fact that he's trying
to get his GED to hopefully get a higher-paying job with benefits, but the GED
exam apparently requires that you have coverage.

~~~
Onawa
The GED requires that you have health insurance to take it? I looked around
for more information about this, but I can't seem to find anything. Do you
have more information?

I took my GED back in 2009 and I don't remember having to supply any
information about whether I was insured.

~~~
tombert
I think it might vary between states. In this case, it's NY.

I can ask him tonight for clarification.

------
Ididntdothis
Health insurance really needs to be disconnected from employment. The fact
alone that this article was written is already ridiculous.

~~~
tboyd47
I agree with you, but how do you address the counterargument that financing
health care requires pooling funds at some level, and a company is a logical
place to do that seeing as how they have an interest in having everyone come
to work on time?

~~~
gerbilly
> and a company is a logical place to do that

This has several unintended consequences:

1) People stay in jobs they hate just for the insurance. This harms both the
company and the individual.

2) It reduces entrepreneurship. In Canada if I want to start my own company, I
don't have to worry about losing health insurance.

3) Children don't work (yet I guess) and old people don't work, so you need
other systems to cover them, or just not cover them at all.

~~~
xur17
> 2) It reduces entrepreneurship. In Canada if I want to start my own company,
> I don't have to worry about losing health insurance.

Are there any groups that offer health insurance (at a cost) with membership?
Ex: IEEE, entrepreneurial groups, etc.

~~~
gerbilly
Sure, i guess, but you have to still pay for it.

I don't have to pay _anything_ for my health coverage.

And before you say, I do through taxes, my tax rate can be pretty low if I
have minimal income, which is often the case when starting a new business.

~~~
xur17
I was honestly just curious if there were. I totally agree that health
coverage is a major issue for entrepreneurs.

~~~
gerbilly
It certainly does exist. It even exists in Canada for extended coverage like
dental and vision.

Now why dental is not part of medical coverage is beyond me, but that's
another topic.

------
technotarek
For those who might not read the article, the key here is that they're
increasing the minimum hours/week required for the benefit to 30 (from 20).
The article suggests they will help those impacted to transition to the longer
work week, although that's certainly not an option for everyone.

~~~
avemg
While technically correct, this assertion has quite the positive Amazon spin
on it. They are required by federal law to provide health insurance to
employees who work 30 hours or more.

~~~
tyingq
It's also unlikely that many will be offered the 30 hours. It's not like AMZN
wants to pay for 20,000 additional hours per week.

~~~
hotsauceror
Not only do they not have an incentive to extend the 20-hour folks to 30-hours
schedules, they now have a very strong incentive to decrease their current 30+
hour part-timers to 29 hour schedules per week.

~~~
ryandrake
When my wife worked retail, this was the standard. Nobody worked more than 29
hours a week. They had people begging for more hours but when the company
needed more hours worked, they hired someone new rather than assign any one
person more than 29. AFAIK nearly all of retail does this now. If the limit
for requiring insurance was 20, they’d cut everyone’s hours to 19 and hire
more.

------
elicash
The best description of the specifics here I've seen came from reddit:

> Leadership has been told that all PT TMs will not be able to work more than
> 19hrs a week and that even those originally grandfathered from this
> restriction are now included in this new policy. Additionally, “difficult
> discussions” would have to take place with these TMs. PBS even sent out a
> list of all PT TMs in the store that fall into this category. It sounds like
> a lot of misinformation is circulating throughout the stores and company.
> Hopefully it will all be sorted out and PT TMs will be able to work up to
> 29hr weeks.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/wholefoods/comments/d3r04k/amazons_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/wholefoods/comments/d3r04k/amazons_whole_foods_to_cut_medical_benefits_for/f0ma0pk/)

------
RonaldSchleifer
Let's recognize that the headline should read:

Amazon Will Cut Health-Care Benefits for Nearly 2k Whole Foods Employees

I am guessing that due to the food perspective of the blog they focused on the
Whole Foods aspect of the story, but this is clearly a dystopian corporation
story, not a grocer story.

------
chrshawkes
I'm middle of the road. Hard working and highly paid. Healthcare in the USA is
broken beyond belief. I pay over 300 bi-weekly for family coverage and high
deductibles beyond that. It goes higher each year. My employer pays over
nearly 800 per week. I'm not using what I pay and honestly feel we're getting
to a point where even a highly paid associate is going to drop out of this
garbage plan and just go to the hospital or urgent care and pay out of pocket.
Something needs to be done about healthcare! I'm boycotting Amazon for this.

~~~
Merrill
Healthcare is about 18% of GDP or about a $3470 billion a year. It should be
shrunk down to about 12%, but that would require terminating millions of
employees who work in healthcare and are the major cost component. The
industry also needs to get rid of lots of real estate. Shrinking healthcare
would cause a bigger bloodbath in commercial real estate than the one
currently going on in retail stores.

------
nextstep
Healthcare needs to be decoupled from employment and guaranteed to everyone.
It’s time for Medicare for All.

------
bfrog
Is Whole Foods losing money? If not why do this.

~~~
ssully
Because they have no obligation to not do this and doing this gives them more
money. It's disgusting.

~~~
bfrog
And capitalism continues to eat at the very foundation its built on

------
AzzieElbab
just playing a amz-devil advocate, what is the point of hiring part-time
employees who earn 30-40K a year and pay them just as much in health benefits?
america's health care costs are out of this world and that is a much tougher
problem to tackle as opposed to who is paying for it

------
geodel
I bet financial press is now discussing how this will lower the price of
bananas at Whole Foods.

~~~
notfromhere
They'll be bleating about how this is will be good for shareholder value

------
Aloha
Whole Foods has 91,000 employees, this effects 1900 of them - a little over 2%
of the total or right around 4 people per store.

While it's unfortunate for those effected, it seems mostly a way to get more
availability out of their employees rather than purely a cost savings measure.

~~~
throwaway2048
I'm sure that's very comforting to the people effected by this.

