Regal Entertainment Group is the largest movie theater chain in the United States, with over 500 locations in 38 states. This week, according to Fox News, the company is cutting back on the hours for all hourly employees. From now on, no one may work more than thirty hours.
Even if there were no further information, anyone who has been following the news will immediately know why Regal is reducing hours. Obamacare mandates that any employee who works more than thirty hours a week gets health coverage courtesy of their employer. (And in an additional stroke of genius, Obama launched his second term by promising to raise minimum wage law, so employers are not only facing a huge increase in money going out the door but are also looking forward to another jump in their expenses). Red Lobster and Olive Garden have already reduced hours for the same reason. These restaurants were already hurting, but Obamacare increases the economic injuries.
But we have more information to go on.
“The Nashville-based company said in a letter to managers that the move was a direct result of ObamaCare. ‘In addition, some managers have requested guidance on what they should tell those employees negatively impacted and, at your discretion, we suggest the following,’ read the memo obtained by FoxNews.com. ‘To comply with the Affordable Care Act, Regal had to increase our health care budget to cover those newly deemed eligible based on the law’s definition of a full-time employee. To manage this budget, all other employees will be scheduled in accord with business needs and in a manner that will not negatively impact our health care budget.’”
This is one of the most obvious and predictable consequence that could possibly occur from the Obamacare law, even for people who didn’t personally read it. Yet the government wrote mandated this provision and never gave any hint of a warning that workers would be affected in this way. What kind of economists work for the Democrats?
And how does anyone know that this is a preferable trade-off? It is not like anyone was warned when they voted for Obama that his plan would take away their hours at their jobs. The vote for Obama only tells us that people believed his promises, at most. It doesn’t tell us that they would choose to lose hours in order to get some level of health care coverage. So how does anyone one person or group of people measure the value of more work in comparison to the value of some still largely mysterious amount of health care coverage? Who has the right to make such an evaluation and impose it on the populace?
“One Regal theater manager told FoxNews.com the move has sparked a wave of resignations from full-time managers who have seen their hours cut by 25 percent or more. ‘Mandating businesses to offer health care under threat of debilitating fines does not fix a problem, it creates one,’ he said”
Cannot liberals understand that this is shredding the economy—even worse?
