Whole Foods to cut health-care benefits for 1,900 part-time employees in 2020 | Hacker News Reader

Whole Foods to cut health-care benefits for 1,900 part-time employees in 2020

cnbc.com

97 pointsus0r37 comments

Amazon is deadset on abusing their workers as much as possible to make a buck.

Wether its the intern turning a spec into code, then getting verbally lashed for 3 hours for not "being creative", or demanding 50+ hour weeks out of engineers on Amazon's Payments team.

No one should be so scared that they work an extra 12hrs on Saturday and another 6 on Sunday, but that seems to be SOP for certain employees in some departments of Amazon :c

Yeah I need to find a new team or company. I just did a 12 hour day, while sick. Never ending deadlines and high turnover... to be fair, my team used to be really fun. Things just changed.

Not things. Management or "vision".. bleh

If you are around my age (25 - 30) this is the only time in your working life unemployment was at a level that is in your favor. Use that leverage and use it fast.

Yeah actually. Both those changed. For the worse.

> “In order to better meet the needs of our business and create a more equitable and efficient scheduling model, we are moving to a single-tier part-time structure,” a company spokesperson said in an email. “We are providing Team Members with resources to find alternative healthcare coverage options, or to explore full-time, healthcare-eligible positions starting at 30 hours per week. All Whole Foods Market Team Members continue to receive employment benefits including a 20% in-store discount.”

How can you write this stuff with a straight face.

> How can you write this stuff with a straight face.

It is the people who cannot relate to others and/or have never had to deal with a serious illness themselves or of a close family member.

Then there are companies who make algorithms like this, that can "predict" to your boss if you will be calling in sick substantially [apparently totally legal, too]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11118120

The Obamacare subsidies drive this.

Let's say a given employees health insurance coverage costs Amazon $5,000 a year to provide. If the employee was to purchase the same level of coverage on his or her own from a subsidized exchange, let's say it costs the employee $3,000 in out-of-pocket premiums. Amazon could then pay the employee less overall while apportioning $4,000 more to wages, and thereby both Amazon and the employee benefit... at the expense of other taxpayers, of course.

Except Amazon is most likely self insured, so it doesn’t pay $5000 per employee per year.

True, but the ACA is likely going away next summer, either partially or completely. This is based on the 9 or so rare cases where the Solicitor General did not act as defendants on a court case at the Supreme Court level. [See the table on pages 58-60. Note: there are better ways to represent the data in the table.]: https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2...

Do not get excited about the first 2 cases in the table being "clearly unconstitutional". Because to diehard conservatives (which is how the court is currently balanced), the healthcare law is "blatantly unconstitutional".

Not only that, this summer, at the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals level (the level right below the Supreme Court), the Department of Justice did an unprecedented move, historically, and joined the side of the plaintiffs. According to legal experts, the court case at this level could not have gone any worse for the defendants of the ACA.

The Republicans are doing this on purpose, as the final decision will come months before an election.

I have a rare disease and I require an extremely expensive orphan drug, so I know I am likely going to be in a bind within the next year. It is extremely upsetting to me, which is why I mention it. But, I am a dual national (I naturalized due to my health issues) of another developed country with universal healthcare, so I can always leave the US. I have basically given up the prospect of the US being my "home", even though it always has been. I basically feel unwelcome here, but it is merely my perception.

sorry to hear that... this is what i don't get about republicans. they could go for m4a or something similar and brand it as a win for entrepreneurship but i guess they are too beholden to the huge corporations that donate to their campaigns, pacs, and super pacs to ever go against that. the number of people that are stuck in deadend jobs just for the somewhat more affordable healthcare is too high.

Their salary depends on it. It's amazing what you can make someone do if you threaten their family with destitution.

It will be interesting to see how this changes interactions between Amazon employees and impacted Whole Foods workers in downtown Seattle.

For their warehouses most employees are shielded away but with Whole Foods it's different. Amazon employees go there every day in the thousands. So, I'd imagine some kind of compassionate move by employees will occur in Seattle.

Or employees just stop going to avoid the awkwardness, and use delivery... we will see.

This employer-gives-you-healthcare madness really needs to stop.

Employers providing healthcare is a part of the compensation package though, right? Couldn't people buy insurance by themselves if they wanted?

Sure, except individuals have less knowledge of and negotiating power with those insurance companies. So per-person costs are actually higher than if the employer provided the insurance. Additionally, I highly doubt Amazon will pay its employees more to cover the health insurance that those employees will now have to pay for entirely out of pocket.

Yes, but I have a healthy family and the shittiest, pay nothing insurance would cost $1700 a month and growing. That's more than I pay for my mortgage. So it's true I could buy insurance if I wanted, but it's financially crippling and you get almost nothing for it.

It's a complete and utter scam.

Bernie Sanders recently asked people on Twitter what their most absurd medical bills were and the response was enlightening as to the current health care status in the US:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2019/09/17/bernie-sand...

If health care cost continue growing faster than inflation, we will see many more articles like this.

First "gig" economy and now this ? We need universal healthcare, like yesterday. Let's not be bonded to corporations to take care of our health.

The 20% employee discount must certainly help. That almost evens out the markup on all their products over regular grocery store prices.

This is just terrible system. They barely make anything and yet no benefits. Sometime it is best just to stay unemployed and let the government take care of them.

This is the part that is so screwed up about there not being a universal public option in the USA.

A universal public option already exists!, you just have to quit your job, and sell your house, and with a chronic condition remain completely destitute for the rest of your life.

How does that situation benefit anyone? Why not just let people work, have a life, and contribute to society, rather than demanding they remain poor for the grave sin of having medical issues.

I have a strange gut condition in which my doctor agrees with me that having a job that pays me would be very good for my health, possibly allowing me to actually heal, but I cannot lose my health insurance because without my medication I cannot digest any food.

The physical problems all began during depression from losing my job, and symptoms often subside when I do volunteer work or help family members with things and just feel useful. But it has been 2 years and I have not found another job that will give me health insurance. I can get freelance work sometimes so that is helpful and hopeful, but I actually have to be very careful not to make so much that I lose health insurance. This makes me very useless and unable to contribute to my family who has helped me out so much in this time. It is a constant misery, yet I am a tremendously able worker who loves to work, even very long hours.

I am not sure how legal it is for me to even have health insurance, but I have no shame either way. That would be laughable to worry about for anybody in my situation.

Working hard in American has never been materially appreciated in my experiences. This country is completely broken. You only want dishonest people who say and act in ways ways that make you feel happy. No respect for human dignity. Everything is salesmanship, and value is a measure of abstract emotional signaling. What should we expect? It is hardly ironic. It’s what this society has been asking for as long as I have been alive.

I assume you know this. Have an LLC in a trusted person’s name and ask to be paid via that and use the LLC tax ID when freelancing.

What is the net benefit of classifying as an employee of this LLC?

I currently work for a temp agency, and they allow you to sign up for health insurance after a few months.

>Why not just let people work, have a life, and contribute to society, rather than demanding they remain poor for the grave sin of having medical issues.

Because the US is a capitalist society which has an almost pathological revulsion for socialism and welfare in any form, where poverty is simply the result of you being too lazy to bootstrap yourself into wealth, and where healthcare isn't a right, but a privilege.

Capitalism is just a word and has no opinions nor most of the implications people claim.

The problem is more that a lot of people are deeply convinced of something like social Darwinism, that if you are sick you must be inferior, and a leech, and can't believe that there is a benefit to society in assisting.

What's crazy is the benefits cut was supposed to be here last Sunday but Amazon hid the fact that it was coming from a warehouse in China.

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