Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

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.

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.

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.

Put another way, they’re giving their part time workers a massive pay cut.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com