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Th e
Component Manufacturing dverti$er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
The
Adverti$er
December 2018 #10233 Page #66
Hiring Zone
Thomas McAnally The The
JobLine
and
Adverti$er
The Silence is Deafening
f you are a Boomer, Next Gen, Gen Z, Millennial, benefits to hourly employees too which, though different or Green Martian, you have been effected by the from benefits for salary employees, were still better than Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare. going out and paying for a personal policy, for example. The vast majority of smaller companies couldn’t compete with The Affordable Care Act added the employer larger companies when it came to benefit packages, leading to shared responsibility provisions under section another gold standard when you worked for a GE, Chevrolet, Bank of America, or other large company that had jobs with 4980H of the Internal Revenue Code. (IRS) benefits you could retire from. When the affordable Care Act, AKA Obama Care, took Because you could count on the hours required for your effect, certain employers who hired employees for 30 hours or more were responsible for providing healthcare benefits job, a “steady job” as we called it, you had time to improve to employees and their families. That sounded great on the your education, maybe get a Bachelors or Masters degree surface, but it also meant that what constitutes a full time and become even more valuable. You could plan a vacation employee went from 40 to 30 hours a week. What is never because the “steady job” also had paid vacation leave. In talked about is how the lowering of a full work week from 20 or 30 years with the same big company, you could even retire because the company offered a retirement plan, not 40 hours to 30 hours has devastated younger Americans. like today where they throw pennies into your 401k. You Consider that most young people entering the workforce were living the dream, buying nicer homes, nicer cars, and start with entry level jobs and many of those jobs are with feeling secure in your future because of a great “steady job.” companies that fall under the ACA requirements to provide Enter the ACA. While it did bring health insurance healthcare options. Until the ACA went into effect, these benefits to many, it also redefined the number of hours employees could work 40 hours before getting overtime, and some even got a few hours of overtime at 1-1/2 times their required (30) as full time employment. No longer could you hourly rate. Benefits were usually offered by better companies count on one job to pay the bills, you needed another part time or even full time 30-hour job to make ends meet. Large who cared about their people. employers who fall into the ACA rules now limited your Before ACA, people could work 40 hours, usually 5 hours to 30, to avoid having to offer health care benefits. days a week, and have two days off to “have a life.” It may Once you have worked 30 hours, forget overtime. The ACA not always be a Saturday or Sunday, as entry level jobs go it may have lowered hours required to be considered full time, could be a Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, or but it left 40 hours as the benchmark for overtime. any combination of days or hours. People learned to live on How small is a company who fits the ACA 30-hour what they made in these 40+ hours, and worked their way up the ladder to more responsibility and higher paying jobs. rule? Is this only limited to companies like GE, Wells Fargo, McDonald’s, and other large employers? Not a chance! Back in the day, going from hourly to salary was Companies who employ 50 full time employees fall under considered the gold standard, and moving to a real Salary the ACA mandate. With only 50 full time employees as the job meant more benefits. Many companies offered some standard, small to medium size companies are being affected
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