Wal-Mart Cuts Benefits For Most Of Its Part-Time Workers R

[frigidmagi]

Businessinsider

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to eliminate health insurance coverage for most of its part-time US employees in a move aimed at controlling rising healthcare costs of the nation's largest private employer.

Starting Jan. 1, Wal-Mart told The Associated Press, the company will no longer offer health insurance to employees who work less than an average of 30 hours a week. The move, which would affect 30,000 employees, follows similar decisions by Target, Home Depot, and others to eliminate health insurance benefits for part-time employees.

"We had to make some tough decisions," Sally Welborn, Wal-Mart's senior vice president of benefits, told The Associated Press.

Welborn says the company will use a third-party organization to help part-time workers find insurance alternatives: "We are trying to balance the needs of (workers) as well as the costs of (workers) as well as the cost to Wal-Mart."

The announcement comes after Wal-Mart said far more US employees and their families were enrolling in its healthcare plans than it had expected following rollout of the Affordable Care Act. Wal-Mart, which employs about 1.4 million full- and part-time US workers, says about 1.2 million Wal-Mart workers and family members combined now participate in its healthcare plan.

That has had an impact on Wal-Mart's bottom line. Wal-Mart now expects the impact of higher healthcare costs to be about $500 million for the current fiscal year, or about $170 million higher than the original estimate of about $330 million that it gave in February.

But Wal-Mart is among the last of its peers to cut health insurance for some part-time workers. In 2013, 62 percent of large retail chains didn't offer healthcare benefits to any of their part-time workers, according to Mercer, a global consulting company. That's up from 56 percent in 2009.

"Retailers who offer part-time benefits are more of an exception than the rule," says Beth Umland, director of research for health and benefits at Mercer.

Wal-Mart has been scaling back eligibility for part-time workers over the past few years, though. In 2011, Wal-Mart said it was cutting backing eligibility of its coverage of part-time workers working less than 24 hours a week. And then in 2013, it announced a threshold of 30 hours or under.

Wal-Mart, like most big companies, also is increasing premiums, or out-of-pocket costs that employees pay, to counter rising healthcare costs. Wal-Mart told The Associated Press that it was raising premiums for all of its full-time workers: For a basic plan, of which 40 percent of its workers are enrolled, the premiums will go up to $21.90 per pay period, up from $18.40, starting Jan. 1.

Wal-Mart also said that changes in the co-insurance, or the percentage workers pay before coverage kicks in, for the health reimbursement accounts and the health savings accounts would result in the company paying 75 percent of the eligible costs of doctor visits, tests, hospitalization, and other services within the network after employees meet their deductible. That's down from 80 percent.

Dick move Walmart. Dick move. I'm gonna find somewhere else to shop.

[rhoenix]

<snark>I like how their "tough choices" all involve hurting the people low on the totem pole of their company.</snark>

More seriously, I've read about Cosco and other companies treating their employees far better (wage and benefits-wise) than Walmart for a number of years now, and yet for some odd reason, Cosco's still around and doing well.

[LadyTevar]

Makes me wish Cosco would come to WV and take over

[Lys]

I generally don't care for boycotts because their success or failure is independent of my input, leaving me little incentive to participate even if I agree with the boycott's aims. Nevertheless I have not done business with Walmart for many years. Not because I am intending to make a moral stance or change anything about Walmart's business practices, but simply because when I feel personal disgust shopping somewhere, low prices are not enough to make me hold my nose. I'm glad that many people have benefitted from Walmart's low prices, and I welcome them to continue doing so, but things like this leave me with no wish to join them.

There is also the matter that the shopping experience at Walmart is quite simply unpleasant. The combination of overbright lighting with stakly white and spare interior surfaces is blinding and disorienting. Noise also seems to bounce about the place uncontrolled and undampened, which serves to aggravate me further. It is difficult for me to tolerate such an atmosphere for more than short periods, so I don't.

[B4UTRUST]

"Yes, today we sat down in a closed door meeting and had to come to some tough, eye-opening, decisions. Effective immediately we are no longer going to provide health-insurance to our part time employees. We feel that this is in the best interest of everyone involved. Also, effective immediately we're reducing all hourly employees to less than 30 hours per week. We believe that this will let us achieve maximum cockbag levels of dickishness that will ultimately add another $1.3 million per year to our bottom line. After all, that 12th house in Maui isn't going to pay for itself, you know."