More than 200 colleges slash work hours to avoid Obamacare
Finding out what’s in it: More than 200 colleges have capped student and faculty work hours below 30 hours per week to avoid the costs of Obamacare.
Those who have seen their paychecks shrink as a result of the Affordable Care Act include students who work on campus at restaurants, bookstores or gyms, teaching assistants, Residence Advisers, officer workers, student journalists, and a variety of other workers, such as part-time maintenance crews and groundskeepers. Educators’ work hours have also been cut due to the mandate, including part-time instructors and adjunct professors.
I guarantee that 70% or more of these individuals voted for Obama and the Democrats, as the political beliefs of the academic population is almost all partisan liberal. I wonder if they now have the intellectual honesty to assign blame for their woes to Obama and the Democrats .
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Finding out what’s in it: More than 200 colleges have capped student and faculty work hours below 30 hours per week to avoid the costs of Obamacare.
Those who have seen their paychecks shrink as a result of the Affordable Care Act include students who work on campus at restaurants, bookstores or gyms, teaching assistants, Residence Advisers, officer workers, student journalists, and a variety of other workers, such as part-time maintenance crews and groundskeepers. Educators’ work hours have also been cut due to the mandate, including part-time instructors and adjunct professors.
I guarantee that 70% or more of these individuals voted for Obama and the Democrats, as the political beliefs of the academic population is almost all partisan liberal. I wonder if they now have the intellectual honesty to assign blame for their woes to Obama and the Democrats .
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Why would they blame Obama? Its clearly George Bush’s fault!
“I wonder if they now have the intellectual honesty to assign blame for their woes to Obama and the Democrats .”
The fact that they support a Progressive agenda is clear and convincing evidence they do not.
Finding what’s in it: You can keep your doctor, period; but you’ll lose your full-time job with “Obama-doesn’t-care”.
Intellectual honesty is reserved for such people as you Robert. Obviously you’ve never been part of a cause bigger than yourself that you have so much faith in, that you’re willing to drink the Kool-Aid to prove it. There is a point at which there is no going back or you no longer are capable of changing your ways or seeing a different viewpoint. Doing so even though it is the intellectual honest thing to do would only serve to prove that your entire life was a lie. Most people won’t cross that line and perpetuate the lies nonetheless.
Perhaps putting their healthcare, paycheck and retirement on the line will test their faith.
I work as an adjunct at two colleges and both schools have done this. I know people who have had their workload (and therefore their paycheck) cut in half. All that I hear is from other adjuncts is that it is because of Obamacare but no one says anything else. There seems to be a silent acceptance. It’s weird. I think if GB did it, there would be a loud revolt. The state just voted in a senator who is a rubber stamp for Obama. Obviously, there is no reaction. Max may be right.
No one knows for certain how to count faculty hours, thus some colleges are limiting adjunct faculty to four courses, some three, and some just two per semester. It gets worse. Some states interpret the ACA to mean that an adjunct faculty member has to count towards the 30 hour threshold courses taught at ALL state colleges, meaning that you can’t make up a cutback at one state college necessarily by picking up courses at another state college because all state agencies are considered a single employer. Moreover, adjunct faculty who used to make extra money working another (non-teaching) job at their college such as academic advising are having those hours cut as well.
In theory, the 30 hour rule should not apply to adjunct faculty who have health insurance from another source, for example, from a spouse or if they receive Medicare. However, I doubt that many colleges, if any, will make exceptions in these situations.
Given the limited pool of available adjunct faculty, this law will result in larger teaching loads for full time faculty, more courses taught by graduate students, hiring of adjunct faculty with “issues,” larger class sizes, more course cancellations, and/or increased tuition.
Truly sheep.
I can say that it happened to me and to several other part-time instructors at my university. One-third of my hours along with one-third of my salary was cut due to the dictates of Obamacare.
During a period of economic downturn Congress and the President are directly taking money out of peoples pockets.
Bob Clark
The day that I heard that the government was redefining full-time employment as 30 hours in order to prevent employers from moving their employees to part time, I realized that it wouldn’t work as planned, and employers would move people to fewer than 30 hours. Yet those employees would still have to pay for their own health insurance on lower incomes.
This means that many people will have to get second jobs. They will lose some of their personal time, because they will have to spend time going to and from the second job (which can’t be for the same employer, such as a state university). Plus, they will lose overtime pay, as when they have two jobs at 25 hours, neither job exceeds 40 hours, so neither will pay overtime, despite the extra 10 hours worked.
But maybe all of that is OK, because with the rapidly accelerating rise in healthcare insurance prices, we don’t have much money left over to spend during those lost hours, anyway.
This boondoggle screws the American people in a large number of ways (not just the tyrannical nature of government determining how we are to spend our hard-earned money).