Obama slams Staples: Is Obamacare really costing workers hours?
President Obama鈥檚 latest dustup isn鈥檛 with Congress or the GOP. It鈥檚 with an office supply company.
In a 聽Tuesday interview with Buzzfeed, the president was asked about that Staples had threatened to fire employees who worked more than 25 hours a week, blaming the new policy on the Affordable Care Act.
鈥淚 haven鈥檛 looked at Staples stock lately or what the compensation of the CEO is, but I suspect that they could well afford to treat their workers favorably and give them some basic financial security,鈥� he responded. 鈥淚t鈥檚 one thing when you鈥檝e got a mom-and-pop store who can鈥檛 afford to provide paid sick leave or health insurance or minimum wage to workers鈥� but when I hear large corporations that make billions of dollars in profits trying to blame our interest in providing health insurance as an excuse for cutting back workers鈥� wages, shame on them.鈥�
Under Obamacare, firms with 50 or more employees are required to provide health coverage for employees who work 30 hours a week or more.聽Staples CEO Ronald Sargent made $10.8 million in total compensation in 2013, and the company reported net quarterly profit of $216.8 million in its latest quarterly report in November.聽
Staples fired back Wednesday, saying its policy of restricting hours for part-time workers is more than a decade old.
"Unfortunately, the president appears not to have all the facts," Staples spokesman Kirk Saville said in a statement. "It's unfortunate that the president is attacking a company that provides more than 85,000 jobs and is a major tax payer."
It鈥檚 very rare for a big, public company to criticize a sitting president, so the response was the corporate communications equivalent of fightin鈥� words. But regardless of what prompted Staples鈥� policies, there is ample evidence suggesting that large companies are doing what they can to avoid increased costs related to Obamacare 鈥� including cutting part-time worker hours.
For one, they鈥檙e trying to change the law: Many Republican lawmakers and lobbyists for the restaurant and retail industries have been pushing to raise the required minimum for health coverage from 30 hours to 40 hours. A bill to do just that passed the House of Representatives in January, and it heads to the Republican-controlled Senate next. (Obama has said he would veto such bill). On a grand scale, the impact of such a change would be small 鈥� approximately 80 percent of workers log 35 or more hours per week, and most of them have access to health insurance, ).
But the small percentage of workers working less, chiefly in sectors like food and services, have seen their hours shrink. According to a analysis, the share of workers logging between 24 and 29 hours ticked up slightly between 2009 and 2014; those working just above the Obamacare threshold, between 30 and 34 hours, has been trending downward.
Additionally, hundreds of public and private companies did cut worker hours in the lead-up to Obamacare鈥檚 implementation. Investor鈥檚 Business Daily is keeping
Staples, meanwhile, recently announced a $6.3 billion deal to merge with Office Depot, its chief rival, a move to combat stiff outside competition from the likes of Walmart and Amazon. Its cuts of worker hours came under fire over a year ago, prompting a that garnered over 200,000 signatures.
