Our colleague August Emil Huelle at Epstein Becker Green has an Employee Benefits Insight Blog post that will be of interest to many of our readers: “Legislation Introduced to Change Full-Time Employee Definition under the Affordable Care Act.”
Following is an excerpt:
On January 7, 2015, U.S. Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joe Donnelly (D–IN) along with Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) introduced the Forty Hours is Full Time Act, legislation that would amend the definition of a “full-time employee” under the Affordable Care Act to an employee who works an average of 40 hours per week. In the coming days, the House is expected to vote on its own version of this legislation, the Save American Workers Act.
The teeth of the Affordable Care Act have the ability to sink excise taxes on employers who do not offer affordable healthcare coverage to full-time employees, which the Affordable Care Act defines as employees who work an average of 30 hours per week. In announcing the introduction of the legislation, Senator Collins argued that the current definition “creates a perverse incentive for businesses to cut their employees’ hours so they are no longer considered full time.” The implication being that the Forty Hours is Full Time Act will increase employee wages because the employers who reportedly reduced employee hours below 30 per week in an effort to avoid costs associated with providing healthcare coverage to employees (or the tax for not providing coverage to employees) are the same employers who will raise employee hours above 30 per week if they are not faced with such costs.
Read the full blog post here.