Hello everybody!


Its an article from Daily Kos, but it is relevant. I just feel like it
might be more ethical just to cook at home and leave entrepenuers who find
the loopholes unworthy.


Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson

Papa John's has company in the Obamacare fear-mongering game. Darden
Restaurants, the parent company of Olive Garden, Red Lobster and others, is
joining the pizza chain in threatening dire consequences stemming from the
requirement that large companies offer affordable health insurance to
employees working 30 or more hours a week. But where Papa John's has
threatened to pass the 11 to 14 cent per pizza added cost it claims will
come from insuring or refusing to insure their workers along to customers,
Darden is sticking it straight to its workers by planning to make sure
hourly workers just don't get the 30 hours a week that would tip them over
into qualifying for insurance.
Here's the thing: Obamacare or no, this is completely typical behavior from
Darden. The chain already keeps 75 percent of its hourly workers below 30
hours of work a week, and:

Darden has been aggressively keeping labor costs down. It has cut
bartenders' pay and required servers to share tips with them. It also has
eliminated busboy positions at Red Lobster and reduced the number of
servers working each shift at that chain.
Labor costs as a percentage of sales have dropped steadily from 33.1
percent in fiscal 2010 to 30.8 percent in the most recent quarter.

What we have here is not some Obamacare cataclysm of good employers being
forced to cut their employees' hours or go out of business. Rather, it's a
food service sweatshop finding one more way to screw its workers. Darden is
one of the 20 largest low-wage employers in the country; meanwhile, it was
profitable in the last fiscal year and over the last three fiscal years,
and has higher revenues, profits, operating margins and cash holdings than
prior to the recession. In recent years, Darden has paid nearly $14 million
in fines and settlements for wage theft.
It's a sad fact that almost any time you're eating in a restaurant, you're
in a low-wage, low-benefits workplace. Usually, employers who've taken the
high road are the only ones that stand out in the restaurant industry. But
Darden has repeatedly distinguished itself by being one of the worst
employers in an industry of bad employers. That it would use Obamacare as
an excuse to cut the hours of the few remaining full-time hourly workers in
an overwhelmingly part-time workforce is hardly a surprise.

Matt


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