Stealing our benefits?

[Bit NOLA]

What is the name of your state? Florida

I work for a hotel chain's banquet department which employs six people fulltime and several others as part timers. We fulltimers have always received benefits regardless of the number of hours we work per week. For the six years I have worked there, I never averaged 30 hours per week. None of us have. But we always paid for and received our benefits package.

Now, this August we were all told first, that if we did not average thirty-two hours per week our benefits would be terminated, since the company's definition of full-time employment includes working thirty-two hours per week. Fine. They have been asleep at the wheel at Corporate, and now want us to tow the line at our hotel. But a week later the hotel decided that we need to work enough hours per week for the rest of this year to make up for the entire year. Meaning, some of us are forced to work forty hours, not thirty-two, per week to "earn" the benefits we paid for and received all year prior to August.

Is this legal? I understand that they can enforce the thirty-two hours per week requirement, but we acted in good faith, paid into our benefits package, and worked exactly what management scheduled us up until August. Now we are scrambling to work in laundry, maintenance, wherever, in a dead season in order to keep our benefits. Must we pay for their mistake, especially when our most senior banquet server was explicitly told by our supervisors that she did not have to work fulltime hours? Kind of late in the year to spring this on us. We are all on our own to find this work, as well, which makes us feel that they want us to lose our fulltime status. But that's another related issue.

 

[kNOwtheLAW]

Now, this August we were all told first, that if we did not average thirty-two hours per week our benefits would be terminated, since the company's definition of full-time employment includes working thirty-two hours per week.

No one is stealing your benefits. It's not the company's definition -- it's the insurance carriers definition.

Most insurance benefit programs require a weekly minimum amount of hours to be 'eligible' for the program. If the employer was lax in that area and the insurance carrier performed an audit and found this deficiency existed, they could have cancelled your benefits as you were technically 'ineligible'. Instead they apparently worked out an agreement with the insurer to correct the deficiency by year end in order to protect your benefit status. You need to work the required hours in order to average 32 hours per week for the year.

I trust they are paying you for these 'extra' hours. If you believe this is such a disservice you always have the option of seeking employment elsewhere.

KTL

 

[cbg]

And, since only one state requires benefits under the law and that state is not Florida, they don't HAVE to provide you with any benefits at all.

 

[ecmst12]

What state is it?

 

[cbg]

Hawaii requires that all full time employees be given access to health insurance.

My state, Massachusetts requires that employers of over 10 employees EITHER provide health insurance OR pay an annual tax to the state per employee, but since the tax is far less than would be paid for even one month of health insurance (at least around here) there may as well not be any requirement at all.