Labor unions were sold a bill of goods when the Obama administration talked up the Affordable Care act, according to Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute.
"The labor unions were absolutely bamboozled. They were told one simple thing: if you did a government-run healthcare in place, we're going to unionize and organization the healthcare workers and you're going to get 1 million more members," Galen told Allen West, guest host of "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
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"What they didn't realize is they're also businesses and companies and they subject to all of the mandates and the taxes and all of the restrictions in Obamacare, including that employers are required to provide expensive, government-provided healthcare if they have more than 50 full-time workers."
Turner, whose group is a Virginia-based non-profit public policy research organization, said many businesses are close enough to the margin that just paying the fine for not providing health insurance – $2,000 or $3,000 a year per employee — wipes out their profit margin.
"So they are putting employees on part time … Obamacare redefines several decades of labor law in saying the full-time work week is no longer 40 hours, it's 30 hours," she said.
"If you have employees that work more than 30 hours you have to provide them health insurance and they're saying, we can't afford that. We have to put these workers on part time, [and] many of them move back to 25 hours."
Her suggestion?
"Just give them some slack, so that the companies don't go out of business with the health insurance or the fines, the cost that Obamacare imposes."
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