No Health Benefits For Half The Employees At Obamacare Call Center

Companies that said they would need to cut workers' hours because of the prohibitive costs of health care if Obamacare was implemented were excoriated for that decision, and calls for boycotts forced many to reconsider.  So it's rather interesting that about half of the 200 or so people being trained to answer questions about Obamacare at a call center opening soon in Concord, California will be part time with no benefits. That's right, those poor individuals who aren't full time will have to pay anywhere from $600 to $1,200 per month if single, and $1,400 to $2,900 if married with a family, for the privilege of making a whopping $15.33 to $18.63 per hour. If a person is lucky enough to get 30 hours a week, you do the math. What's worse, it was understood that all those jobs would be full time, including those who were hired.

"The battle for the call center was over jobs with good working wages and benefits; I never dreamed they would be part-time," said Karen Mitchoff, who has heard from complaining constituents and expressed her "extreme displeasure with how it was handled" to call center supervisors.

One recent hire, who last week learned the job would be part-time, said the new "intermittent" employees feel like they've been used as a political tool, and many now regret applying for the positions.

"What's really ironic is working for a call center and trying to help people get health care, but we can't afford it ourselves," said the worker, who asked for anonymity out of fear of losing the job. The county says it had been telling the public and supervisors all along that some positions would be full-time and some part-time. However, portions of staff reports list all 204 jobs as full-time, and a job posting said the same.

It's the latest controversy involving the call center, one of three created statewide to help citizens enroll in various new health care options under President Obama's Affordable Care Act when it goes live at the start of next year.

The rest here.

Will the liberals be outraged? Nah.