Moderated by Rick Badie
Higher menu prices. Fewer work hours and jobs. Zero expansion and possible closings. This, writes a local franchiser, will be the potential impact in the restaurant industry of health mandates under the Affordable Care Act. But the co-founder of a workers? advocacy group suggests that businesses can profit by taking care of personnel.
Repeal Obamacare
By Aziz Hashim
More than three years into our jobless ?recovery,? 12.1 million Americans are still out of work. Nearly 23 million have stopped looking or can?t find full-time work.
The labor participation rate is 63.6 percent, the same level we saw in 1981. Employers are only adding slightly more jobs per month needed to keep pace with normal labor-force expansion.
So why did the unemployment rate go down below 8 percent last month? In large part, due to an increase in part-time work. While the drop in unemployment may seem completely positive, there is an underlying problem for small business owners due to Obamacare.
As employers begin to make their growth plans for the next year, the true costs of Obamacare have started to sink in. They threaten much of the growth forecast in businesses like mine, a franchise of pizza, burger and chicken restaurants that include Atlanta-based Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen. I want to grow my business and add more locations. Obamacare penalizes me every time I add a full-time worker to my franchise.
The employer mandate forces employers to provide coverage or pay a penalty once they reach the 50 full-time-employee threshold. Employers face a decision of closing a business, eliminating jobs, or shifting workers from full- to part-time to avoid the law?s penalties. We are likely going to choose the latter option.
In the franchise industry, there are thousands of multi-unit franchises like me who are put at a competitive disadvantage by the law?s employer mandate. This threatens growth in our industry. In cases where a franchisee owns and operates multiple locations, the law treats these firms as one company for tax and health-care purposes.
Suppose a multi-unit franchisee owns four establishments with 15 full-time employees each. Under the law, this multi-unit franchisee will be treated as a single firm with 60 full-time employees. The employer will be required by law to provide health care benefits for all employees or pay a fine of $2,000 per full-time employee per year. If these four establishments were owned and operated separately, they would be exempt from the health care requirement.
If these four separately owned businesses choose to offer health insurance, they would in many cases be entitled to a tax credit, making this an even further disadvantage for multi-unit ownership.
Businesses cannot operate at a loss for an extended time. That is the choice this law may force companies to face. Another often-overlooked factor is that many businesses will have an added incentive to become more automated and employ fewer workers. Utilizing automated check-out counters and purchasing new machinery are options we must consider to reduce the number of employees and remain profitable under these mandates.
Business owners like me who want to continue to expand would feel more confident about expansion and hiring plans without Obamacare. The only way to change this is by repealing Obamacare in its entirety and starting over with market-based solutions.
Aziz Hashim is president and CEO of? Decatur-based National Restaurant Development, Inc.
Health care can help stabilize workforce
By Saru Jayaraman
There?s been a lot of talk about the recent announcement by Darden, the world?s largest full-service restaurant company and owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster, that it would reduce workers? hours to avoid having to provide health coverage when the Affordable Care Act goes into effect in 2014.
None of the coverage mentioned the impact on one key stakeholder group: consumers.
Last fall, a server at a North Carolina Olive Garden was forced to work with Hepatitis A because the company neither offers paid sick days nor any kind of health care. Three thousand people had to get tested for Hepatitis A and many ended up winning a consumer class-action lawsuit against the company.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a great step to ensure that people who touch our food are not sick, making sure that we don?t get sick as well. Darden claims the ACA is forcing the company to reduce its employees? hours to stay afloat.
Moreover, the National Restaurant Association would have you believe the industry is going to collapse if it actually provides workers with genuine health-care access. There are plenty of great employers in America already providing benefits.
For the last three decades, Zingerman?s Community of Businesses in Michigan has been providing up to 80 percent of workers? health care premiums on a comprehensive health care plan. Zingerman?s started as a two-employee deli in 1982. It has grown to an award-winning company with nine businesses that employ 575 workers and realize more than $40 million per year in revenue.
How? Zingerman?s was committed to working benefits into its business model from the start and heard workers? input in choosing the plan.
Says Zingerman?s founder Paul Saginaw, ?What do you get from it? You get a stable workforce. You get a workforce that can stay healthy. You get someone who feels good about the company and is out there trying to help the company be successful. The benefits are enormous. So now you figure out how to make it work.?
Everyone agrees health care costs are high. Saginaw believes a government-funded plan would be best. Without that, Saginaw needs and wants his employees to be healthy, for the sake of his workers and customers, and for his own bottom line. His workers say their customer service is better because they feel secure.
In fact, restaurants in the whole city of San Francisco have had to contribute toward a health care fund for their workers since 2008. Business is booming.
The organization I direct, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, puts out a consumer guide on which restaurants provide benefits like paid sick days and which don?t at www.rocunited.org/dinersguide. We should support restaurants that do and let others know they shouldn?t cut corners because we put our health in their hands every time we eat out.
Saru Jayaraman is co-director of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United in New York.
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While Philadelphians can?t seem to stay off the negative lists these days (most overweight, angriest, most sweatsuits purchased), our restaurants can?t seem to stop getting praise from the listosphere.
Eleven North Bay restaurants received the industry?s highest rating? the Michelin star ? with two Napa Valley restaurants maintaining a three-star rating and nine others earning the one-star rating.
I?ve got awesome news to report?Lancaster Farmland Trust announced at its annual banquet, on October 24th, that the Jacob Mast Homestead became the 400th farm to be preserved in Lancaster County by The Trust!? This is the farm that Isaac?s raised over $16,000 for, with our ?Save A Farm!? campaign in August.? For every cup or bowl of Fresh-Cut Corn Chowder sold during that month, we donated $1 to The Trust to go towards preserving the 103-acre farm in eastern Lancaster County.
It was great to see Wayne and Frieda Reiter, owners of the farm, at the banquet.? I had the privilege of visiting them on their beautiful farm back in the summer with my boss, Phil Wenger, and the two Karens (as I like to call them), Karen Dickerson and Karen Martynick, from The Trust, for an interview with Anne Shannon from WGAL.? The history, the landscape?everything about their farm impressed me, including the Reiter?s vision of getting it preserved.
Another highlight of the banquet was the presentation of the ?Corporate Sponsor Of The Year? Award to Isaac?s Famous Grilled Sandwiches.? Phil accepted the award on behalf of the Company and, during his acceptance speech, urged the audience to talk to any restaurant owners they know about holding a campaign similar to the one Isaac?s held in August, to raise even more money to go towards farmland preservation.? This would definitely help The Trust in reaching their goal of preserving 100,000 acres in 2013!
Security isn't just an issue for Windows PCs. Smartphones, tablets and Macs are also vulnerable to attack, which means you should have security protection on every Internet-connected device you own.
Norton Internet Security 2013
) monitors email and instant messages and has an identity safe that remembers, secures, and automatically enters your user names and passwords when you visit websites. It also scans your Facebook news feed for dangerous links and protects you from scams by reviewing a website?s reputation and letting you know if it?s safe to enter your personal information there.
Bitdefender Total Protection 2013
) comes with Bitdefender Safepay, which activates automatically when you access your bank accounts, creates an unbreachable connection on public hotspots, and includes a virtual keyboard so no one else can read your keystrokes. It also has an anti-theft feature that lets you lock, wipe and locate a laptop or netbook if it?s lost or stolen. And parental controls are included?they let you remotely monitor your children's online activities (including Facebook through an integrated Facebook app), restrict web access to certain hours, and more.
Webroot SecureAnywhere 2013 - Internet Security Plus
) is less than 750Kb in size and performs full scans in just a few minutes instead of a half an hour or more, which is standard. The reason it can be so small is because if you?re connected to the Internet it compares file attributes with its cloud database to block threats in real time. If you?re working offline it blocks any files that have not been previously verified in the cloud.![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 22-Oct-2012
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