Hey are the corporations using the ACA to

[applegrove]

cutback on fulltime employees? I mean are they using the ACA as cover so they can degrade the employment market even more? Sending a whole bunch of employees out into the labour market where they desperately look for more part time hours somewhere else all the while corporations would be hiring more part time people. The sum of all that. employers‘ market activity would be lower wages.

[bhikkhu]

1. Statistically, no

as the average work has increased a little bit lately to 34.5 hours. The "employed part time for economic reasons" numbers are also down, while total jobs numbers are up.

You can get a better idea of how things are going from the monthly BLS summaries than from the selective (usually biased one way or another) journalism that feeds from them. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm for the most recent.

[applegrove]

3. Good to know it is not a major shift.

Though those hours taken away from a long term formerly full time employee are given to a new part time employee whose starting salary would be less. So on the individual level it is depressing wages. Maybe the corporations are trying to hold back those trends that favour the employee.

[delrem]

2. You can bet that corporations will exploit every loophole to save money.

If that means fucking over employees, that isn't even an issue.

Dems and others who're in favor of progress, the ACA being step one, should fight back with total to-the-death defiance against those who use their economic position to push progress back.

I think *all* Dems can unite behind the notion that the ACA is step one in a forward, progressive motion.
All the flaws in the ACA, and there are plenty as compared to the policies of other progressive nations, are there to be rectified. There are already a lot of templates.

To point out flaws to be rectified is *not* a negative thing - it's a positive thing. It's a positive thing because Dems are basically all on the same track.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

4. If Dems created the ACA and then the problems that go with it belong to the Dems.

What makes you think the American electorate is going to give them the political impetus for something bigger? The people who lose jobs/hours/benefits/income due to employer/insurer reaction to the ACA aren't going to rally to the Democratic party's call for an even more comprehensive program (which is code-speak for "this one sucks&quot ; they're going to go to the polls with electoral blood in their eyes.

Every year we will have to fight tooth an toenail just to keep ACA. Unlike other laws we don't get to use the filibuster to protect it. A simple majority in both houses is all it will take. That's 217 in the House and 51 in the Senate and it's dead. It was passed under the rules on reconciliation and the USSC ruled it to be a tax. So, instead of fixing anything all our political energy will be spent on keeping it on life support. In fact, the only "fix" being debated at the moment is: should congress have to operate under the same rules if ACA as everyone else? In a rousing endorsement of their good work they have, to date, demurred.

God help us if we lose the Senate next year.