Denny’s Franchise CEO Threatens To Cut Employees Back To Part-Time Over Obamacare

[truebluefan]

Employees at the 40 Denny’s restaurants and five Hurricane Grill and Wings owned by John Metz now have fair warning: their hours are getting cut back in January of 2014.

To avoid having to provide health care for his employees, Metz — who owns restaurants in Florida, Virginia and Georgia — told Fox News today that he will cut back many of his workers’ hours to part time. At the same time, he’ll add a five percent “Obamacare surcharge” to his customers’ bills:

“Everyone’s looking for a way to not have to provide insurance for their employees. It’s essentially a huge tax on all us business people.”

To further offset the costs, Metz, who oversees roughly 1,200 employees as president and CEO of RREMC Restaurants, LLC, said he also will slash most of the staff’s time to fewer than 30 hours per week. That change will be announced to employees next month, he said. [...]

At Denny’s restaurants operated by Metz, the average check is $9, he said, meaning the ObamaCare surcharge if implemented would be 45 cents on that bill. At Hurricane Grill & Wings locations, where the average bill is $14.50, the surcharge would total 72 cents.

Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/11/15/1197431/dennys-obamacare/