Under the Affordable Care Act, also known as "Obamacare," Walt Disney Co. will be promoting 427 of its part-time Walt Disney World employees to full-time status, which will provide them with more health benefits and higher pay.
"Disney wants to be proactive," Ed Chambers, president of the Service Trades Council union that represents tens of thousands of Orlando Disney employees, told Bloomberg News. "Disney is way out in front on this."
The offer was made to staff members who put in more than 1,500 hours in the past year, or more than 30 hours a week, the threshold at which employees are required to work at in order to be be offered health care coverage.
Under the Affordable Care Act, large employers with 50 or more workers must offer basic health care benefits or risk paying $2,000 per employee in fines. Instead of reducing the number of hours their employees are working in order to avoid the new legislation, Disney has decided to simply promote them.
Those who work at Disney and have not met the requirement to be eligible for promotion will still receive health care benefits, though they are limited.
Disney's decision is in stark contrast to that of other companies that have used Obamacare as an exucse to cut employee hours and benefits, including United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS), who announced last month that they would drop coverage for married employees, and Walgreen Co., who told some 160,000 workers that they would have to buy their own private insurance rather than be provided for by the company.
Fellow Orlando-based theme park SeaWorld has said that it will reduce its weekly work hour cap from 31 to 28 for part-time employees and add more full-time employees at its 11 parks across the country. Full-time positions will include medical benefits, while part-time jobs will not.
