NEW YORK — Walmart Stores Inc. plans to eliminate health insurance coverage for some of its part-time U.S. employees in a move aimed at controlling rising health care costs of the nation’s largest private employer.
Walmart told The Associated Press that starting Jan. 1, it will no longer offer health insurance to employees who work less than an average of 30 hours a week.
The move affects 30,000 employees, or about 5 percent of Walmart’s total part-time workforce. The company already had scaled back the number of part-time workers eligible for health insurance coverage.
The announcement follows similar decisions by Target, Home Depot and others to completely eliminate health insurance benefits for part-time employees. It also comes a day after Walmart said it is teaming up with an online health insurance agency called to help customers shop for health insurance plans.
“We had to make some tough decisions,” said Sally Welborn, Walmart’s senior vice president of benefits.
Welborn said she didn’t know how much Walmart will save by dropping part-time employees, but added that the company will use a third-party organization to help part-time workers find insurance alternatives: “We are trying to balance the needs of (workers) as well as the costs of (workers) as well as the cost to Walmart.”
