Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Longhorn To Cut Employee Hours, Blame Obamacare

Darden Restaurant group has been pulling out all the stops to better their bottom line — including a menu revamp at Red Lobster to capture seafood abstainers — and the conglomerate plans to cut more employees from full to part-time hours in a bid to save on health care costs, blaming Obamacare for the decision.

Darden is the parent of not only Red Lobster, but Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, Bahama Breeze and several other American chains. The pilot program to put even more of the chain group’s 180,000 employees on part-time hours (currently, more than 75 percent of workers work 30 hours per week or less) isn’t the chain’s first attempt to foist declining revenues off on already poorly-paid workers in an effort to increase profits.

Back in 2011, the company began forcing servers to share tips with other workers in the restaurants, enabling Darden to in turn pay more workers a far, far lower than minimum wage “tip credit” rate of just over $2, compared to a minimum wage of $7.25.

So it should come as no surprise that rather than comply with new health care regulations stipulating full-time employees receive coverage, that Darden would instead opt to save cash by shafting servers and other low-wage employees at their restaurants.

The Huffington Post quoted Darden’s Bob McAdam, who confirmed the chain group was trying to strip labor costs even lower by reducing the number of employees eligible to receive healthcare benefits:

“Bob McAdam, who heads government affairs and community relations for Darden, said the company is still learning from the tests, which was first reported by the Orlando Sentinel.

“‘We’re not at a point where we have results,’ he said. McAdam also noted that Darden is not alone in looking at ways to keep labor costs in check, with companies across the industry prepping for the new regulations to take effect.”

Red Lobster and Olive Garden aren’t the first restaurants to threaten to punish employees or customers for Obamacare’s supposed costs — over the summer, the CEO of Papa John’s said that pizzas at the chain will become costlier unless Obamacare is repealed.