Coffee Company Ready To Grind Down Employee Work Hours Due to Obamacare?

According to a company employee, Dutch Bros., the largest privately held drive-through coffee company with over 200 locations throughout 7 western states, is limiting the hours of their corporate staff in order to comply with Obamacare mandates.

In tallying up the casualties in the Obamacare war on jobs, FreedomWorks set up a tip line of sorts, at Brokenpromises@FreedomWorks.org.  The Broken Promises line yielded a response from a Dutch Bros. employee stating that the company had announced a reduction in work hours for all corporate employees to 29 hours per week – management excluded.

I was able to confirm the individual is indeed an employee at Dutch Bros.

Here was his initial statement:

The fastest growing drive-thru coffee company in the country, Dutch Bros. http://dutchbros.com/, reduced the hours of all of their corporate employees to 29 hours per week – excluding management – in order to comply with the Obamacare mandates. Since the mandates were pushed back, the company is still holding to the 29 hour work-week.

Some Dutch Bros. locations are franchised owned, but the employee states that “all corporate owned locations are now under this policy.”

It was handled during location based employee meetings by managers with their employees,” he added.

Despite several attempts to reach out to the company, a “PR Specialist” I was put in contact with refused to return messages.

A separate representative in the customer relations department finally provided a statement late last week.  The company delivered what essentially amounts to a ‘no comment.’

We appreciate your interest in Dutch Bros. Coffee. I have been in contact with our Human Resources Team and have received the conclusion that the information that you are requesting is information that we are not disclosing to anyone.

Rather than deny that employee hours were cut, or refute that the Obamacare mandates had anything to do with personnel decisions, Dutch Bros. has decided not to disclose the information? 

If the company never made a move to slash the hours of their staff, it would have been a relatively simple denial.  Additionally, not disclosing the information to anyone seems to indicate that Dutch Bros. doesn’t want to create waves by saying the move was designed to circumvent Obamacare mandates.

A 2009 company profile in Oregon Business indicates that Dutch Bros. employed over 1,500 employees.  Since then, the company’s franchises have expanded from 135 to over 200, with the number of employees presumably expanding as well.  It’s not clear how many corporate employees this move would effect, however.

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