Joining Target, Home Depot and others, Wal-Mart — the nation’s largest retailer — has announced plans to eliminate health insurance for some of its part-time workers (those who work fewer than 30 hours a week) in order to curb health care expenses. Wal-Mart employs 1.4 million full- and part-time workers, but only about 30,000 of them will be affected.
The move will be implemented come Jan. 1, according to The Associated Press.
“We had to make some tough decisions,” Sally Wellborn, Wal-Mart’s senior vice president of benefits, told The Associated Press. Wellborn says 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 Wal-Mart.”