Talking Stick - September/October 2014 - 25

qualify as full-time employees. In
addition, hours in which an RA is oncall (a common part of an RA's duties)
are said to count toward the weekly
averages that determine whether an
employee is entitled to healthcare
coverage. Based on the size of the
campus, how the law is interpreted
and implemented could mean having
to provide healthcare coverage for
hundreds of additional student staff.
Brandon Long, an attorney at
McAffee & Taft in Oklahoma City,
and Josh Ulman, chief government
relations officer with the College and
University Professional Association
for Human Resources (CUPA-HR)
and owner of Ulman Public Policy
& Federal Relations, helped answer
some of the most frequently asked
questions regarding ACA and what
steps a campus should consider.

what is the affordable Care
act (aCa)?
The Affordable Care Act was passed
by Congress and signed into law by
President Barack Obama in March
2010. The ACA is complex and has
numerous provisions that affect
employers, including colleges and
universities. One provision that many
employers have been focused on
in the last few years is the so-called
employer mandate (also known as
the play-or-pay mandate), under
which a large employer must either
offer full-time employees (and their
dependents) certain coverage or
pay certain penalties. A college or
university with 50 or more full-time
equivalent employees is considered to
be a large employer and subject to the
employer mandate.

How is a full-time employee
defined?
The ACA generally separates
employees into full-time, part-time,
and variable hour employees as well
as seasonal (working six months
or less) and ongoing (having been
employed for at least one year)
employees. A full-time employee is
a non-seasonal employee reasonably
expected to average at least 30 hours
per week (or 130 hours per month).
Employers often know that
certain employees are clearly full
time because the employee is hired to
work in a position that requires 30 or
more hours per week. But even other
so-called part-time, variable hour, and
seasonal employees - who are not
clearly identified as full time - might
average 30 hours per week over a
period of time. These employees can
create difficult issues for employers
trying to comply with the ACA.
Fortunately, ACA regulations
allow an employer to use one of
two so-called measurement periods
to help determine full-time status.
Under the first, the monthly
measurement method, an employer
determines each employee's status
by counting the employee's hours
for each month. For most employers,
the monthly measurement method
is likely not the preferred approach
because an employee might average
30 hours per week in January, drop
below 30 hours in February, go back
up to 30 hours in March, etc., thereby
creating a month-by-month change in
status. Consequently, most employers
utilize an alternate method, the lookback measurement period method,
under which the employer measures
an employee's hours looking back
over a prior measurement period to
determine whether to offer coverage

during a subsequent stability period.
The look-back measurement
period rules are complex. But
generally, for new part-time, variable
hour, and seasonal employees,
an employer might measure an
employee's hours for 12 months after
their date of hire. If the employee
averages 30 hours per week during
the measurement period (the lookback period), the employee will then
be offered coverage for the entire
subsequent 12-month stability period
regardless of whether that employee's
hours drop below 30 per week during
the stability period.

How does the aCa define an
hour of service?
For purposes of the measuring rules
identified above, the ACA specifies
that an hour of service is each hour
for which an employee is paid or
entitled to payment for performing
duties for the employer, as well as
each hour for which an employee
is paid or entitled to payment for
a period of time during which no
duties are performed due to vacation,
holiday, illness, incapacity (including
disability), layoff, jury duty, military
duty, or leave of absence.
For employees paid on an hourly
basis, an employer must calculate
actual hours of service from records
of hours worked and hours for
which payment is made or due. For
employees paid on a non-hourly basis,
an employer must calculate hours
of service by using (1) actual hours;
(2) days-worked equivalency - where
the employee is credited with eight
hours for each day for which the
employee would be required to be
credited with one hour; or (3) weeksworked equivalency - where the
September + OctOber 2014

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Talking Stick - September/October 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Talking Stick - September/October 2014
