In school districts across North Carolina, substitute teachers are having their work time cut below 30 hours a week to save school districts from having to pay for their health insurance under the new Obamacare mandates, WITN-NC reports.
“We’ve got a good number of subs who have come to rely on substituting as their primary source of income,” Brock Letchworth of Pitt County Schools said. “Unfortunately when you cut hours you know you’re affecting their livelihood. It’s not something we want to do but it’s something that we’re forced to do because of these mandates that have been put on us.”
Liberal commentators have begun pushing the line that, in reality, no one is actually hurt by Obamacare, and such stories are merely propaganda pushed by right-wingers.
David Perry, a substitute teacher, would disagree. He received an e-mail from the Pitt County school district informing him that substitutes could work only twelve days a month or 90 hours a month. “I felt like they were telling me I couldn’t work when I wanted to work,” Perry said. “Who has a right to tell me I can’t work if a job is available? I was shocked.”
Letchworth said that supplying health care to substitutes would cost the district between $600,000 and $7 million annually.