i have to create a law... does this one make sense?

It would be a law that states that if a company has dental/drug/work benefits for full-time employees, the benefits would have to be offered to part-time employees also. Alot of families are going without benefits, and with the family already trying to strive on part-time income, it makes it almost impossible to afford dental or drug health care. what do you think? thats my idea but im finding it hard to elaborate a little more... it's also difficult for me because i dont fully understand benefits. this is for a grade 11 law project, by the way. thank you :)
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I think I understand what you're asking here. You've been tasked with writing a law that states that companies must offer benefits to all employees and you're asking how you would go about wording that and what things you might have to deal with. Here's a brief description of the "benefits" you have mentioned: DENTAL/MEDICAL: Companies contract with various insurance agencies to provide insurance to the employees at a certain rate. In most companies, they company pays a fairly substantial portion of that cost for each employee. For example, if the premium (the cost of the insurance) is $400 a month for you, the company will often pay $300-350 of that cost leaving you to pay the other $50-$100. WORK BENEFITS: This can include such things as vacation time, sick time, discounts, reimbursement for education, child care, life coaching (time management, budget counseling, some legal assistance, stress management, etc) and a slew of other things that are a "bonus" for working at that company. An example might be someone working for the phone company. They might get 10 days of paid vacation, 3 unexcused absences (sick time) and 1 free phone line in their residence. Here's a few things to think about... 1. You'll want to check into the regulations concerning "independent contractors" to make sure that you don't create a loophole that makes companies convert all of their PT employees to contractors (since contractors have to supply their own benefits). 2. When a company supplies benefits, the company often pays 70-90% of the premium for the employee while the rest of the premium due to the insurance companies is deducted from the employee's paycheck. You'll want to include wording that the company cannot change their percentage of support due to this. (You don't want the company turning around and saying that the employees have to pay 100% of the premium which would make most people pay $400-$800 per month rather than the $40-$100 that they currently pay. Many part-timers won't even make that much!) 3. You will probably want to include wording pertaining to the nature of the part-time work. If a retail store hires sales staff for the Christmas season, should the company still have to provide those people with a vacation if they're only going to be working for 4-6 weeks? However, if the person is part-time year-round, that may be different. Think about where the line might get drawn between these two examples. 4. You'll want to think about the cost associated with these benefits and the management of those benefits. It does cost money to get people signed up for all of these various things and in some cases, it might take longer to complete these tasks than the PT worker will even be employed. (as you can see here, I've already presented a case where it's an unreasonable burden on the company to supply these things, but by legislating to deal with that, you've created a loop-hole that companies can work around. Example: If you say in your law that PT employees working less than 6 weeks don't have to be supplied benefits, then the company can just hire temps in 6 week intervals to avoid that cost (although there is a cost to replacing employees!). If you want to find an example of a company that already gives benefits to their part-time employees, do some research on Starbucks (the coffee shops). They do offer benefits to their PT people by choice, not by law. You could attempt to model your law off of the template created by Starbucks.
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