Staples Fire Back At Obama's Criticism of Employee Health Care

The corporation Staples, Inc. recently slammed President Barack Obama for statements he made in response to an article on the store's policy on part-time employees.

Buzzfeed published an article this week accusing the corporation of trying to subvert the laws of the Affordable Care Act by requiring part-time employees to work 25 hours or less. The Affordable Care Act, enacted by President Obama, requires large-scale employers to offer their employees health insurance if they work 30 or more hours per week.

When Buzzfeed asked the president for a comment on the Staples' policy, Obama replied:

"I haven't looked at Staples stock lately or what the compensation of the CEO is, but I suspect that they could well afford to treat their workers favorably and give them some basic financial security, and if they can't, then they should be willing to allow those workers to get the Affordable Care Act without cutting wages," the president said. 

"When I hear large corporations that make billions of dollars in profits trying to blame our interest in providing health insurance as an excuse for cutting back workers' wages, shame on them," he added.

In a response, Staples' Public Relations Manager Mark Cautela, Sr. said that the Buzzfeed story was "misleading" and that the president "appears not to have all the facts."

"Unfortunately, the president appears not to have all the facts," Cautela said in a statement. "The initial story was misleading as our policy regarding part-time employees is more than a decade old. It predates the Affordable Care Act by several years."

"It's unfortunate that the president is attacking a company that provides more than 85,000 jobs and is a major taxpayer," he added.