In my case, i am the only part time employee with my position in the whole company, and its a big company.
The next guy with the least seniority after me has 15 years with the company. I have a rare trade. They are not using this as an excuse to cut my hours.
Word is that they are gonna be offering me full time soon mainly because of this. It because of Obamacare and the way its structured.
There is just no way that all these businesses all over the country are using Obummercare as an excuse to cut hours, they could do that anyway, anytime with or without it.
I'm sorry but that makes no sense. Either someone in HR is yanking your chain (nah, HR people never do that!) or your explanation of the events lost me. You said:
Well, this week it happened. The Deductions in my paycheck increased and the Company sent a memo saying that no part timer can get more than 29 hours per week.
Why? Obamacare.
The FICA payroll deductions in your paycheck simply went back to the level they were before. But does that make a difference to some people? I'm sure that it does. But it was announced right up front that it was a temporary measure. And it was the GOP that opposed it in the first place. And if you recall, no one on the right was prepared to lay down on the railroad tracks to preserve it
(the way they have been for the carried interest rules for the hedge fund boys 
).
But back to this Obamacare thing. So are they keeping you at part-time to avoid paying you benies or not? That's really all it comes down to. Because all Obamacare does is mandate that they chip in on a healthcare plan for you. If they make you full-time, then they clearly have no issue with paying you benies (health, dental, 401k and whatever else is offered to full-timers). But if you were part-time and had no benies before, and then they knocked you down to 29 hours (the Obamacare threshold), then they do indeed have an issue with paying you benies. Otherwise, they'd keep you at 35 hours, 38 hours, 39 hours per week, or just make you full-time right now, and pay your insurance premium.
In the last two sentences, you say that there's no way that businesses are using Obamacare as an excuse to cut hours, but in your first post, you said it was Obamacare that "made" them do it. So which is it? :dunno: Whether you realize it or not, whether you accept it or not, businesses seek to reduce costs and/or enhance profits in whatever way they can. And because labor is usually the largest expense that most businesses have, that's typically the area that they look at first. So again, temps and part-timers are a way to reduce overall labor costs (even if you don't pay them less per hour, you still save on the benefits package... that they don't have). Whoever gave you that song & dance (in HR?) is just lying to you if they told you otherwise. If I get rid of 10 full-time people who each make $50K a year, then I get a cost savings credit for their salaries
plus the value of their benefits for a year on my project. And if I have to hire 10 part-timers, who will also make $50K a year (but get no benefits), to replace those full-time people, I get the difference between those new (lower) net wage costs and the ones I eliminated: net cost savings.
Best of luck to you, dude. Really. But this thread reminds me of a conversation I had about a year ago with some guys who I was going to let work on a weekend to finish a plant project for me. Instead of contractors, I was going to pay them double time and help out the "home team" players... or so I thought. But at the last minute, they bowed out. Why? Well, they claimed that they figured out how much extra "tax" they'd have to pay on that double time and it wasn't worth it. Uh... wait... what?!
They didn't know the difference between withholding and actual tax. Rather than taking the time to explain to them that while $50K a year with no overtime and $50K a year with lots of overtime do indeed yield different withholding amounts, they do
not yield different final tax bills. The income tax bills would be exactly the same. Fuck it. I hired the contractors.
So rather than get any deeper into this, again, as long as you're getting whatever hours you want/need and you're doing what you need to do to take care of your kid, I guess it's all good. And don't be lulled into believing that you have a (truly) rare trade. If your trade was indeed that rare, then they'd have either hired you full-time right off the bat or put you on a defined contract (with or without benefits).
