Leon i have worked for Giant they had been doing that for years even BEFORE obama.  Read back on my posting history I have mentioned it many times.

The Giant I worked for started transfering and laying off and demoting to part time and cutting full time benefits in the middle of Bush's Second term.    We went from a 7 cutter 2 wrapper shop to a 2 cutter 1 wrapper shop. then my own hours went from 40 to 16 hours a week and I had to quit.   All this went down in George W. Bush's administration.   

-- Edited by fdarn on Wednesday 7th of November 2012 09:47:54 PM

I don't know anything about this but I know about this, http://washingtonexaminer.com/examiner-editorial-companies-cut-hours-and-jobs-to-dodge-obamacare/article/2510268

If you want to know how Obamacare will affect future U.S. employment, look no further than this week's Orlando Sentinel report on Darden Restaurants -- the company that owns popular chains like the Olive Garden and Red Lobster. Currently, all 185,000 Darden employees are offered health insurance, but that's about to change, thanks to Obamacare.

Obamacare fines large companies that fail to offer health insurance to their full-time employees. This would not be a problem for Darden, except that many of its employees have affordable health plans whose coverage is not robust enough to fulfill the requirements of Obamacare's individual mandate. Such plans are popular with restaurants, whose profit margins tend to be small, because they let employers offer benefits at a very reasonable cost. But such plans have coverage limits and other features that Obamacare bans, so they will likely be discontinued beginning in 2014, if not sooner.

And so in order to avoid paying fines or buying massively more expensive health plans that are Obamacare-compliant, Darden is now experimenting with limiting its employees' hours instead. By keeping workers to fewer than 30 hours per week, Darden can categorize them as "part-time." Thus, the company avoids the Obamacare fines and leaves employees to the new government health insurance exchanges, where they may receive subsidies to purchase insurance. At least two other restaurant chains -- White Castle and McDonald's -- are considering similar plans.

So to sum up, Obamacare is leading to fewer hours worked, less tax revenue for the government and bigger government subsidies for health insurance for people who were already insured in the first place. If enough companies do this, Obamacare will become a massive dead weight on the federal budget, even as it does little more than shuffle people from one insurance plan to another, whether they like it or not. The Congressional Budget Office estimates, at the high end, that 20 million workers could see their health plans dropped thanks to Obamacare.

That's how Obamacare will affect the restaurant industry, beginning in 2014. The medical device industry, which is far more closely connected to health care, only has until this January before it is hit with a 2.3 percent industrywide excise tax. Medical device makers have been cutting back in anticipation of the tax. Cook Medical Inc., an Indiana-based manufacturer, announced this summer it was canceling plans to build five plants that would have employed about 1,500 people. Those would have all been manufacturing jobs -- the kind of jobs that President Obama keeps saying he wants to create, but then keeps smothering through his grand agenda.

These are just two examples of industries where there will be less work and workers will be hurt, all because of Obamacare, should its provisions go into effect. Voters should take notice - Obamacare may soon be reaching out to disrupt your job

I think we all need to pray that our companies don't start thinking this way, I really don't want to have to work two 29 hour jobs

I came across this a few days ago, think it might fit here.

Could your family survive on $505 a week?” If only I could make HALF that much! The dirty secret is McDonalds needs to add 50,000 workers to increase the headcount in every store. The goal is to have no full-time employees who qualify for health benefits. So these 50,000 jobs will pay $174 a week BEFORE taxes, and have no benefits, no vacation days, no holidays off, call in sick and get fired, but they will have 52 mandatory weekends each year.
And how do I know this? I work for a national restaurant chain that already has gone to a part-time only policy. I am scheduled for 23 hours next week. The threshold for benefits is 26 hrs.

I know where I live what few ads for jobs, most everyone says part time only

it could very well be something that is coming.

Employers are weighing a lot of options in advance of 2014, and cutting back hours is just one, said Jeanne Wyand, a senior consultant at Towers Watson, which advises companies on employee benefits. "Reducing hours is an option that hasn't gotten a lot of traction at the moment but I would expect that to be a real consideration," especially for retail, restaurant and grocery chains, she said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/health-care-reform-part-time-work_n_1952455.html

So KY Lady Cutter, you're not working as a cutter right now?

Club member Mike Smollon shuts down Annapolis butcher shop 

By Matthew Cole — The Capital

Mike Smollon My Butcher and More

Mike Smollon of My Butcher and More shut down his business in October. He opened it in 2004 and moved to Annapolis in 2009.

Mike Smollon blames the weather and economy for the closure of his business.

Business fell 25 percent between the spring and summer, forcing him to close, he said. He shuttered the shop Oct. 25.

He has been running into past customers and telling them about the closure. “(One customer) hadn’t been in there in many months because her husband lost his job. That’s the gist of a lot of people’s lives — less income and less confidence in the economy.”

There is a Wegman's here about a mile from my house.

It is a good looking store. Pretty much every meat there is pre-packed. They do carry some Kobe. The rumour here is that there are no full-time cutters just a enough to cut some high end stuff.

The cheese section and the deli dep't is out of this world. It is a real draw to bring in the bucks. They also do a 99cent EBT section to draw the government sponsored customers.