• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Thirty Hours = "Full Time"?

How many hours should the base of "Full Time" employment be?

  • Total voters
    51
year2late said:
I do 3 - 12 hour shifts ....I have been 36 hours for about 22 years.
Click to expand...

Intermittently there have been options for 5 -12 hours shifts per 2 weeks (breaks down to 30 hours)
 
MaggieD said:
I don't understand your post. I want to double-down on what??
Click to expand...

MaggieD said:
By defining full-time as 30 hours per week, Obamacare opens the door for employers to staff accordingly. As I said, had 30 hours been the benchmark when I owned my business, none of my employees would have been eligible since I could easily staff our needs working employees only 29 hours a week.

To protect employees rather than employers, the definition should have been set at 20 hours rather than 30.
Click to expand...

See your above comment; the regs for aca placed full time status as 30hrs to try and keep that max amount of employees in the now cost prohibitive system, all that did was hurt employees and based on your comment you recognize that. To reduce the full time status even further would be to double down on an idea that you already admit had a negative consequence.
 
DVSentinel said:
Guess they made the wrong choice in careers. Maybe they should retrain themselves to something else or make themselves valuable enough to their employer. Also, the should quite voting for people who want the government to force things on other people.

If they voted for Obama and other dems, then they got what they paid for. If they didn't, well, thank your fellow "Americans" for the reaming and ask them to at least furnish some vaseline or KY next time.
Click to expand...

Huh? Not getting your point.
 
Rainman05 said:
The French produce the most value for their work week.
That makes them the most efficient workers.
Click to expand...

I think you missed the part about the capital being what actually has the largest effect on productivity. So like I said, highest capital to work week ratio.
 
johndylan1 said:
See your above comment; the regs for aca placed full time status as 30hrs to try and keep that max amount of employees in the now cost prohibitive system, all that did was hurt employees and based on your comment you recognize that. To reduce the full time status even further would be to double down on an idea that you already admit had a negative consequence.
Click to expand...

That's what I thought -- you don't "get it". The higher the number of hours it takes to be considered "full time" the less advantageous that is to employees -- and the more advantageous it is to employers. A thirty-hour definition allows employers to adequately staff most positions with 29 hours or less. A twenty-hour definition? Notsomuch. Staffing so that no employee works over 19 hours would be logistically almost impossible.
 
MaggieD said:
That's what I thought -- you don't "get it". The higher the number of hours it takes to be considered "full time" the less advantageous that is to employees -- and the more advantageous it is to employers. A thirty-hour definition allows employers to adequately staff most positions with 29 hours or less. A twenty-hour definition? Notsomuch. Staffing so that no employee works over 19 hours would be logistically almost impossible.
Click to expand...

Ease of staffing depends on the type of work and production systems that are in place now doesn't it. Low skill service and well designed production positions can be filled with 2 PT employees instead of one FT easily. What I do get is that an employee / employer relationship must be mutually beneficial. Anyone who uses language such as you did, ie. employer vs employee, doesn't get it in my opinion.
 
johndylan1 said:
Ease of staffing depends on the type of work and production systems that are in place now doesn't it. Low skill service and well designed production positions can be filled with 2 PT employees instead of one FT easily. What I do get is that an employee / employer relationship must be mutually beneficial. Anyone who uses language such as you did, ie. employer vs employee, doesn't get it in my opinion.
Click to expand...

Yep, I was right. You don't get it. Thanks for playing.
 
MaggieD said:
Yep, I was right. You don't get it. Thanks for playing.
Click to expand...

His arguments get more and more obtuse and irrational. He wants to tell us that we are hostile to employers, even though we have both been employers.
 
sangha said:
His arguments get more and more obtuse and irrational. He wants to tell us that we are hostile to employers, even though we have both been employers.
Click to expand...

That's what I think, too. I personally (when I owned my business) would have absolutely loved a thirty-hour definition of full-time. The twenty-hour rule was a show stopper. Ha!
 
ReformCollege said:
So wouldn't you rather that worker get screwed at 38 hours a week then 29?
Click to expand...

No, not really. Progress is messy but it goes in the right direction.

If a business needs someone to work full time but wants to get around giving their employees extra benefits starting at 40/hr, they can easily do that by just giving them an hour less work. No big deal to their productivity. But if they need someone full time and now the benefit starts at 30/hr to ensure that if the employee works essentially full time than they get what they deserve, then that forces the company to evaluate their priorities. Do they really want to avoid providing benefits if it cuts back their productivity, or is the value of having full time workers worth the extra cost?

Suppose they choose to cut back hours. Now instead of having 60 full time workers they have 80 workers at 30 hours/week. They increase their workforce by 1/3, increasing costs like training and paperwork by 1/3. They are also now employing 80 people that will probably go out and get a second job to make up the difference in their income. So now you will have a full time job scheduling your workers to accommodate their second jobs. Your workers are probably going to work at least 20 hrs/week at their second jobs, and so will be overworked when they show up to their job, and maybe even mentally still thinking about their other job.

So you have more staff to accommodate, who are probably going to have lower morale and are more tired, who aren't focusing on their work because they're working out in their minds problems from their other jobs. And maybe their second job actually offers them full time work, so now they've quit and your rollover has increased.

In this hypothetical situation, it would seem more and more attractive to the employer to just provide the health care, or at the very least pay the $2000 fine and keep their employees on full time.

This is why I feel the burden is on the employer. They have always and will always have to work around laws and regulations, and this is just the next example of that.
 
Zyphlin said:
Seriously, for as long as I've lived on this earth...even as a younger child...I understood that standard "Full time" was generally a "40 hour" work week minimum. That's definitely been my understanding for my entire working age. How in the world is it that we're randomly deciding that 30 hours is "full time" employment?
Click to expand...

For how many hours an employer schedules a given employee before having to pay them overtime, it's been 40 hours/ week for a long time.

For how many hours an employer is allowed to schedule an employee before awarding them benefits it's been 30 hours/ week, that is to say, if that employer even offers benefits. My father has worked or the same contracting company for the past few decades and although he works 40+ hours per week, the company does not offer any benefits (health care or otherwise).Meanwhile my mother has worked in retail for the past few decades and currently works for a supermarket that ensures that she works 29 hours per week. Low & behold, neither of them have employer health benefits.

It's a matter of qualifications. Simply put:

Overtime = 40/ week
Benefits = 30/ week

Zyphlin said:
Do you agree with equating a 30 hour work week to "Full Time" employment?
Click to expand...


I am currently working approximately 47 hours/ week on average. I'm on salary so overtime doesn't really fit into my pay, but I do have comprehensive health/ dental benefits. A long time ago, when the owner of the company that I work for asked me if I wanted to become an exempt employee, I told him that I'd rather be compensated for the work I perform than the hours I punch on a card.

For me this is a much more suitable paradigm, and I'd rather see people compensated for what they accomplish than how long they are at work. I strongly disagree with the 40 hour work week and think that, by paying people for what they do rather than the hours they work we would see shorter weeks, but more efficient work.

I also think that health benefits should be divorced from employers, that is severely hurting both employees and employers.
 
MaggieD said:
That's what I think, too. I personally (when I owned my business) would have absolutely loved a thirty-hour definition of full-time. The twenty-hour rule was a show stopper. Ha!
Click to expand...

What's a 30 hour week?
 
aberrant85 said:
No, not really. Progress is messy but it goes in the right direction.

If a business needs someone to work full time but wants to get around giving their employees extra benefits starting at 40/hr, they can easily do that by just giving them an hour less work. No big deal to their productivity. But if they need someone full time and now the benefit starts at 30/hr to ensure that if the employee works essentially full time than they get what they deserve, then that forces the company to evaluate their priorities. Do they really want to avoid providing benefits if it cuts back their productivity, or is the value of having full time workers worth the extra cost?

Suppose they choose to cut back hours. Now instead of having 60 full time workers they have 80 workers at 30 hours/week. They increase their workforce by 1/3, increasing costs like training and paperwork by 1/3. They are also now employing 80 people that will probably go out and get a second job to make up the difference in their income. So now you will have a full time job scheduling your workers to accommodate their second jobs. Your workers are probably going to work at least 20 hrs/week at their second jobs, and so will be overworked when they show up to their job, and maybe even mentally still thinking about their other job.

So you have more staff to accommodate, who are probably going to have lower morale and are more tired, who aren't focusing on their work because they're working out in their minds problems from their other jobs. And maybe their second job actually offers them full time work, so now they've quit and your rollover has increased.

In this hypothetical situation, it would seem more and more attractive to the employer to just provide the health care, or at the very least pay the $2000 fine and keep their employees on full time.

This is why I feel the burden is on the employer. They have always and will always have to work around laws and regulations, and this is just the next example of that.
Click to expand...

I didn't realize that forcing people to jump through hoops was a good thing. *eye roll*

Maybe you should be a business owner, since you seem to have such a fancy opinion of what they "should or would" do? The employees we are talking about here aren't exactly expensive to train. It doesn't cost a lot of money to train someone to flip burgers or work a cash register at Walmart. And you bet your bottom dollar most of those are going to be part time workers after this healthcare law takes place.
 
ReformCollege said:
I didn't realize that forcing people to jump through hoops was a good thing. *eye roll*

Maybe you should be a business owner, since you seem to have such a fancy opinion of what they "should or would" do? The employees we are talking about here aren't exactly expensive to train. It doesn't cost a lot of money to train someone to flip burgers or work a cash register at Walmart. And you bet your bottom dollar most of those are going to be part time workers after this healthcare law takes place.
Click to expand...

Because you can bet your bottom dollar that almost all of them were part time workers before
 
ReformCollege said:
I didn't realize that forcing people to jump through hoops was a good thing. *eye roll*

Maybe you should be a business owner, since you seem to have such a fancy opinion of what they "should or would" do? The employees we are talking about here aren't exactly expensive to train. It doesn't cost a lot of money to train someone to flip burgers or work a cash register at Walmart. And you bet your bottom dollar most of those are going to be part time workers after this healthcare law takes place.
Click to expand...

Ok, guess we'll just see. The economy has been working against the middle class for decades now, we'll just have to see if this worsens or improves it.
 
sangha said:
Because you can bet your bottom dollar that almost all of them were part time workers before
Click to expand...

I think you were missing the point. Most workers that the business mandate is trying to cover aren't exactly high tech, expensive to train workers. I was just giving examples.
 
aberrant85 said:
Ok, guess we'll just see. The economy has been working against the middle class for decades now, we'll just have to see if this worsens or improves it.
Click to expand...

I'm thinking it'll work against it. This law is trying to help the lower class the most, not the middle class. But anyways, the only thing that can possibly work in the middle classes favor right now is jobs. And that needs to come from energy independence. But that's another topic for another time.
 
ReformCollege said:
I think you were missing the point. Most workers that the business mandate is trying to cover aren't exactly high tech, expensive to train workers. I was just giving examples.
Click to expand...

You're missing the point

Those workers are already part timers
 
ReformCollege said:
I'm thinking it'll work against it. This law is trying to help the lower class the most, not the middle class. But anyways, the only thing that can possibly work in the middle classes favor right now is jobs. And that needs to come from energy independence. But that's another topic for another time.
Click to expand...

I honestly don't know what these companies are that have more than 50 workers working 40 hours a week and still don't provide health care options. Any examples you know of?
 
sangha said:
You're missing the point

Those workers are already part timers
Click to expand...

Many part timers used to work over 30 hours. Now, they won't be able to, which is what we are talking about here. If you want to jump into the middle of the conversation, you have to at least keep up...
 
aberrant85 said:
I honestly don't know what these companies are that have more than 50 workers working 40 hours a week and still don't provide health care options. Any examples you know of?
Click to expand...

Which makes me question why the mandate was needed in the first place. All this is going to do is further cut the hours of already part time workers trying to make ends meet.
 
ReformCollege said:
Which makes me question why the mandate was needed in the first place. All this is going to do is further cut the hours of already part time workers trying to make ends meet.
Click to expand...

But the mandate is separate from the 30-hour rule, isn't it?
 
ReformCollege said:
Many part timers used to work over 30 hours. Now, they won't be able to, which is what we are talking about here. If you want to jump into the middle of the conversation, you have to at least keep up...
Click to expand...

Then they'll be free to get a 2nd job, increasing their income
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom