On January 8, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 252-172 (all voting Republicans plus 12 Democrats) to pass the Save American Workers Act (H.R. 30), a piece of legislation designed to repeal the Affordable Care Act's 30-hour definition of full-time employment and replace it with a 40-hour standard.

The number of full-time workers on an employer's payroll is important, since the ACA requires employers to offer health insurance benefits if they have 100 or more full-time employees as of January 1, 2015, and 50 or more full-time employees as of January 1, 2016.

Rep. Todd Young (R-Indiana), who sponsored the legislation, and his over 150 co-sponsors, believe that the ACA's 30-hour definition of full-time employment will cause employers to reduce the number of hours many of their employees work, or even cut jobs, in order to avoid the current ACA requirements, resulting in hardships on these employees. That is, employers are likely to convert some or many of their full-time workers to part-time (29 hours or less) status.