It's not always that nefarious. At a past company we had certain manual labor tasks that had to be done by end of day, so work schedules were flexible. We offe

It's not always that nefarious. At a past company we had certain manual labor tasks that had to be done by end of day, so work schedules were flexible. We offered full time with benefits, but there was still a lot of demand for part-time work. There are a lot of people out there who simply want to use extra time in the day to take on paying work. You get college students looking for a few hours after work, or parents who have to work around their kids school schedules, or older people who simply want to have something to do but aren't up for full-time jobs. There are also plenty of jobs where companies simply can't afford to pay someone 40 hours per week plus benefits. Hiring someone for 20 hours per week with no benefits is arguably better than not having that job in the economy at all. I'd love as much as anyone for the US to separate health care from employer-provided health insurance, but it's not really fair to blame companies for the failures of our politicians.