My Job Wants To Cut My Pay Or My Hours Right Before My Wife Gives Birth. Need Some Advice.

My wife is in her 36th week of pregnance and last week my hr rep at work had a meeting with me, saying that they could no longer keep up with my wage and will have to either drop my wage by $10.00 an hour or move me to part time.

While I do make a lot of money in my field that is because of the experience and knowledge that I have with it. I am a metrology programmer. Meaning I program machines to measure parts for manufacturing (CMMs, Vision Systems, Laser Scanners, etc.). I not only know one type of software/ machine ,but multiple software and machine types with over 10 years of experience on some.

The problem I have is that they hired a second programmer with less experience at the lower rate and now expects me to fall in line. Is this legal in their part? I need to know because this will be a big impact on my family.

Thank you very much in advance and I appreciate any advice you can give.

Edit: I live in Minnesota. This whole situation started when Minnesota apparently changed the law for who qualifies as a salaried employee it was also when we found out my wife was pregnant. When i got changed from salary to hourly. They wanted me to work an extra 5 hours of overtime to make my regular paycheck. I refused and hr decided to hire someone cheaper with the excuse that having two programmers would make it easier on the work load. There is not enough work for two programmers and they knew it.

Thank you for all the responses.