Timesizing® Associates

---

Good News, August 21-31, 2000
[Commentary] ©2000 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 622, Cambridge MA 02140 USA (617) 623-8080

8/31/2000  glimmers of intelligence -

1. [1 UPsizing -]
   United States aids Russians in [retiring] nuclear jobs, by Michael Wines, NYT, A10.
   MOSCOW...- American and Russian officials dedicated a 10-acre industrial park [yester]day at what was until recently a nuclear-weapons factory east of Moscow...in the once-closed [ex-]nuclear city of Sarov..\.. It was the second step in a joint project that American experts hope will provide jobs for up to 4,000 [ex-!]Russian weapons scientists and workers. Energy Secretaryl Bill Richardson attended [as] part of a weeklong [tour] promoting programs to cuorb the spread of nuclear materials and technology.... The U.S. will spend $4.5m next year to help prepare buildings at the Sarov site for private businesses, and hopes to spend $8.5m more on other programs there in 2001.... The first tenant at the new ["Avengard"] Technopark [at Sarov will] be a German-American venture to make kidney-dialysis machines and supplies....

2. State and Pentagon in deal on cleanup at 29 bases, by Ronald Smothers, NYT, A19.
   Dept. of Defense officials and New Jersey environmental regulators signed an accord yesterday in which the Pentagon agreed to finance the cleanup of 550 contaminated sites on [29] current and former military bases around the state....
   [Is N.J. big enough to have almost 30 military bases??]

3. [NYT places Greens second in Campaign Briefing section -]
   The Green Party - Nader wins Union backing, NYT, A18.
   ...On Tuesday in South Dakota [a judge rejected Mr. Nader's appeal to be] on the fall ballot \even though\ he missed the June 20 filing deadline [and] in Wyoming...he fell short of the 3,584 signatures needed to qualify, [partly because] a volunteer walked off with...650 signatures. \However\ on Wednesday in Erie, Pa., Mr. Nader won the endorsement of the 35,000-member United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers [UERMW] of America [which] seldom endorses presidential candidates..\..after telling the union's convention that while the Democratic Party might be labor's traditional partner in presidential races, it always promised more than it delivered. He promised to deliver.

1. [1 timesizing]
   Auto supplier Tower lays off 100 [indefinitely] due to tire recall, Reuters via AOLNews via RadioTony, 29Aug2000, 14:47:49 EDT.
   ...Tower Automotive Inc...also said another 200 workers will be furloughed for one week next week..\..because of Firestone's tire recall and the resulting effect on Tower customer Ford Motor Co.... All the layoffs are in the company's Milwaukee plant, which employs 3,000 people....
   [So let's see, 100/3000= 3.3% layoff (bad) and 200/3000= 6.6% furlough (good). Hey, at least 2/3 of these 300 people still have their jobs. A furlough is a type of timesizing (trimming worktime, not jobs) that operates on a jerky alternating day, week or month basis instead of just trimming hours as little as necessary all along the way. In this case, the company is doing a one-time weekly alternation - this week on, next week off, following week back on and hopefully continuing on. The point is, these 200 still have their jobs and Tower still has their skills. The other 100 - it's not so sure.
   [Now what they should have done - timesize the whole thing. 300/3000 workweeks not needed? OK, that's 10%. Do a 10% cut for everyone - 10% of the 40-hr workweek is 4 hrs/wk. Cut indefinitely to a 36-hr workweek (and payweek) for everyone, including top management - indefinitely until Ford gets it back together and starts ordering parts again (and then relengthen the company workweek back to 40). Keep everyone together and employed and morale high, due to shared adversity. If some people like their jobs enough to work their old hours with only 36 hours pay, match them up and let them crosstrain one another, so the whole company gets more adaptible and competitive, and so you get fresh minds looking at various operations and coming up with ideas for greater efficiency. This is true Timesizing.]

2. [1 UNtakeover]
   Gliatech shares tumble [60%] after merger cancellation, Reuters via NYT, C4.
   ...Guilford Pharmaceuticals Inc. said that it no longer planned to purchase the medical device maker. The companies mutually agreed to terminate the deal, valued at $203m when it was announced in May [see 5/31/2000], because the FDA questioned the way...Gliatech presented its data on its only product, Adcon, a gel that prevents postsurgical scarring....

3. Beyond the glass ceiling - Women's MBA program is redefining its mission, by Julie Flaherty, NYT, C1.
   Since it was founded more than 25 years ago as a graduate school of business for women only, the program at Simmons College [in Boston] has continued to grow even as women have gained greater acceptance at the major mainstream MBA programs.... A quarter-century later, the Graduate School of Management at Siimmons College is still the only all-woman MBA program in the world....
   When Anne Jardim and Margaret Hennig..\..two Harvard Business School professors...founded the school, their focus was...to teach women how to get along in a many's business world and how to cope with the so-called glass ceiling that held them back.... [They] wrote the influential 1976 book, "The Managerial Woman".... But [now,] with so many women having broken down the barriers that once held them back, Simmons administrators have a new goal: to groom women for advanced leadership roles as chief executives....
   [More power to 'em!]

4. First central lab for Linux research planned - A popular [alternative] operating system picks up support from big computer companies, by Matt Richtel, NYT, C5.
   ...Intel, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and several other computer companies...will jointly create and finance a laboratory for developing and testing advances in the onetime renegade [Linus] operating system. Working with prominent Linux developers and promoters, the companies said, they plan to open the Open Source Development Lab in Portland, Ore., by the end of the year, and then create several satellite offices around the country to support it. \This will give] thousands of computer hobbyists and software developers who together honed the Linux operating system from their homes and small offices...their first central physical lab for testing new versions of [Linux] and application programs designed to run on it....
   [ANYTHING to counterbalance Microsoft - no longer "micro" and no longer "soft"!]

1. [1 UNtakeover]
   Advanced Magnetics, Cytogen change deal, by Naomi Aoki, Boston Globe, E7.
   ...A Cambridge [Mass.] developer of diagnostic pharmaceuticals used in magneteic resonance imaging said a proposed $60m acquisition by Princeton, NJ-based Cytogen Corp. has been called off. Instead, the two companies have entered into a marketing and supply deal....
   [We logged this merger agreement, not just proposal, on 7/11/2000.]

2. [At last, headline trumpets stupidity of attempt by gov't to bribe firm into keeping jobs in state -]
   Strike or not, Raytheon tax break was a mistake, by Syre & Stein, Boston Globe, E1.
   Raytheon's blue-collar workers in Massachusetts are on strike.... They have watched their ranks thin over the years - from 10,000 ten years ago, to 4,200 five years ago, to 2,700 today. They are especially angry because in 1995 they lobbied the [state] Legislature to give Raytheon a tax break. In return, they thought they were getting job security. They got some - Raytheon is still in Massachusetts - but clearly not as much as they hoped for....
   [And the fact that Raytheon is still in Massachusetts is no comfort to 4,200-2,700= 1,500 employees (36%) who lost their good jobs at Raytheon over the past five years.]
   We...do have..\..a strong opinion...on the original tax break: It was a well-intentioned mistake. It was based on the flawed assumption that the state could dictate the hiring plans of a company. In an uncertain world....that kind of micromanagement can't fly.... Raytheon [had] promised to keep its total Massachusetts payroll at 90% of the 1995 level for five years....
   [They only maintained it at 100-36= 64%, not 90%.]
   The company has since [1995] closed plants in Waltham and Quincy.... Raytheon...kept its payroll [in the unintended sense] above the 90% mark, in part by hiring more well-paid engineers and scientists, even as it cut its blue-collar work force....

• [1 weekend UPsizing]
  8/28  DaimlerChrysler to expand its production in Alabama, by Keith Bradsher, NYT, C2.
  ...The Mercedes-Benz unit of DaimlerChrysler..\..will nearly double production in Alabama, adding another assembly line close to the site where it already builds M-Class sport utility vehicles.... The Birmingham News reported that Mercedes would receive $150m in state incentives for the new operation and that it would create 1,750 jobs. Mercedes received $235m in incentives for the existing factory....
  [Two questions -
  1. Is this pathetic parasitism on taxpayers what we are passing off as robust and competitive, private-sector, free-market capitalism these days? This is nothing but corporate socialism - welfare for the rich.
  2. How come the private sector claims there's a job surplus when they want more visas for cheap pretrained labor from India, yet claims there's a job shortage when they want more "incentives" from state and city governments around the country? There is a global labor surplus and a job and training shortage, but this is the way to make it worse, not solve it. Politicians dependent on contributions from big corporations will always give away more of our tax money to those who already have more than they can spend in hundreds of lifetimes - and set us up for yet another Great Depression. The real solution lies along the lines of simply sharing the vanishing work, as technology cuts into it. (And for those of you who still think techology isn't cutting into it, suppose you try to explain the motivation for introducing the technology.)]
  [The new jobs are nice, but hitting the taxpayer is a disgrace that's taking us further and faster down to Third World levels.]

• 8/27  If you took an airplane recently, you know deregulation [was a mistake], by Robert Kuttner, Boston Globe, F7.
  [It is an age of simplistic economics -
  • Completely dismantle government - except for last-resort human relations (courts and prisons) and last-resort international relations (the Pentagon)
  • Completely deregulate (except when it's in the short-term interests of our topmost income brackets)
  • Have completely "free trade" (except when it's against the short-term interests of our topmost income brackets)
  But here's another view -]
  If you are like millions of Americans who vacationed this summer, you paid top dollar for airline tickets, had little choice of airline, and were rewarded by long delays. But then, when you landed, you became a sovereign consumer again. You had your choice of car rental companies, hotels, and restaurants. You could shop around for the best prices, carefully measuring price against quality, and exercise real buying power.... How is it that car rental companies [etc.] give you plenty of choice and high quality service, but not airlines?
  The answer is that airlines are not a naturally competitive industry.
  • They require very expensive capital equipment that needs to fly mostly full to be cost effective.
  • Big airlines have the market power to crush little ones.
  • And airlines depend on public facilities, namely airports.
  ...which is why they used to be regulated. [Roughly] twenty years ago, however, [came the idea we should] stop regulating fares and routes, get the government out of the way, and new, cut-rate carriers would offer better service or lower fares.
  But it hasn't worked out that way. ...Big airlines either bought out or drove out most [little ones]. The few surviving cut-rate airlines with good safety records, such as Southwest, have toeholds in some big airports (thanks to antitrust regulation); but they are mostly limited to fringe air fields. [Without] regulation, airlines are increasingly crowded, surly, incompetent and overpriced. [And how much] choice do we have?...
  [It's the Big Leak Upward. American top executives at last count are getting 400 times the pay of their lowliest workers, the biggest spread in the developed world - and there's no end in sight. CEOs apply Efficiency to everyone but themselves.]
  This summer has also brought...deregulation of electric power. Again, dereglation failed. In...the vanguard of electricity deregulation, [California] consumers are facing bills double and triple those of the regulated era.... There is a very long lead time in the construction of power plants. The free market can't easily predict weather conditions or peak demands; it can't suddenly add new capacity. Electricity is [now] a necessity.... Consumers can only conserve so much..\.. If scarcity suddenly materializes because private entrepreneurs cut construction costs, [the entrepreneurs turn around and raise] prices. Consumers...have to pay whatever [they] charge - price competition is not meaningful in a deregulated [electric] system because different power companies increasingly all buy in the same wholesale power market and charge essentially the same prices.
  ...The one part of California that still has plenty of power at reasonable prices is [the part that still] has its own system and never bought into deregulation..\..Los Angeles.... [Its] system...is headed by [a man] who was once [headed] the TVA \-the forerunner\ of all public power systems.... Under the "bad" "old" regulated system, electric prices were set by public utility commissions. A power grid was maintained with plenty of generating capacity to spare.... For three quarters of a century, as technology improved, regulated electric rates came steadily down..\.. Regulators made mistakes, but nothing like the calamity that Californians face this summer....
  Want one more example? How about banking. Under the old regulated system, banks almost never failed, they didn't buy and sell each other, and customer service reps actually had time for their customers. And there was more choice [among] local competing banks.
  Granted, a lot of the economy works fine with little regulation.
  • Other than making sure that cars pass safety standards, governmetnt can stay out of the auto rental business.
  • Other than inspected kitchens for cleanliness, government [can stay out of] what restaurants serve [and] how much they charge.
  • The same goes for retailing and manufacturing.
  But big industries where market power is concentrated, and the product is a public necessity, and consumers lack the effective means to shop around, are just different. Deregulating them...just helps the consumer - to get gouged. The geniuses who brought us deregulation of those industries should be sentenced to a purgatory of endless waits at a one-airline airport - during a power brownout in a heat wave - on hold to their banker.

1. Free-trade support dwindles, Greenspan tells economists..\..Policy makers note globalization protests..\..Trade support is dwindling, Fed chief says, by Richard Stevenson, NYT, B14..\..B1.
   JACKSON HOLE, Wyo...- The protesters who [voiced] the risks and costs of globalization outside meetings of the IMF and the WTO over the last year did not make an appearance at the annual conclave of central bankers and economists from around the world that opened here [yester]day, but their influence was felt nonetheless.
   Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, told the conference...that pragmatism rather than ideology was driving the adoption in country after country of policies intended to help meet "the rigors of international competition"....
   [Try "insanities" of international competition. Free trade is just a scam for the top 1% in America, who already have as much as the "bottom" 95%, to gain an even broader skimming field. Their hoardings alone could put the entire 6B population of the world in heaven, and the base storyline of the coming millennium will be how we design and implement a way for that to happen. Our entry starts with Timesizing, which centrifuges the high-demand skills and employment.]

2. Indians seek bank of their own, Pointer summary (to A11), NYT, A2.
   Eleven Indian tribes...from across the country, including the Mashantucket Pequots [who run Foxwoods], have agreed to commit $1m each to found the nation's largest intertribal bank. The bank, with a plan to focus initially on providing large-scale loans to Indian-owned businesses, is seeking $19m more in start-up funds.
   [And if they're smart, they'll copy the Nature Conservancy and put some dough into buying back land.]

3. The Humpty Dumpty of scholarship - American history has broken in pieces. Can it be put together again? ...[e.g. from photo caption] Before the 1960's, historians largely ignored or minimized the presence of Native Americans and other minorities, by David Oshinsky, NYT, A17.
   The writing of American history underwent a significant change in the 1960's and 70's, one that remains in place today. Not only did the Vietnam War set off a reaction against national institutions, especially the [government], but the growth of "liberation" movements also led many women, blacks, gays and other groups to demand their own distinctive "usable past".... By the 1980's an explosion of historical categories - [such as black history, women's history, Native American history, gay history] - had supplanted the more traditional fields of political, diplomatic and intellectual history. Those formerly on the margins of American society now got the lion's share of attention. But [what it] the place of these categories in the larger scheme of things. How do they fit together?... Where is the framework that connects the parts to the whole?...
   [Stay tuned to this website - we're going to put out a book this year that will provide a BIG framework for all this - and for Timesizing. One more interesting quote in this article from David Thelen, editor of the Journal of American History -]
   "It's difficult to view the nation-state as an agent of progressive change any more"....

1. In Europe, wireless mergers losing ground to alliances - Easier and cheaper to bid collectively in an industry in flux, by Kapner & Sorkin, NYT, C2.
   LONDON - ...European wireless telecommunications companies are increasingly hinting that dating may be more productive than marriage....
   [Good thing too, because "marriage" so often leads to "shrinkage" (downsizing).]

2. Bad service cited in loss of bank customers, Reuters via Boston Globe, F2.
   NEW YORK - Banks are losing droves of customers [more than 60% of those polled] who are fed up with bad service and closing their accounts, a new survey...by software company Mobius Mgmt Systems..\..found....
   [No kidding? In New York too? We thought it was only in New England with FleetBoston.]
   People would rather switch banks than argue about mishandled problems with customer service representatives, Mobius said.... Nor are banks unique in this respect.... 36% of those polled had changed insurance providers, 40% had changed telephone companies, 35%...credit card companies, and 37%...Internet service providers....
   "Companies need to explore their customer services strategies very carefully," said Mitchell Gross, Mobius president and CEO....
   [No kidding! As evermore miraculous robotization goes splat against our frozen 1940 workweek and marginalizes most of us, spoiled CEOs have it so easy doing takeover deals and ignoring people issues, that both employees and customers suffer their neglect, disdain, and even contempt. Look at the robotization of telephone directory assistance, corporate phone reception, and even telephone sales and surveys. Look at the scrunching of airline seats. Look at the introduction of "cost-saving" technology (e.g., ATMs) - followed by higher prices and fees. And then CEOs, gleaning a record 400 times what lowest-paid workers get, have the gall to accuse everyone else of "declaring class warfare"! "How long, O Lord, how long?!"]

3. For debates, three isn't a crowd, letters to editor re "Stop arguing and start debating" (editorial, Aug. 22), NYT, A24.
   • By Sam Husseini of DC, communications director, Institute for Public Accuracy.
     ...[Your editorial] advocates one-on-one debates between Al Gore and George W. Bush as the best approach to educate voters and spur public interest. But recent history suggests otherwise.
     In 1992, when Ross Perot was included in the presidential debates, they were watched on average by 90m TV viewers, with the audience growing for each successive debate. The 1996 debates, limited to Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, had shrinking audiences that averaged 41m viewers.
     Third-party candidates not only bring fresh issues and viewpoints to the debates, but new viewers and voters as well.
     [You know, we wondered about that editorial. Nice to have someone skewer the Times so expertly!]

   • By Irving Horowitz of West Orange NJ.
     ...I strongly disagree with your dismissing Ralph Nader because he has not "demonstrated national support."
     Mr. Nader has received as much as 10% in come of the national polls, and he has done this without any tainted corporate money. The Federal election law provides matching funds when candidates receive 5% in a national election. Why not use the same standard for the debates?
     [Thanks for making that connection, Irving! It sure would be logical.]

1. Verizon strike settled in full after accord on overtime, by Simon Romero, NYT, C5.
   Verizon Communications and a union representing more than 35,000 employees in several mid-Atlantic states settled an 18-day striked last after the company agreed to reduce requirements for mandatory overtime.... Customer service representatives will be required to work as much as 7.5 hours of overtime a week, down from as much as 15 hours. Other union employees' overtime will be capped at 10 hours a week after the contract is ratified and 8 hours in January....
   [Clearly the work-per-person cap in the 1938 FLSA (Federal Labor Standards Act) was poorly designed. It was supposed to set a maximum workweek per person, but instead, as costs of employment mounted on a per-employee basis, it turned into a minimum workweek per person. At Timesizing.com we recommend that the cap be redesigned as a confiscatory tax on overtime, with a complete exemption for companies that implement on-the-fly training and hiring in overtime-targeted skills. "Confiscatory" means completely offsetting the gradually built-up advantages of overworking existing employees as compared to training and hiring new employees. This approach sets up something a high -tech economy needs very badly = continuous training right in the workplace. Plus this approach amounts to a continuous and colossal reinvestment of the mixed-blessing of overtime into a company's own markets via its own employees. Every company's employees are its customers' customers, and often directly its customers - its own best customers and marketers - except in heavy industries that sell only to other businesses. It's time business schools and "captains of industry" re-acquainted themselves with an insight that kept fading in and out of Henry Ford's life - in the overall picture, your employees have to be able to afford their own output, because in the overall picture, they have to BUY their own output. If you disempower them with the lethal combination of high technology and long working hours, you concentrate income and wealth - seemingly nice for you (especially the stock bubble aspects) but - "the more concentration, the less circulation" and eventually - depression = the bubble fragments.]

2. [NYT shows glimmers of obeying equal-coverage law -]
   Campaign briefing, by Drummond Ayres, NYT, A22.
   [today includes, in addition to "the usual" -]
   
   • The Reform Party
     
   • The Green Party
     
   [and its subsection -]
   Today's schedules
   [is beginning to include]
   
   • Ralph Nader
     
   [of the Greens, although not yet including John Hagelin or Patrick Buchanan of the Reform Party.]

3. Plan on Hawaiian status, AP via NYT, A23.
   HONOLULU...- Acknowledging "less that honorable" actions by the United States against Hawaiian natives more than a century ago, the federal government recommended [yester]day that their descendants be given the same sovereign status as most Indian tribes. The plan seeks to give indigenous Hawaiians greater control over their lands and cultural resources.... The U.S. annexed Hawaii five years after [overthrowing] its native ruler in 1893.

1. Our nuclear trap, letter to editor by Jerry Meyerle of Charlottesville VA, NYT, A24.
   Re "Russia's unsafe nuclear submarines" (editorial, Aug. 18): When the Soviet Union collapsed, many of us congratulated ourselves on winning the arms race by finally forcing Moscow into bankruptcy.
   Now we are worried that Russia's financial trouble may lead to leaks of radioactive material or nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands. But instead of trying to solve the problem by openly acknowledging our mistakes, we talk about starting it all over again with a missile defense system that will end up forcing an impoverished Russia to pump more money into new and better nuclear weapons.
   If we have won the race, survived its dangers and are in a position to clean up the mess we made, then why don't we do it and stop pretending real concern?
   [Good question, Jerry. We fear the answer is one word - jobs. The Pentagon is the Republicans' big makework campaign. They're going to throw megabucks at the Pentagon even if the Pentagon doesn't want that much. It's all part of the way we're stymying the whole purpose of new technology - namely to make life easier for everyone. But that takes an automatic system of adjusting the workweek downward as our level of technology goes upward. We did this for the first two thirds of our economic history - not automatically but painfully and traumatically - and the workweek came down from 80-84 hours a week plus, to 40 in 1940. But we have frozen it there for the last 60 years, and that means that we have to make good on the ridiculous assertion that "technology creates more jobs than it destroys," otherwise we'll have even more people living on our streets and in our prisons than we already do. Our usual moronic "solution" is war - to remove the huge extra working hours from the job market by killing and maiming people. The intelligent solution is Timesizing.]

2. Professional women gained in last 3 years, by Kimberly Blanton, Boston Globe, C9.
   ...According to data by Catalyst, a New York organization that tracks women in the work force...women have barely increased their presence overall in the workplace [but] were 11.9% of corporate officers in 1999, up from 10% in 1996. Women accounted for 49% of all managers and professional specialists during that time, up from 46% in 1996. And women, who were 1.9% of top earners three years ago, now make up 3.3%....

3. A challenge to King Coal - Denise Giardina and her Mountain Party, op ed ad by TomPaine.com, NYT, A25.
   [This journal of common sense has taken out another conspicuous ad.]
   West Virginia seems like America's very own slice of the Third World.
   [And add to that most of our Indian reservations, except for the Foxwood Pequots, of course - and more power to 'em - may they train their fellow (but desperately poor) Native Americans all across the land - and not get taken over by organized crime. Back to WV -]
   A powerful clique of good ol' boys plunder the state's natural resources - especially coal - while the [majority] contend with shabby schools, environmental destruction, inadequate public services and unresponsive government.... But this year the status quo in West Virginia has a challenger...Denise Giardina [who] has launched the Mountain Party, and with it an underdog campaign for governor. She hopes to show that while WV may act like a banana republic, it is, in fact, still a democracy....
   [Good luck to her! "Hope springeth eternal...."]

1. St. Joe Co., NYT, C4.
   ...Jacksonville...one of Florida's largest landowners, agreed to sell 15,105 acres of land in southwest Georgia known as the Chickasaw-hatchee Swamp to the Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit organization, for $30m.
   [The Nature Conservancy scores again!]

2. Simple method found to increase crop yields vastly- [Photo caption] Simply planting different varieties of rice in the same field drastically reduces losses to blast, a fungal disease afflicting these plants, by Carol Yoon, NYT, D1.
   In a stunning new result from what has become one of the largest agricultural experiments ever...tens of thousands of..\..rice farmers in [Yunnan,] China have doubled the yields of their most valuable crop and nearly eliminated its most devastating disease - without using chemical treatments or spending a single extra penny.... Dr. Youyong Zhu, plant pathologist at Yunnan Agricultural University, heads the mostly China-based research team whose study now covers 100,000 acres..\.. "I wasn't surprised that the system worked, but I was surprised that it worked to well," said Dr. Christopher Mundt, population biologist at Oregon State University and the one American-based author on the study, which was published in the current edition of the journal Nature....

3. [here's a case of "tiresizing" requiring timesizing by cutting worktime but not workforce -]
   Ford reduces output to help recall of tires, by Keith Bradsher, NYT, C1.
   ...Ford idled 6,000 unionized assembly line workers \and closed\ three assembly plants for two weeks, beginning next Monday, to make an extra 70,000 tires available.... Under Ford's union agreement, the worers draw 95% of their usual pay, excluding overtime, during temporary layoff....

4. [now a case of timesizing by cutting overtime & spreading the work to more people -]
   Labor accord hits new-economy notes, by Simon Romero, NYT, C1.
   ...including stock options, profit-sharing and the relentlessness of long workdays..\.. From wage increases to greater pension benefits to less mandatory overtime, telecommunications union workers in 12 Eastern states from Maine to Virginia and the District of Columbia appear to have been the victors in the strike that ended yesterday for more than half of the 86,000 workers who walked off their jobs 16 days ago.... The unions [came to an] agreement with Verizon Communications, the nation's largest telecommunications employer with 260,000 employees around the nation.... Verizon said it had a backlog of some 78,000 repair orders, about 38,000 of these including people with no service at all and 40,000 with trouble like static on the line....
   [However -]
   A hollow lesson - Deal in phone strike should have little effect on rest of industry - A settlement whose impact is likely to be narrow-spread, by Seth Schiesel, NYT, C9.
   ...When auto workers go on strike, cars stop rolling off the assembly lines. When pilots go on strike, planes stop flying. But when phone workers go on strike, life pretty much goes on [except for that backlog of 78,000 repair orders! - ed.]. Incidents of vandalism cut service to a few thousand [38 thousand is more than "a few" - ed.] customers here and there.... But in a backhanded test[imony] to the power of the machines, those figures paled beside the hundreds of thousands of Verizon customers who lost long-distance service last week when an obscure piece of equipment failed in New Jersey....
   [Anyway, the point that automation is reducing the leverage of human employees is something that you rarely find articulated in the media. Because it contradicts our general "party line" in this economy that "technology creates more jobs than it destroys." But there's a further reason for the non-spreadability of the Verizon unions' success -]
   "I think that Verizon has the toughest unions, so it's very difficult to extrapolate from what happens here to the rest of the industry...," said Eric Strumingher, a telecomms analyst at PaineWebber....
   [But that's hopeful, because it means that if the other unions get it together and toughen up, they can offset the marginalizing effects of technology on their leverage and bargaining power. But isn't all this union power scary? Doesn't it "coddle workers"? Isn't it "class warfare," as Geo. W. says? Here's a reader who has the answer to that one -]

5. When tax cuts turn into 'warfare', by Peter Scotto of South Hadley MA, NYT, A26.
   Bob Herbert is right about the Republican double standard ("This is class warfare?", column, Aug. 21).
   As long as Republicans are handing out huge tax breaks to the wealthy, that's "sound economic policy." The moment anyone suggests doing something for the rest of us, then it becomes "class warfare."
   [But what about the objection the next reader (David Shnaider of Concord MA) brings up about "the important fact that the tax increases of Presidents Bush and Clinton disproportionately affected higher-income families"? Well, higher-income families are the ones who can pay higher taxes without noticing it, let alone actually hurting, can't they? Higher-income families are the ones who have disproportionately benefited from the "economic boom" in the first place, haven't they? Would Shnaider have us continue to disproportionately tax the poor? "But higher-income families have earned it!" Have they really? Check out the letter below on 8/18, "The new philosophy of the free marketers," by Ken Falor of Westford MA, Boston Globe, A22 - "As a 50-year veteran of business, I...noted how important the element of chance was to many business 'successes.' Sometimes 'just being there' was incredibly important.... The fact is that even if inheritance taxes were 100%, the wealthy would have incredible advantages over the poor - in education and in contacts...."]

6. Taking a cue from the old economy...- In uncertain market, stock options losing favor, study says, by Peter Howe, Boston Globe, C1.
   [Thank God!]

7. Intel's hopes high for Pentium 4, but analysts wonder who needs it - 'Like buying a car today, you don't buy a 500 cu. in. monster engine unless you need to pull a boat' - Rob Enderle, Giga Info Gp, AP via Boston Globe, C5.
   [Finally, an article speaking out on just how far we need to go in technological "advance" now we've got high fidelity so high that only dogs can hear the difference, and high-res TV so fine that only hawks can see the difference, and now computer chips so fast that only druggies on speed can tell the difference. The underlying pressure for more and more technological substitutions, regardless of lack of substantial advantage, is the crying need to maintain enough jobs at a rigid, 60-year-old workweek level of 40 hrs/wk, and thus to offset each new wave of technological efficiency, lest we damage our consumer base and markets too much. Ecology provides the encroaching pressure to quit straining for effete innovation and CUT THE WORKWEEK.]

1. ["Good, But..." #1]
   Accord is reached in phone walkout - Concessions by Verizon..., by Simon Romero, NYT, front page.
   ...Mandatory overtime for customer service representatives and operators would be reduced. For example, operators who are single mothers will be limited to as few as 7.5 hours a week in some areas, down from as much as 20 hours before the strike....
   [Pathetic. The year 2000 and people who were working 60-hour weeks (the national level in 1900) are now "only" liable to work 47.5 hours per week, and only if they're single parents. Labor is refighting the battles of 1900-1933, and all because they didn't keep the heat on in 1933 and get the 30-hour workweek bill passed.]

3. ["Good, But..." #2]
   New jobs for lumberjacks, pointer summary (to A1), NYT, A2.
   As high-tech companies face labor shortages in cities, they have begun to branch out to areas passed over by the boom, bringing jobs and training. But for places like Coos Bay, Ore., once a center for the wood-products and fishing industries, there are painful twists. Many newjobs pay less than the old ones and require people used to physical outdoor work to sit at computers.