5/25 Students' latest cause: labor, by Robert Jordan, Bos Globe, D4.
...Seeking higher wages, better health care, more training, and improved working conditions, about 1,700 graduate teaching assistants at UCLA voted, by a wide margin, for representation by the Student Association of Graduate Employees, an affiliate union of the United Auto Workers..\.. This upsurge in activism...is not coincidental.... It is linked to the recent advent of such training programs as the AFL-CIO's Union Summer, a four-week internship that puts college students in the nation's...workplaces developing their skills....
[Too bad the unions are still diffusing their energies and bucking market forces by seeking a chaotic list of improvements, instead of the one strategic reform that would get them everything - control of their own aggregate labor supply via shorter hours, aka Timesizing.]

5/25 Increasingly, a woman's place is in boardroom, by Kimberly Blanton, Bos Globe, D1.
[From graph - ] Yearly percentages of seats held by women in Fortune 500 companies from 1993 to 1998 are
8.3, 8.7, 9.5, 10.2, 10.6, 11.1%....

5/25 IBM latest to ally with Linux system - Deal would bundle it with database software, AP via Bos Globe, D3.
[Good, Microsoft needs some competition from a better operating system now that the Apple Mac has been sidelined.]

5/24/99 A man for all cultures - Naturalist ponders birds, human history, by Karin Jegalian, Boston Globe, p. C1.
[Karin is talking about Pulitzer and MacArthur winning ornithologist Jared Diamond of the American Museum of Natural History. Jared has set the table and placed the appetizer for a fuller and more comprehensive and integrated view of human evolution and progress that sidesteps the racist doodoo that sociologist Edward O. Wilson stepped into with his ant book (*Sociobiology, 1975). Jared's basic point is that the big human pecking order is not a matter of racial superority but just a matter of geography - where you happened to be born. He dilates on some influential basics about the orientation of the continents in the eastern vs. the western hemisphere, and allows that the "pedal hit the metal" for him when his twins were born in '87 and he saw the wipeout of rain forests by 2030 and of fossil fuels by 2050 as no longer remote.
[We're glad Jared has got to this point in his thinking and has managed to splash it around a bit with his deluxe appointments, memberships and prizes. However, we'd like to ask a few leading questions. Granted, as we travel across the globe, that it's not primarily a matter of different racial/linguistic zones (or simple timezones) that we are crossing, but is it really primarily just a matter of different geographic zones either? Hint - maybe, most significantly, we're passing through different non-simple timezones, say, different human evolutionary or social progressionary timezones, where various groups of people are strung out all along the path backward - and a few forward of where we ourselves are, hard as that may be for Karin to conceive relative to such a paragon as Jared.
[But how then do we avoid the racist doodoo? We can talk about how we determine the timezones of social evolution, but ultimately we'll have to talk about equal potentiality and the idea that we just can't sell short any group's potential without activating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sooooo, we focus on humans' enormous learning powers and flexibility - IF our teaching methods aren't too homogeneous and culture-specific.
[Of course, we also have to be ve-ry care-ful, as Thor Heyerdahl on the BBC's Agenda program pointed out this weekend, that we don't mistake technological glitz (ignoring baggage like karoshi and nukes and school shootings and booming prisons) as progress, the way the Star Wars series and Star Trek family of series (except for the Past Tense episode) does. Those damn writers just can't seem to break through the pettiness of their own psychosociolinguistic box except in the area of special effects - about which, after a while, who cares?
[But this consideration takes us back to how we determine those social timezones. Expect a book on that from us later this year.]

[Store openings, not closings? "Be still, my heart!"]
5/22 L.L. Bean details expansion plan - Retailer plans 1st full-price store outside Maine in Virginia mall, by Chris Reidy, Bos Globe, F2.
...to reenergize its legend...next year in suburban Washington, D.C. Looking to boost flat sales, Bean [not to be confused with the rubber-faced "Mr." Bean, Rowan Atkinson] previously disclosed plans to open four or five stores, some similar to its flagship retail space in Freeport, Maine, but it had [specified only that] they would be outside New England.
[Those frugal New Englanders not spending enough cash then?]
Set to open in the summer of 2000, the 75,000-square-foot store will be an anchor in Tysons Corner Center, a mall in McLean, Va. Roughly 1.4 million of Bean's catalog customers live within the trade area of the new store, the company said.
[Hey, they've really done their homework on this.]
It might seem odd for a catalog company to be opening stores at a time when the retail industry is abuzz about e-commerce. But...many consumers balk at buying expensive items sight unseen from a Web site operated by a strange retailer.... "Our store will be the catalog come to life," said Leon Gorman, the company's president. Opening stores may have another benefit. Catalog sales spike around the holidays. Stores see steadier traffic year-round.... Last year...the lion's share of revenues [at privately owned Bean] came from catalog sales..\..
New stores should not be confused with Bean's roughly 10 outlet stores, which the company operates around the country to liquidate unpopular merchandise.... Opening stores is part of a strategy to regain the double-digit growth Bean enjoyed for most of the last 20 years....

[Cloud with silver lining? - ]
5/21 [March] Trade gap breaks record for 3d straight month, AP via Boston Globe, p. C2.
...as countries struggling to recover from economic turmoil continued to unload their products in the United States' booming economy.
[But keep skimping reinvestment and consolidating wealth and we'll reveal this "boom" as a bubble.]
The March trade deficit of $19.7 billion [oo oo, nearly 20!] was 2.9% higher than...February, the Commerce Department said. So far this year, the trade deficit is running at an annual rate of $222.6 billion, nearly one-third higher than the record high of $169.3 billion set last year.
But there are glimmers of hope [our words exactly] for improvement now that some countries in Asia and elsewhere have begun a fragile recovery. US exports, which had fallen for four straigaht months, staged a small rebound in March, climbing by 0.9% to $77.5 billion. Exports of farm goods were up 2.5%, led by rising sales of soybeans and corn.... Steel imports fell by 14% in April...a good sign for the country's beleaguered steel industry that has been battered by cheap imports.

5/20 8 protest [Fleet-BankBoston] bank merger, by Lynnley Browning, Bos Globe, C7.
...Five area residents, one local business and two community groups..\..concerned about the deal's implications for competition and community lending...have filed [protests] with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston against the combination.... Under a practice sesn in most bank mergers, state and federal regulators and officials are surveying customers and competitors for their views on the deal.
[Does it ever make a difference?]

3 cases in one day of expanding accountability -

1. 5/19 2 Mass. firms, janitors sue R.I. firms in worker dispute, by Diane Lewis, Bos Globe, D7.
   Filed in US District Court in Boston, the lawsuit by System Management Inc. of Lawrence, Forget Me Not Services of Wilmington, and a group of laid-off workers alleges that..\..a Rhode Island cleaning company...Aid Maintenance Inc. of Pawtucket has been able to..\..gain an unfair advantage over competitors \by\ using undocumented workers [and paying them] low wages.
   Last year...Aid Maintenance workers had received less than the prevailing wage while cleaning offices at Mass. Bay Community College, a state-funded institution. The report by State Auditor Joseph DeNucci found hundreds of [listings of] false Social Security numbers...on federal work forms required by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "The INS claimed 38% of the firm's work force used...fraudulent information and phony Soc Sec numbers...to get entry-level custodial jobs...in 1992, but we believe the company is still doing it," \said the plaintiffs'\ lawyer Gabriel Dumont.... Laid-off...union members filed suit after a corporate client terminated a contract with Forget Me Not last year, causing 20 people to lose jobs. Members of Local 254 have been passing out leaflets protesting the use of Aid Maintenance workers by such employers as EMC Corp. of Hopkinton...and the Internal Revenue Service[!]...

2. 5/19 FTC sues unidentified spammers for fraud, AP via Bos Globe, D2.
   The perpetrators of a new junk e-mail scam [have contrived so far to conceal] their identities.... But...the Federal Trade Commission [is still] suing them.... The scheme...has already prompted 20,000 [complaints] to America Online. The [unsolicited] e-mail [known as "spam"] told consumers that...a purchase [order] had been processed and...$375 would be billed to their credit card in the next two days unless they called the number on the screen to cancel. But instead of a consumer representative, on the other end was a pornographic recording by a company using a site in the Caribbean. The international toll call appeared on consumers' phone bills shortly after.

3. 5/19 SEC fines [$60K], censures on-line brokerage - Settlement is 1st action taken by US against [burgeoning Internet stockbroker business], AP via Bos Globe, D2.
   ...Datek Online Brokerage Services [used] customers' cash to pay some of its expenses, a violation of consumer protection laws....

5/17 IMF wants "reforms" [our quotes]; Russia says wait, Reuters via Bos Globe, A14.
...Yeltsin comfortably survived an attempt to impeach him on Saturday....
["Keeping up with the Clinton's."]

[Good - but...]
5/17 Corporate climb said no steeper for women, by Doris Wong, Bos Globe, B3.
...Less than 8% of 450..\.. of Greater Boston's women executives say...they had to meet higher standards than men to reach leadership positions..\..in the workplace, according to a new study...by the Radcliffe Public Policy Institute and Boston Club..\..but they still feel they had to make greater personal sacrifices in their climb to the top....

5/15 US escalates beef war trade war, theatens $202m in tariffs, Reuters via Bos Globe, F1.
[ANYTHING to lose this simpleton's idea that free trade is a magic pill for anything but opening up the skimming fields of the rich with no thought for the consequences to anyone else!]

5/14 Gillette agrees to fund wetlands program, by Peter Howe, Bos Globe, E5.
...State officials hope to attract more than 30 partners and $1 million in contributions within a year to begin restoring 300 acres of wetlands by 2005 and another 300 by 2010.... Other founding sponsors include two consulting companies, ERM-New England and Capaccio Environmental Engineering. State Environmental Affairs Secretary Robert A. Durand noted that since colonial times, Massachusetts has lost 28% of its wetlands, which are key areas for generating drinking water and wildlife habitat.
[We're glad this is getting done, but - charity is for short-term emergencies, not long-term routine. In the future when companies no longer need to scramble for disconnected image salvage but focus on mission and provide the low workweeks and high pay we should have had 50 years ago with our technology, individuals will have the time and money, and referendum-activated governments will have the tax revenues, to take care of wetlands without 'corporate sponsorship'.]

5/14 Fund managers' private trading faces SEC curbs, by Neil Roland, Bloomberg via Bos Globe, E2.
[Creeping accountability is also a Good Thing.]

5/13 Rubin, economy's steady hand, resigns as Treasury secretary, by Kimberly Blanton, Bos Globe, frontpage.
US Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, architect of the Clinton administration's remarkably successful economic policies at home and its controversial response to unprecedented financial crises abroad, submitted his resignation [as of July 4] yesterday after four years in the post. Pres. Clinton...nominated Rubin's trusted top aide, Deputy Secretary Lawrence Summers, to take over as Treasury secretary.... Rubin, a former Wall Street financier, has presided over the Treasury during a period...that saws the benchmark Dow Jones industrial stock index nearly triple in value....
[Is the stock market an adequate wealth-centrifuging mechanism - while personal bankruptcies, homelessness, and prisons break all records? If it is, why do we need charity (story below)? Merely because we haven't yet privatized social security and tossed it into the stock market? Is our system nothing more than speculation and philanthropy, aka skimming and charity, that coexists with, and possibly fosters, an underclass, largely dependent not-to-say parasitic, that is constantly growing and that is matched by parasitism on the other end among the rich? Upon your answers to these questions lies your agreement or not with the judgment of Rubin's "remarkably successful economic policies at home."]

[Skimming from high tech and giving charity to poor schools - ]
5/13 Couple gives $2m more for schools in Boston, by Beth Daley, Bos Globe, frontpage.
...Pam Trefler, who teaches two classes every Tuesday at Dorchester High School, and her husband, Alan Trefler, owner of Pegasystems Inc. in Cambridge, will split the money between East Boston and Madison Park high schools. It will help the large schools break down into smaller academies so students can get more personal attention. The latest contributions bring the Treflers' total donations to Boston schools and related programs to $7 million....
[This is all very lovely, but are these drop-in-the-bucket caprices the best we can do? Why are we so dependent upon 'random acts of kindness'? The randomness is the problem. What do we redesign to begin to automate this kind of centrifuging? Timesizing says we redesign our worktime laws (FLSA of 1938) to really discourage overtime, or convert it into training and hiring, thus turning the top of the workweek into a reinvestment threshold. Then we redesign our compensation laws and practices to detach benefits from our frozen and arbitrary definition of "full time" work (40 hrs/wk), thus enabling us to change our definition of "full time" from arbitrary guesswork to a market-determination, depending on how many people our current distorted job market has left behind or left out. In other words, we make the workweek vary inversely with un- and under-employment....]

5/13 Making Web accessible, by Hiawatha Bray, Bos Globe, D1.
...IBM said it would stop advertising on any Web site that didin't pledge to respect visitors' privacy.... Comply [people] shall, if they want a slice of IBM's $60-million Web advertising budget. It's a classic case of a big, powerful mega-corporation throwing its weight around in exactly the right way [giving] every major Web site an incentive to do what they should all be doing anyway - looking out for the privacy of Internet users....

5/13 Preserving the evidence - Acrobat 4 allows digital signing on PDF files, making it hand for Web site [law] suits, by Simon Garfinkel, Bos Globe, D4.

5/12 Brazil economy mending faster than expected [which isn't saying much], Bloomberg via Bos Globe, D2.
The Brazilian inflation rate tumbled to a four-month low in April and industrial output rose more-than-expected in March....
[Low inflation is just an index of fear (specifically job insecurity) in the workplace, and as for output, it's no good without purchasers and as we say, you make 'dramatic' good announcements easy by expecting nothing. But check this out - under a huge foto yet, beggering the article - ]
MIT economics professor Paul Krugman: "Brazil has turned the corner."
[What a simpleton! And isn't this the guy who just came out with *The Return of Depression Economics so he should know better?!]

5/12 Productivity of labor rises sharply in quarter, AP via Bos Globe, D2.
Labor productivity, the basic source of improving standards of living in the United States....
[Whaaaaaat?! As we said above, what good is output without purchasers?!]
is rising strongly as workers collectively produce ever more goods and services while working relatively few additional hours....
[That's because so many have been downsized, you morons! Those who still have full-time jobs are working more additional hours than ever - many of them for free because they're on 'salary' = charity for the rich.]
In the first three months of the year, prodcutivity - technically output per hour worked - at nonfarm businesses rose at a rapid 4% annual rate, the Labor Dept. reported yesterday. That allowed production to rise at a 5% rate while hours worked went up less than 1%. Furthermore, that...came on the heels of a 4.3% rate 4Q98. There haven't been back-toback quarters that good since the first half of 1983, when large productivity gains were expected after the 1981-82 recession.
[Well, that should be the tipoff to you, brother. You typically get these good-appearing numbers when you're playing with recession - or worse.]

[Yes! - another one bites the dust for keeps!]
5/12 Lycos-USA Networks deal reportedly dead - Confirmation of merger's demise expected today, by Hiawatha Bray, Bos Globe, D1.
[See the original merger story on 2/09 and beginning cracks in the merger on 2/27 and 3/13. ]

[Good, they're sticking up for themselves - but we've got a better way - ]
5/11 Bell Atlantic hit with $100m bias suit - Workers: Racial bias prompted [THREE!] suicides, by Genaro Armas, AP via Bos Globe, D5.
PHILADELPHIA - A group of current and former employees of Bell Atlantic Corp. filed a...federal lawsuit against the company yesterday, charging that a racially hostile environment led to the suiceds of three employees who worked at a company garage. The lawsuit filed in US District Court alleges that company executives did not do enough to stem the discrimination allegations lodged by 10 plaintiffs against two men who were supervisors at the garage the suicide victims worked at. The three workers, all black, males, died between 1994 and 1997. The alleged harassment by white supervisors Thomas Flaherty and Nick Pomponio was so harsh that some workers considered "taking the law into their own hands," the lawsuit said....
[Racism infects the people who have the most to lose by it - here an Irish American and an Italian American, in Yugoslavia Serbs and Croats, in Haiti the shade-graded elite...usually because they themselves have been subjected to it. But unless they wake up and break the cycle, it rolls on and on and on.]
Both Flaherty and Pomponio have since been transferred out of the garage.... The lawsuit charges the company with racial discrimination and retaliation, negligence, breach of contract, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. "Bell Atlantic knew this was going on," Hermina said. "It's a culture of neglect, because apparently Bell Atlantic felt that these African-American employees don't matter.
[At least some of these employees chose fight, not flight. But we can't keep relying on legislation and litigation to improve society. We can't keep crisis managing. The alternative, which may sound new but has happened hundreds of times in human history, is to engineer a shortage of people where it counts, the job market, and let that scarcity drive up mutual respect the natural way - market forces - instead of the artificial way - preaching, legislating, litigating - mostly too little too late. Timesizing follows this approach by cutting the workweek and rationing the availability of labor to the market, one central government regulation that supercedes virtually all others.]

5/10 Gearing for life after welfare - Offer of a retail job follows Goodwill training program, by Jordana Hart, Bos Globe, frontpage.
...To prepare for her entry into the world of work, [Sharrie] Benford and six other women have spent the past three weeks in a new course for welfare recipients at Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries....

[Stock euphoria moderating - ]
5/10 Rebalancing: Act now, by Charles Jaffe, Bos Globe, A13.
CHICAGO - Amid nearly a thousand money managers and mutual fund executives at the Mornningstar Investors Conference here, a funny thing happened on the day after the Dow Jones industrial average crossed 11,000 for the first time. Instead of talking about how to take advantage of the ongoing boom or which fund is cashing in on the Internet, much of the conversation...centered on the art of rebalancing portfolios, of playing things safe.... This was...a trend that has been growing...over the last few months: investors looking outside of stock mutual funds for a little...protection. In the first quarter, net sales of domestic stock mutual funds [were] off 45% from last year. That follows a 24% decline in the sales of all stock funds during 1998.... There is no indication that people are saving less; they are just investing elsewhere. For some...that means individual stocks.... But a big chunk of the money is moving into safer havens. Net sales in bond funds were up 140% in 1998...and net investments in money-market funds [were up roughly 170%]....

[Tightening the screws on merger mania - ]
5/08 FCC will give AT&T-MediaOne deal 'careful scrutiny', by Jeannine Aversa, AP via Bos Globe, F2.
...The $58 billion deal's size, complexity and its potential reach into American homes must be studied, Federal Communication Commission [FCC] chairman Bill Kennard said in his first comment on the matter.
[Question - what government agency is charged with enforcing the anti-trust laws - the FCC as here or the Justice Dept. as in the 5/08 Bell Atlantic-GTE story on our mergers page, or both - with what division of responsibility?]

5/07 UMass to open a new campus in Westborough, by Kate Zernike, Bos Globe, frontpage.
...a sixth campus, the first expansion of the state's public university since the birth of UMass-Boston 35 years ago.... Courses will be staffed with professors from the other UMass campuses....
[So no new jobs for faculty, and no indication how many new jobs for staff. But there's gotta be some new staff positions.]

5/06 Networks Solutions falls on antitrust probe news, Bloomberg via Bos Globe, C2.
...The company that dominates the business of assigning Internet addresses said the Justice Dept. wants more information for a two-year-old antitrust investigation....
[Don't tell us there's still some life in the ol' antitrust movement yet?! And scoping an area that nowhere else in the world is handled by a private company! By the way, who gave them that monopoly in the first place? - or was it just another "one of those things" that slipped (or was pushed) off Congress's plate (the biggest being control of our central bank)?]

[There's still time to polish the long-term solution - ]
5/5/99 Index sees continued expansion - Leading indicators post 6th straight increase, by Vince Golle, Bloomberg News via Boston Globe, p. D2.
[Now if these outdated indicators can only keep the dumb fund managers from panicking, we'll postpone armageddon a bit longer. But make no mistake. No matter how good things may look, the disaster is deepening daily because there's still no comprehensive automatic market-oriented way in place of reversing the overwhelming trend toward 1% of the population concentrating 99% of the wealth and suctioning the spending and markets away from their own investments. But at least we're publishing this kind of solution - Timesizing, Not Downsizing. And notice we haven't even mentioned the proliferating "triggers" - unbalanced trade deficit, the unbalanced consolidation of the media (Murdoch, Turner,...), the unbalanced margined and leveraged gambling in the financial markets (LTCM, Greenspan, Soros,...), the unbalanced wipe-out of natural resources (fisheries, forests, fertile soil, fresh water, ground water, ozone,...), unbalanced weapon availability (NRA, webnuke instrux, unpaid Russian silo keepers...),....]

5/04/99 Training mutual fund employees, by James Brett, Boston Globe, p. C4.
...ln recent months, business and higher education leaders have joined in creative ways to help ensure the work force keeps up the pace with this growing industry....
[The bad news - a moral appeal for training?! - pathetic! - plus a reinvention of the wheel as in "Oh gee, there's something called 'training'! Wow!"
[The good news - at least somebody's talking about training, however little substance there is to it. The only time the private sector has the incentives to train at appropriate levels is when they perceive an acute labor shortage, as during and after World War II. Their 'labor shortage' today is merely a veiled attempt to get visas so the third world can do their training for them (and come over and further clobber their markets by clobbering their wages).

5/04 Eastman Kodak to fix bias in pay, Reuters via Bos Globe, C2.
In an unflattering snapshot of pay practices at the nation's largest camera company, Eastman Kodak Co. said yesterday it found that it underpaid some 2,000 female and minority workers and said it fired "a handful" of managers because of the discrepancies.... Kodak said it increased the pay for about 2,000 workers, who make up about 7% of its US work force. About 70% of the underpaid workers were minorities and about 30% were women....

[Another merger interrupted - for a nanosecond.]
5/02 MediaOne said to call off Comcast merger - Decision to take AT&T offer could set off bidding war, by Noelle Knox, AP via Bos Globe, A14.
NEW YORK - MediaOne Group Inc. today will announce plans to accept an offer to be acquired by AT&T Corp., abandoning a previously agreed upon deal with Comcast Corp., according to a person familiar with the negotiations....
["No honor among thieves."]

[More things bought on time, more time to hone a long-term solution - ]
5/01/99 Economy grows at surprising 4.5% rate - GDP report fuels rate-hike fears, tripping stock, bond markets, by John Berry, Washington Post via Boston Globe, p. F1.
As American consumers continued their shopping spree, increasing their spending at the fastest pace in more than a decade, the US economy grew at a stronger than expected...annual rate in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Dept. reported yesterday. In snapping up new motor vehicles, furniture, clothing and a variety of services, consumers spent more than they received in current after-tax income. That meant that the household had to borrow or dip into past savings to cover the difference, driving the personal savings rate to an all-time low of minus 0.5%....