Timesizing® Associates - Homepage

---

Timesizing News, July 16-31, 2001
[Commentary] ©2001 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 622, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080

7/29/2001  weekend glimmers of timesizing -

• Brazilian army may replace police, AP-NY-07-28-01 via AOLNews.
  SAO PAULO...- Brazil's government may give army troops special police powers and use them to replace "mutinous" striking police officers around the nation, the president...Fernando Henrique Cardoso..\..said Saturday.... The latest wave of strikes began in May in Palmas, capital of the central-northern state of Tocantins, where officers demanded a 47% wage hike and a shorter workweek. The work stoppage ended 11 days later with none of the demands met. In June and July, police also walked off their jobs in the states of Bahia and Alagoas, but returned after they received a 21% wage hike....

1. Qld public servants push for a shorter working week, Australian Broadcasting Corp. 27 July 2001 2:55pm AEST via AOLNews.
   Queensland [one of Austalia's six? states] public servants are calling for a 35 hour working week. The Queensland Public Sector Union, at its conference on the Gold Coast [the Australian, not the African, one], decided to push for a package which includes the shorter working week.
   General secretary, Gordon Rennie, says the move toward a 35-hour week is part of a global trend.
   [Sounds pretty optimistic, but hey, we're with him 100%.]
   "Our public servants formally work a 36¼ hour week," he said. "They actually in reality work far in excess of that. A lot of people may not be aware public servants are not paid overtime when they work excess hours - they have a scheme where they can accumulate hours for a day off and invariably that never eventuates."
   The union also wants certified agreements [whatever they are?!] to be abolished in the public sector and the right to partially convert accumulated sick leave to other forms of leave.
   [Any Australian readers who can tell us what "certified agreements" are and why they are bad, please email timesizing@aol.com - also if you know whether the Northern Territory has achieved statehood yet and would therefore push the number of Australian states up to seven, assuming we've got the right list of six with Western Australia, Southern Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania.]

2. Analysis - Jobs open in France despite high-profile layoffs, by Nikla Gibson, Reuters 11:55 07-27-01 via AOLNews.
   PARIS...- French newspapers are full of stories of mass corporate layoffs almost daily, but data shows that the job market can still soak up at least some of the damage in a country where unemployment is at an 18-year low. French telecoms equipment maker Alcatel joined food group Danone and IT consultancy group Cap Gemini Ernst & Young in announcing severe restructuring measures on Thursday to deal with slack worldwide demand. Despite intense media coverage of plans to axe jobs, and the distress of those directly affected, analysts said official figures suggest that France can still create new jobs....
   [Yeah, especially if they adjust their statutory workweek down some more and "share the vanishing work" - and spread the pay. The less concentration, the more circulation - of income.]
   France has not escaped the effects of a U.S.-induced global economic slowdown....
   [Funny how the biggest economy "gets the wrap" for this, even though the second-biggest, Japan, had already been "in the tank" for ten years.]
   This has not so far reversed the trend of high job creation and falling unemployment which has taken the official jobless rate to below 9% from 12.5% when the current left-wing coalition government took power in mid-1997. The jobless rate has fallen almost every month since 1997 but has remained at 8.7% for three consecutive months....
   "The impact of the working time reduction in France spurred our fall in the unemployment rate, something that differentiates us from Germany, for example," said Vincent Champain of the Ministry of Employment. "The decline has slowed down a bit now, but we expect that when small companies have to comply with the 35-hour week in 2002 there will be another boost to employment."
   Youth job programmes and the phased imposition of a shorter legal work week, so far applied only to big firms, have helped to boost employment. Despite reservations, agencies such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have acknowledged that the statutory shorter work week had been accompanied by changes that make sork practices more flexible.
   [Standard economists will do ANYTHING but admit they have a gigantic blindspot in the middle of their thinking. Maverick economist Carolyn Shaw Bell expressed it this way in a 8/01/2001 email to Phil Hyde: "Economists' insistence on counting the number of people (employment) as somehow equivalent to the input of labor {without including a worktime variable} is foolhardy."]
   HOUSEHOLD SPENDING CREATES JOBS
   One of the key results of France's progress in reducing mass unemployment is the positive knock-on [i.e., cumulative] effect on consumers who spend more when they believe employment trends are positive.
   "The United States has imbalances in its economy between sectors that we don't have in France, and we have strong domestic demand with a lower rate of indebtedness so our economy is reacting differently," Champain said.
   [I.e., it's reacting better.]
   Bernard Ernst, statistics director at the jobless benefit agency, Unedic, said sectors directly tied to consumer spending such as retail or road haulage were still recruiting people in 2001 after a bumper year in 2000. "The service sector showed a very strong dynamism in 2000 and this growth is continuing, though less strongly, in 2001," Ernst said. "The same is true for construction."
   [Isn't it strange how little we hear about this important experiment in American media, even including the "liberal" and "cosmopolitan" New York Times?!]
   Ernst even went as far as highlighting hiring bottlenecks in certain trades where there was either a lack of skilled labour or what was regarded as undesirable work. This was true for both the hotel and catering industry and construction, he said.
   [Well, as far as a lack of skills goes, this just points up the need for France to integrate its training with its workweek, along lines we've outlined in Phase 2 and Phase 3 of the Timesizing.com program.]
   The ANPE job search agency reported a 3.4% increase in the number of vacancies [i.e., job openings] registered in May compared to April. The number of available jobs registered with ANPE has fallen 10% over the past 12 months, but this decline was matched by a 12% fall in the number of people looking for a job.
   While there is little doubt the job market is not saturated, it is certainly not as dynamic as in 2000, when more jobs were created than in the previous 20 years....
   A fall in temporary jobs is often seen as an early signal of a slowdown in job creation, as short-term contracts are widely used in industry to adjust staffing levels to production..\.. Unedic's May data on temporary employment positions showed a 2.1% drop versus April, even if recruitment in this area was still 1.9% higher year-on-year.... Ernst contends that, for now at least, other factors [besides a slowdown] could be at play, such as people's wish to find a more permanent job rather than flitting from post to post, as this was no longer as lucrative as in 2000.
   [For speakers of English as a foreign language - Note that this article is written in British English, not American English. There are differences both in spelling and vocabulary. Many of the British spelling differences are shared with Canadian English, such as programme and labour (vs. US "program" and "labor"). Others are optional, such as organisation (vs. organization). Vocabulary differences have usually been noted, such as knock-on (for "cumulative" - we believe) or one-off (for "one-time" - does not occur in this article but we store it in a nearby braincell) or vacancies (for "job vacancies" or "job openings") or redundant (for "laid-off"). The article above this one displays Australian English. This article's only difficult phrase is "certified agreements," and we have no idea of its equivalent in American English. Email us at timesizing@aol.com if you do. We'll stick it in above and give you a vocab credit.]

• South Korea: Shorter workweek, by Don Kirk, NYT, W1.
  In two years, most Korean bureaucrats will not have to work Saturday mornings. The Labor Ministry said it would introduce a five-day week in the public sector by 2003. People working for private companies may have to wait. The finance minister, Jin Nyum, said the five-day week should be phased in gradually, taking into account the size and type of business. President Kim Dae Jung has said he wants Koreans to work 40 hours each week rather than the current 44 hours, which includes half a day on Saturdays.
  [Well, there's a big chunk of South Korea's economic problem - a highly industrialized and robotized industrial economy with a pre-1940 workweek that prevents adequate sharing of the vanishing human employment and spreading of the work-based income to the people who would spend it and spur domestic demand.]

1. Maryland: Crabbing rules are challenged, by Gary Gately, NYT, A13.
   [Here's another exhibit for the collection of novel reasons for cutting workhours -]
   ...New state rules reduc[e] crabbers' workdays to 8 hours from 14 and prohibit...them from catching crabs one day each week....
   [Whoah, not only timesizing but reconfirming Exodus 20's Fourth Commandment - "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh is the sabbath (rest) of the Lord thy God; in it, thou shalt not do any work...."]
   Maryland imposed the rules [on Monday] in the first year of a three-year effort to increase the bay's crab stock..\..
   [We'll hafta change our motto from "Timesizing, not downsizing" to "Timesizing, not fishery depletion"! But as colleague Kate says, "Can you imagine crabbing for 14 hours a day?" To which Phil replied, "Must be part of our officially-nonexistent desperation for work."]
   The plaintiffs - the Chesapeake, Atlantic and Coastal Bays Waterman's Coalition and the Blue Crab Conservation Coalition...
   [the latter must be one o'them wolves in sheep's clothing]
   ...say the regulations [will] financially ruin those whose livelihoods depend on Chesapeake Bay blue crabs....
   [Well, ruin them now or ruin them later - with the crabs totally extinct. Fishermen - and lumbermen - can be awfully overpopulated - and stupid. How about we eat fishermen for awhile? Note the additional downer today, "Two whale sanctuaries rejected," Reuters via NYT, A10. A strange alliance of Japan and Norway is carelessly depleting one of the smartest animal orders (cetaceans) on the planet. The Animal Welfare fund accused Japan of rigging the ballot and Greenpeace criticized Japan for using overseas aid to influence the voting for the proposal, which failed again to enlist the necessary three-quarters of the 37 voting countries.]

3. MKS Instruments cuts work force, Bloomberg via BG, F9.
   ...In addition to the job cuts, the \maker of\ gas measurement instruments...used in making semiconductors...has reduced work weeks, lowered management salaries, and mandated vacation days, MKS said in a release.... Andover MA-based MKS's shares fell....
   [Presumably the 16% layoff would have been higher without the "reduced work weeks" = timesizing.]

• Time for vacation economics, by Carolyn Shaw Bell, BG, D4.
  [See our short vacation page.]
  ...Paid vacations [e.g., 2 weeks off] are more common than paid holidays [e.g., Christmas, Independence Day,...] or any other type of benefit, in both small and large firms, reaching 85-95% of all workers..\.. Vacations date only from the early 20th century, when organized workplaces [such] as mills and factories..\..appeared outside of farms, mines, or fisheries....
  [Ah, doesn't she mean "early 19th century"? Organized workplaces outside of farms, mines and fisheries appeared with the beginning of the first industrial revolution based on steam power and did not have to wait for the second based on gas and electricity (let alone the third based on computers).]
  Since World War II, however, the average hours worked weekly have remained much the same...
  [This is the same point that is made by Juliet Schor in her "Overworked American" (1992), Benjamin Hunnicut in his "Work Without End" (1988) and Wassily Leontief in his "Distribution of Work and Income" article in "Mechanization of Work" (Scientific American, 1982).]
  suggesting that vacation time is now well established.
  [Huh??? If this statement is anything more than sheer tautology, Carolyn seems to be making two errors. (1) She's confusing vacation time with holidays, which can reasonably be spoken of as "established," and (2) she's projecting the United States' miserly vacation policy onto the whole world, where we find at least one huge counter-example in terms of European economies, where vacation time has seen none of the bizarre rigidity it's experienced in the United States for the last two generations.]
  The most striking change in hours worked occurred in the 19th century when the Ten Hour Movement revealed that abolishing the 12-hour day six days a week could actually increase total output. The change took over six decades to bring about in Britain.
  [And in the United States as well. Almost as striking as were the Nine Hour and Eight Hour Movements that followed the Ten Hour Movement. In fact, shortening the workday and the workday was so standard and common between the 1790s and 1940 in both the US and the UK that it was not a "striking" change at all. What's striking is that this natural process was so successfully sabotaged in the US by FDR's propaganda against it following his reaction of misunderstanding, fear and anger to the passage of the Black Thirty Hour Work Week Bill through the U.S. Senate on April 6, 1933.]
  ...Workweek [reduction] and paid holidays and vacations came later, partly from political pressure and bargaining by unions. In the United States, the average workweek in agriculture dropped from 72 hours in 1850 to 48 in 1950, and in other industries from 66 hours to just under 40. Today [in 2001] both figures are close to 40 hours, with substantial differences by occupation.
  The steady growth in productivity characterizing US output for almost 1½ centuries, between 3 and 3.5% yearly, could have yielded various outcomes.
  1. The same GDP can be produced with fewer workers
  2. or less time spent working;
  3. the same quantity of workers [and worktime] could produce more good and services, enlarging the GDP;
  4. or some combination of the [three] could ensue.
     [Carolyn is just awakening to the pervasive worktime dimension so she says incorrect "two" instead of correct "three."]
  Evidently the [third] alternative won out...
  [True enough, but that is a matter of simple observation in the U.S. economy, and does not need the "reason" she then gives, which retails a bizarre but currently standard notion from mainstream economics -]
  ...for real wages (what the worker can buy with money payments) have risen steadily over the years, derived from the steady growth of GDP.
  [The bizarre notion here is that real wages somehow automatically vary with output/productivity, here strangely equated with "GDP." They don't (see "Gap seen in wage, productivity rise" on 1/22/2001). And output is extremely poorly counted by contemporary economists, who have every incentive from their wealthy employers to undercount it (see "Economic scene - Despite real concerns, gauging work hours is not a problem in measuring productivity growth" on 6/21/2001, item #3). But there's another strange error here. Real wages have not "risen steadily" over the years. On the contrary, real wages stagnated or even slipped for most of the last generation, from roughly 1970 when the babyboomers, and women, were beginning to enter the job market in considerable numbers. Real wages showed some upward stirrings during the Internet bubble of the last couple of years, but now that's burst we can expect them to resume their stagnation. A mention of technology's contribution to the GDP/output is also now long overdue in this article. It's as if conventional economists, a group which Carolyn is only partially breaking away from in this article, ignore technology and assume the "steady growth in productivity characterizing US output for almost 1½ centuries, between 3 and 3.5% yearly" is an unremarkable and automatic feature of the passage of time, requiring no further explanation. However, then Carolyn attacks a major fatuous assumption on the part of present-day conventional economists, the notion that Americans made a free choice here and selected item three from the list above on the basis of some kind of unspoken referendum -]
  But this was not through choice on the part of Americans. Economic analysis looks at work as time spent in paid employment (including self-employment), given the alternative sometimes called leisure. Economists have created a model of choice between them, decided by the worker's needs and preferences.
  [Presumably a reference to the "rational-choice" model of conventional economics.]
  But such a model is limited.
  1. ...It doesn't work that way: People take jobs with specified working hours, take-home pay and vacation time; changing the amount of time at work means changing jobs.
     [Here Carolyn refers to the all-important power gradient between employees dba job candidates, and employers, well covered by Arthur Dahlberg in his "Jobs, Machines and Capitalism" (1932). She even hints at the underlying worktime basis of this power gradient, since with the constant infusion of labor-saving technology, if worktime does NOT reduce to compensate, job candidates dba labor become redundant, lose power, and experience stagnant or slipping real wages.]
  2. ...It is unrealistic to pose "leisure" as the alternative use of time. The first demand on a worker's time is human capital maintenance - sleeping, eating, all kinds of personal care - and while some of this can be contracted out, much cannot.
     [She does have a point here, but she doesn't quite articulate the underlying point. She needs to explicitly challenge economists' assumption that worktime arrangements are a free-market call and as such, entirely explicable within present-day economics and so, negligible, because, hey, nothing's changing in worktime arrangements. And of course, since conventional economists are so entrenched in this assumption, they're completely missing the boat on the reality that US worktime is actually slowly increasing - we now have longer annual workhours than karoshi-rife Japan - because the power gradient between employees and employers is steepening against employees, because in turn, labor is again flooding the job market in profuse but officially denied excess, because labor-saving/multiplying technology is continuing to pour into the economy with no compensating worktime reduction.]
     
  3. Then factor in social activities, the myriad physical and mental activities known as recreation [getting dangerously close to "leisure" here, Carolyn], and human capital investment - being a caretaker for children or parents, or acquiring education.
     [And here comes her biggest breakthrough in the article -]
     The common denominator remains time, and studies of time use are few and far between.
  So vacations, like other forms of non-monetary compensation, exist as institutions rather than clear-cut economic outcomes.
  [Her point being that vacations and worktime arrangements in general, such as the length of the workweek, are extra-economic institutions - they are outside the realm of present-day economics, they are outside the province of free-market forces. There is nothing automatic about them. They cannot be assumed, i.e., taken for granted and ignored. In fact, they are central, and as such, represent a huge blindspot in the very core of contemporary economic theory. As such, they present a devastating indictment of mainstream economics, or more in terms that the cookie-cut brains of conventional economists themselves will understand, they undermine the whole enterprise of contemporary economics and call in question all their results and conclusions. They disclose a huge Achilles' heel in the body of mainstream economic theory and writing and talking. How coincidental the recent NYT article on Kuhn's "Theory of Scientific Revolutions" (see our excerpts from "Coming to blows over how valid science really is" on 7/21/2001) because Kuhn would immediately identify WORKTIME as one of those fateful "anomalies" which from time to time trigger scientific revolutions. And boy, is naive, blindered, arrogant, present-day economics ever ripe for such revolution.]
  The origin of paid holidays can go back to Genesis...
  [Make that Exodus, Carolyn, chapter 20, the Fourth Commandment - "Six days shalt thou labor and do all they work, but the seventh is the sabbath (rest) of YHWH thy God. In it, thou shalt not do any work...." (Of course, the mention of the sabbath/rest does refer back to Genesis 2:2.) And we're not sure it's a good idea to confuse the length of the workweek alias weekly "holidays" with "paid holidays" that are annual. Few standard-workweek employers would regard the wages they pay as somehow remunerating every Saturday and Sunday as "paid vacations."]
  ...but today a new paid holiday occurs as a political action, the contemporary way of being institutionalized.
  [Again, Carolyn hammers home the point that worktime arrangements currently fall OUTSIDE the realm of present-day economic action. The irony here is, that prior to the neglect of worktime as an economic variable that became total around 1970 as American labor began to slip rapidly into the trashcan as a perentage of the American workforce and as a political force, the distinctively American form of economics was always "institutional economics" - anchored by Richard Ely, John R. Commons and Wesley Clair Mitchell - and, some would say, the great Veblen himself and his disciple, the never-to-be-enNobelled John Kenneth Galbraith. Her last sentence is kind of a punch-pulling non-sequitur (perhaps some intervening material has been edited out for space reasons?) -]
  And the concerns of the past century [i.e., the 20th?] about how best to use leisure are now given over...
  [Having started the sentence with employee concerns, we here expect a continuation presenting something from the employers' viewpoint like "are now given over to how best to use work, how to squeeze every ounce of output out of yourself, how to keep up with the latest productivity tools in software and palmtop and server and cellphone," but instead we get a confused mix of something else from the employees' viewpoint plus something from the sociologists' viewpoint -]
  ...are now given over to worrying about overworked Americans and the disappearance of the leisure class.
  [Perhaps we can rectify this somewhat by repeating at the end her title -]
  Time for vacation economics.
  [And indeed, for worktime economics in general!]

1. F.A.A. acts to fine American over pilot rest, by Laurence Zuckerman, NYT, C4.
   The Federal Aviation Administration announced yesterday that it was seeking to fine American Airlines $285,000 for violating regulations mandating how many hours pilots can work without rest.... Regulations require that all pilots receive at least 8 hours of rest in the 24 hours before they finish their shift..\.. The move is the latest skirmish in an increasingly testy conflict between pilots' unions and the commercial airlines over working conditions in the cockpit.
   The pilots say that the airlines are compromising safety by not giving flight crews enough rest, while the airlines counter that the unions are using the issue as a way to force them to hire more pilots.... American, a unit of AMR Corp...told the FAA in 1999 that it needed to hire 200 more pilots to be in compliance with the rules and that it would do so by last September, according to John Hotard, a spokesman for the airline..\..
   [And the problem with that would be...? Guess this is another piece of experiential evidence against those "flat earthers" who deny that shorter hours mean more jobs. For Republicans, the opinion of a GOP president should be enough, and GOP President Herbert Hoover said in 1932 that shorter hours were the quickest way to create jobs. It's just that he didn't act on it quickly and widely enough, although he did shorten the government's workweek to 40 hours and thereby save hundreds of thousands of jobs in the depths of the depression.]
   The fine announced yesterday cites American for violating the rest regulation in 38 instances last year between Aug. 15 and Aug. 30.... Under the law, the FAA is entitled to seek a fine of $11,000 for each violation [x38= $418,000] but it settled on the sum of $285,000....

2. Japan: Chip maker cuts back, by Miki Tanikawa, NYT, W1.
   Hitachi Ltd. [will] give workers at its semiconductor plants longer summer holidays to adjust for slumping demand for chips. Workers at its domestic factories will have up to 14 consecutive days of vacation instead of the maximum of 7 days last year. Toshiba and Mitsubishi Electric have announced similar moves while Fujitsu [will] cut production at a plant making flash memory chips in the U.S....
   [Cutting worktime instead of workforce (and markets) - timesizing, not downsizing.]

1. Medical students to descend on Capitol Hill calling for shorter hours for overtired hours for overtired young physicians, U.S. Newswire via AOLNews.
   RESTON, Va...- This month, new physicians - usually called residents or interns - will begin the most arduous period of their training, frequently required to work 36-hour shifts and workweeks up to 100 hours, at hospitals in every community across the country.
   [This is nothing but our medical "professionals" playing with our health and our lives - since clearly they have no respect for their own. This is not medical training. This is a stupid frathouse initiation.]
   This week, medical student leaders will descend on Capitol Hill to call for reform of this arcane and inhumane system that forces young doctors to work such terrible hours, placing themselves and their patients in danger.
   "A recent suruvey of obstetrics/gynecology residents found that nearly 60% wanted to limit their hours for fear of compromising quality patient care," said Jaya Agrawal, national president of the American Medical Student Assoc. (AMSA), the nation's largest, independent medical student organization. Agrawal is a fourth-year medical student at Brown University. "We know that fatigued residents are more prone to depression, motor vehicle accidents and pregnancy complications. We know that, due to preventable medical errors, as many as 100,000 Americans die each year in hospitals. It is profoundly disappointing to me that our colleagues in academic medicine are so resistant to improving safety in hospitals when patient and physician lives are at stake."
   AMSA is calling on Congress to enact legislation that would limit the workweek of residents to 80 hours, and limit on-call duty shifts to no more than 24 hours. Hospitals receiving funding from Medicare would be required to comply with these proposed regulations. Opponents of these reforms have suggested that internal industry guidelines are more acceptable than government intervention. The federal government does, however, regulate the number of hours airline pilots and truck drivers do their respective jobs.
   [And even at 80 hours a week, "welcome to the 1840s." There's something real sick about America and ground zero is our "work hard, not smart," bootcamp-brained medical profession.]
   "Medical students from across the country will be visiting over 45 Members of Congress," according to Rob Levy, AMSA's legislative affairs director and a medical student at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. "Since the medical community has abdicated its responsibility, the federal government must intercede here as it has done with pilots and truckers. The industry's own lax regulations, which purport to limit hours for different medical specialties, have been in violation as often as 30% of the time, while some specialties do not have any work-hour limits at all."
   [No wonder US healthcare is such a mess.]
   To learn more about the issue of overtired physicians, visit *www.amsa.org.
   Contact: Tim Clarke, Jr., the [president?] of the AMSA, 703-620-6600, ext. 207 or 703-732-7021 (mobile)

2. Hong Kong: Pilots' slowdown, by Mark Landler, NYT, W1.
   Pilots have voted to extend indefinitely a work slowdown against Cathay Pacific Airways. In their first meeting since the carrier dismissed 49 pilots, the 1,300 pilots repeated demands for higher pay and changes in work schedules.
   [Pilots, nurses and medical students are finally putting their foot down about dangerously long work schedules.]
   John Findlay, the head of the Hong Kong Aircrew Officers Assoc., said the airline's tactics "are driving further downward the good will of the pilots."...

3. [And on the extreme outer fringe of what may be called timesizing as an alternative for downsizing -]
   Hynix to shut chip plant in Oregon for 6 months - The Korean [chip]maker decides to retool in the 'worst year ever' for semiconductors, by Don Kirk, NYT, W1.
   SEOUL...- Hynix Semiconductor said [yester]day that it would suspend operations for six months at its plant in Eugene, Ore., as a result of what it called "the worst year ever for the global semiconductor industry."... The plant, with 600 workers on its payroll, accounted for 16% of total Hynix chip production and 50% of its output of 64 D-RAM's....
   [You have to wonder if Hynix really expects any of their employees to still be available after six months. This suspension is so long that it begins to look like they just can't quite yet face the handwriting on the wall.]
   The Hynix announcement coincided with word that Fujitsu Ltd. of Japan was also scaling back production of semiconductors at its plant at Gresham, Ore. Unlike the Hynix operation, however, Fujitsu's plant will remain open while reducing output from its current 60% of capacity to 20%, a Fujitsu spokesman said.
   [Fujitsu's chip operation sounds a little more like a timesizing, but no details are given on how they plan to implement the additional 40% output reduction.]
   The struggle for survival at Hynix [and Fujitsuchips] contrasted with the strategy of Samsung Electronics, the global leader in memory chips, [which] had no plans to reduce production.... As an example of diversification, Samsung [will] form an alliance with AOL Time Warner to develop and sell new lines of digital products, including digital TV set-top boxes and mobile handsets....

1. UMass Memorial begins layoffs, by Liz Kowalczyk, Boston Globe, D11.
   ...The [Worcester, Mass.-based] hospital eliminated 66 administrative jobs and reduced the hours of six additional employees....
   [Presumably instead of laying one or two of them off.]

2. Flexible work week key for women - survey, Reuters 15:46 07-17-01 via AOLNews.
   More than one-third of Canadian women executives regularly consider leaving their jobs to find a shorter work week or more flexible work arrangements, according to a survey released Tuesday.... The national survey of 350 women executives in the private and public sectors...which was conducted in May for the Women's Executive Network..\..shows the best way to attract and retain women executives is to offer the option of a four-day week or allow them to work from home, research firm Pollara said....
   [And it ain't about kids -]
   About 37% of the respondents with children said they regularly consider leaving their job, compared with 32% of respondents without children who would quit for the same reasons. Overall, 34% of the women surveyed said they regularly thought of jumping ship....
   Said Angela Marzolini, vice-chairman of Pollara, "Women executives are looking for flexibility from their employers rather than benefits that, in the end, cost employers a lot of money [without satisfying]." About 56% of the women in senior management positions said they could not name one single employer who would provide the kind of flexibility they would prefer.
   [So, fat lot of good technology is doing us. Remember when Zorba said to Alan Bates, "So what's the use of all your damn books?!" - if they don't tell you why people die. We might ask, "So what's the use of all our damn technology - if it doesn't make life easier?! With all this miraculous technology, we should all be living in heaven. And to "make it so," all we need is to apply a fraction of the design smarts we lavish on computer software to our social software. Well, Phil Hyde has done this for the last 25 years and Timesizing is what he's come up with. It ain't perfect but it's lightyears ahead of what any other economic designers have come up with (if there are any "other economic designers").  The survey described here was also covered in the Toronto Globe yesterday - "Shorter week tops women's wish lists," by Elizabeth Church, 7/17/2001 Toronto Globe & Mail, B1, via SWT e-list via Joe Polito.]

• Rogers reports second quarter results, exceeds updated guidance, PRNewswire 07/16/2001 17:40 EDT via AOLNews.
  Rogers Corp. (NYSE: ROG) announced today that earnings per share for the second quarter were slightly above the guidance given in the Company's May 24th news release.... Combined Sales, which include one half of the sales from three of Rogers 50% owned joint ventures, were $67.2m for the quarter, down from the $78.2m reported in the second quarter of 2000. The major cause of the decrease in revenue was the widespread slowdown in wireless communications, specifically associated with cellular phones, infrastructure, and a temporary reduction in satellite television-related sales. Weak sales to the automotive market also contributed to the lower revenues....
  To combat the slowdown in sales resulting from the current economic situation, expenses are being carefully controlled throughout the Company.... Reductions in work-in-process and finished goods inventory, along with shorter workweeks at some of the Company's facilities, are also contributing to lower operating costs....
  [From company reports -]
  Rogers Corporation, headquartered in Rogers, CT, U.S.A., develops and manufactures high-performance specialty materials focusing on the growing wireless communications and computer markets. Rogers operates manufacturing facilities in Connecticut, Arizona, and Illinois in the U.S. and in Ghent, Belgium. Sales offices are located in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, China and Singapore. Rogers has joint ventures in Japan with Inoac Corporation, in Taiwan with Chang Chun Plastics, and in the U.S. with Mitsui Chemicals and with 3M Corporation.
  [Back to PRNewswire -]
  For more information, please contact the Company directly, visit *Rogers Website on the Internet, or send a message by e-mail:...
  Financial E-mail Address: finfo@rogers-corp.com
  Financial News Contact: Frank Roland, VP and CFO, Phone: 860-774-9605
  Editorial Contact: Debra Granger, Manager of Investor and Public Relations, Phone 860-774-9605, email: debra.granger@rogers-corp.com ....