Timesizing® Associates - Homepage

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Timesizing News, August 1-15, 2001
[Commentary] ©2001 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 117, Harvard Sq, Cambridge MA 02238 USA 617-623-8080

8/15/2001  glimmers of timesizing -

1. Mattson Technology Inc. announces second quarter results, Business Wire BW0558 AUG 14,2001 17:44 EASTERN via AOLNews.
   ...A leading supplier of advanced process equipment used to manufacture semiconductors [yester]day announced financial results for the second quarter of 2001.... The Company recorded a net loss...of $27.1m.... Brad Mattson, CEO...stated, "We, similar to other semiconductor equipment suppliers, have experienced a significant decline, not only in shipments but also in bookings...as a result of the economic downturn experienced by our customers. This contraction has hit us especially hard since we recently acquired substantial production facilities as part of our merger with CFM and STEAG....
   [Again the fatal takeover-contraction connection.]
   We have already taken several actions so far in Q2 and into Q3 to reduce expenses and improve efficiency, including consolidating facilities, reducing materials costs, reducing executive pay, implementing shortened workweeks and reducing headcount. We implemented a reduction in force in May, releasing approximately 180 employees. This was in addition to previous reductions in contract and temporary employees."...
   [Presumably there'd have been more "releases" if they hadn't shortened workweeks. Unfortunately, no details on the shortened workweeks are given. Note the euphemisms in use here for throwing people out of work and income - "reduction in force," "releasing employees." Kinda reminds you of "body count", etc. during the Vietnam War. Mattson also cut workweeks last quarter as we reported on 5/09. And once again, Mattson gives their contact person as Ludger Viefhues at 510-657-5900 so shorter-hours researchers can phone him for the deets.]

2. Korea to introduce 5-day workweek in 2002 - minister, Reuters 05:07 08-14-01 via AOLNews.
   South Korea's Labour Minister said on Tuesday large-sized companies and public sector firms would begin introducing a five-day workweek from next year. But it would take about five years for small companies to shorten their workweek, Minister Kim Ho-jin told reporters. Most of South Korean companies currently have a six-day workweek.
   [Or to be more accurate, which the media seem to have difficulty doing when it comes to worktime, a 5½-day workweek currently, because they work half days on Saturday. But look at the grinding difficulty of this process - FIVE YEARS for small companies to shorten their workweek four hours! At least the government ("public sector") is leading from the front in South Korea instead of leading from behind as in France, where the gov't did not implement the 35-hour week along with big companies last year. The French gov't granted itself the same reprieve they granted small companies - next-year implementation. That's gotta have hurt large-company morale and implementation.]
   "The government is discussing the issue with...labour and...management," said Kim. "Given many advantages, large companies and public-sector firms will be able to begin the shorter workweek in 2002."
   [And this is only the FORTY hour workweek we're talking about here! Welcome to 1940, South Korea!]
   Unionised workers have demanded the government cut the workweek to 40 hours from the current 44 hours, while management has contended it is too early to...cut work hours given the weakness of the country's economy.
   [Management everywhere is too stupid to realize that "the weakness of the country's economy" is BECAUSE OF an obsoletely long workweek. You can't introduce worksaving technology and take the savings in unemployment and underemployment without cutting your own markets. When will CEOs wake up and smell the coffee? CEO Edward Filene of Boston realized it nearly 70 years ago and wrote a book about it in 1932, "Successful Living in this Machine Age." Here's what he said on page 1 of the US edition, "Mass production is...based upon a clear understanding that increased production demands increased buying.... For selfish business reasons, therefore, genuine mass production industries must make prices lower and lower, and wages higher and higher, while constantly shortening the workday and bringing to the masses not only more money but more time in which to use and enjoy the ever-increasing volume of industrial products." (See our bibliography page.) This isn't rocket science. We've been doing this for the last 200 years. But our media don't report on it, and our business schools don't teach it, even though it is the most important thing we could and should be doing. And we call ourselves "an intelligent species"? We're dumb as 2x4.
   [And look how apologetic Korea's labor minister is about this -]
   "I personally welcome the shorter workweek because it is expected to create new jobs catering to weekend leisure industries," Kim said.
   [In other words, he feels he can't officially welcome it because he has to keep his channels open to management, so he tries to slip in a plug on the personal level. Evidently, South Korea has the same kind of problem Americans have with fear of idleness - "The devil finds work for idle hands to do." Not any more! That's why God created leisure industries.]
   ...The seasonally unadjusted jobless rate was 4.1% in 2000.
   [Two things - (A) Both South Korea and Japan seem to have the kind of sensitivity to unemployment that the US had in the 1940s when anything over 2% unemployment was viewed as problematic. Good for them - the US has lost it, now congratulating itself for anything below 6%, the supposed NAIRU (non accelerating inflation rate of unemployment) of a suicidal Federal Reserve. (B) Why on earth would you ever have to "seasonally adjust" an annual rate?]

• Text - Fitch affirms France's AAA currency ratings, Reuters 09:56 08-13-01 via AOLNews.
  NEW YORK...- Fitch, the international rating agency, [yester]day affirmed the French Republic's long-term foreign and local currency ratings at 'AAA'.... Strong growth during the past three years and the constraints imposed by Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) prompted consolidation of the fiscal position, allowing for a gradual moderation in public debt levels. This has been a particularly positive development given that EMU sovereign credit ratings place less emphasis on the balance of payments position and more on fiscal and structural issues. [French] inflation has remained low in recent years and labour market performance has improved: unemployment fell to below 10% last year for the first time since 1991.
  [Well this year, thanks to the 35-hour workweek, unemployment has fallen to 8.7%, the lowest in nearly 18 years (ie: since 1983). But this Reuters reporter is still ambivalent about the 35-hour workweek as the following indicates -]
  Moreover, fiscal consolidation has facilitated tax cuts, a key rating factor given one of the highest tax burdens in the EU. However, many recent improvements in macroeconomic indicators have been cyclical in nature and structural weaknesses remain. Compared to a euro-area average of 7.3%, France's unemployment rate is high and may have stopped falling, labour force participation is low and the phasing in of the 35-hour week will require gains in productivity to offset potential effects on competitiveness and the public sector wage bill....
  [French unemployment has not stopped falling when smaller firms will be coming online with the 35-hour week next year, and if that's unemployment isn't yet low enough then, the workweek can be adjusted further downward to a 32-hour week. But this Reuters reporter evidently doesn't get the connection between employment and markets -]
  Recent government proposals to tighten labour regulation and increase redundancy costs - largely in reaction to several high-profile announcements of jobcuts - are a worrying development, and represent a deviation from previous moves to promote labour market flexibility....
  [All France has to do to fix this is to implement overtime-targeted training and hiring.]

• [The timesizing aspect of Netherlands is that "part time" benefits are usually the same as "full time" benefits.]
  A robust Dutch economy that's short of workers - Not much help from a one-size-fits-all European central bank, by Edmund Andrews, NYT, C6.
  [The internal headline is much clearer than the front-of-section one, "Robust economy short of workers - As Europe fuses, Dutch find success distorts the job market." In either case, there's no such thing as "short of workers" - there's only "short of training." For all this article's attempt to portray a labor shortage, the mentions of training are sporadic and over-specific. Clearly Dutch employers really don't yet "get it."]
  ...Germany [has an] unemployment rate [above] 10%. As for the Netherlands...even in the current slowdown, joblessness is running at [only] 2%.
  [The Netherlands should be counting its blessings.   2% unemployment was regarded as high during World War II, not low. This is the measure of how spoiled and self-indulgent employers have become since the babyboomers, starting around 1970, completely flooded out the lingering labor-employment balance from the war years.]
  Dutch inflation is the highest in Western Europe at 5%; in France it is barely over 2%....
  [Inflation is nature's way of centrifuging income. It rewards small active spread-around flows of earned money and penalizes huge sluggish concentrated pools of unearned money. But the point is well-taken. European monetary union was and is way premature. You can't healthily unite an area without skill fluidity throughout, and Europe's different languages, despite their greater polyglossia, inject skill rigidities.]
  ...Language and culture are barriers. "When you move someone from New York to Illinois, it is not so hard because at least you have the same language," said Hans de Boer, president of the Royal Association of Small and Medium-Size Enterprises. "But when you want to hire someone here from Germany or France, it's entirely different. As soon as the job gets into communications, the fact that we all speak different languages is a problem"..\..
  By now, if [the Dutch] still had control of their own monetary policy, they might well have tried to slow their economic growth by raising interest rates....
  [Then maybe it's lucky they don't have such control, because their shortage of labor hours with the right skills is delivering fast economic growth, which they should be learning to handle by implementing overtime-targeted crosstraining, retraining and training, which evidently they don't have. And beyond that, overtime-to-unemployment linkage, which evidently they don't have. And beyond that, an appropriately narrow range of worktime per person, which evidently they don't have. All they have done is cleared the way for timesizing, by removing the differential-benefits rigidities between "full time" employment and anything less. And as in France where they don't have the full, flexible timesizing program, even the small beginning is delivering stunning slump-proofing.]
  But lacking control over rates, the Netherlands is suffering both from the global economic slowdown and a measure of inflationary pressure that ties in with [an "overheated" economy and] its shortage of workers.
  [This article never really makes the point that Netherlands is suffering from the global economic slowdown. In fact, it never makes the point that Netherlands is suffering at all. The only people "suffering" are spoiled Dutch employers, and they're not suffering from sales slump like the rest of the world (except France), just the 'inconvenience' of greater equality with their employees. CEOs evidently haven't made up their mind if they really want progress for everyone, as in France and Holland, with lots of business, a "shortage" of labor hours, high pay for everyone with the high spending and high domestic demand that goes with it, and readiness to take the next step to control inflation, which is income-balancing = the same five phases as in the Timesizing program mapped from the working hours per person dimension onto the income per person dimension.]
  Almost everywhere, the job shortage is apparent..\..
  [The article then gives a series of special cases that can be duplicated in any economy in the world. There are always spot skill shortages and whining employers who want something for nothing, people who just don't get it and don't want to do the pay raises and training programs that are required in their business in their current business environment. Some people have to pressured pretty hard to wake up and share the profits. And there's always further automation.]
  Hospitals are severely short of nurses....
  [Well that's the same here in the USA, but it's just because hospitals treat nurses so badly.]
  Indeed last year, hospitals agreed to increase nurses' wages by 12%....
  [That could be a start. But how much did doctors' wages increase last year? Maybe the nurses' raise is relatively insignificant.]
  With wages rising and labor productivity declining, the Dutch cost advantage is shrinking.
  [We repeat, there's always further automation if you're really worried about productivity, but usually you just have to really count it all - something very few employers are motivated to do. But here's another Dutch problem -]
  Employers are pushing government and the unions to make major changes in the country's safety net. Almost a million people collect disability paychecks of as much as 70% of their last salary. About 950,000 people, almost 10% of the adult population, are listed as at least partly disabled. Company executives are pushing hard to scale back the program.
  [Every country has to make sure that their "safety net" isn't a dependency breeding program. The Canadian province of Ontario is struggling with this whole issue, as reported in a first-section article today, "Ontario's new welfare rule: Be literate and drug free," by Anthony DePalma, NYT, A3. To summarize the Dutch article, ya gotta notice that this article, supposedly speaking for the whole country, is really just speaking for Dutch employers. Where's the voice of Dutch employees? This article is one-sided and has a very big blindspot.]

• Opinion: The French aren't the crazy ones, by Michael Zuzel, [Vancouver daily British] *Columbian via SWT elist via Kenneth Ellis.
  They're working less in France these days - working less, enjoying it more and confounding the supposed experts who predicted the national economy would go right down the toilette.
  Those crazy socialists running the French government have mandated a reduction in the standard workweek to 35 hours. The law became mandatory for companies with more than 20 workers - with certain exceptions for doctors, lawyers and, dammit, journalists - at the start [Feb. 15] of 2000; smaller firms will be included beginning next year.
  Not surprisingly, France's formerly all-powerful business lobby opposed the move to a shorter workweek. Union des Industries Textiles, the association of French textile manufacturers [a "union" that is management?!], was typical in its shrill cries of doom: The 35-hour workweek, it predicted last year, "will destabilize the industrial sector" and "seriously weaken its competitiveness...in a period of accelerated globalization and electronic revolution."
  [Never acknowledging that the whole purpose of the electronic revolution is to save work, and if you don't take it in leisure (= financial security that maintains/grows spending and markets), you get it in underemployment (= financial anxiety that cuts spending and markets, ergo our current global slump). Such "competitiveness" is merely a race to the bottom.]
  The policy got outright belly laughs from the productivity gurus who run the "work or die" economies of the United States and Great Britain. Free-market economists, appalled at what was happening in the land of laissez faire [i.e., free market theory], confidently predicted that France's shorter working hours would lead to higher costs, higher unemployment, higher inflation and a lower standard of living for the whole nation.
  Instead? C'est magnifique!
  Today, French unemployment is at its lowest level in almost two decades, having fallen from 12.6% in 1997 [under the French version of the US Republicans/GOP] to 8.5% in June/2001 [under the French version of the Democrats] .
  [It's almost as if the French replayed America's fateful 1933 decision:
  • no controls (GOP),
  • many controls (Dem.),
  • or one control = cut workweek (conservative Dem, liberal GOP),
  and somehow got it right this time, 67 years later. It ain't poifec but at least they're now tinkering in the right garage while we're still sliding backwards and wasting our idealism and reforming zeal on unprioritized, unstrategized, grocery-list micromanagement and a discretionary (i.e., capricious and black-hole maintaining), unreliable and condescending charity approach.]
  The government estimates that 285,000 new jobs have been created and predicts a full half-million total by 2003 [big stuff in an ecoomy that's a fraction of U.S. size]. The financial incentives that the French government is offering businesses to keep workers at the same wage levels are at least partially offset by lower payouts for unemployment benefits [and higher tax revenues].
  Consumer confidence is up; consumer spending is up; foreign investment in France is booming. One poll found 59% of workers saying their daily lives have improved as a result of the shorter week. Health club memberships and sales of home-improvement goods are skyrocketing, and London's Daily Telegraph reports that the weekday traffic in Paris has noticeably lightened as people enjoy three-day weekends with their families.
  If this be misfortune, [we should all be so unfortunate!]
  It really shouldn't surprise anyone that the free-market fanatics were wrong about a shorter workweek. Any proposal anywhere to improve the lives of working peple - through higher wages, improved benefits, safer workplace conditions or stricter pollution rules - will always draw fervent opposition from business interests that can't see past the next quarterly profit statement....
  [And the short-sighted variety of free-marketers that can't see
  • the vital role that shorter hours has played throughout the history of the US economy before 1940.
  • Or the amount of unfree-market tactics used by private-sector interests throughout supposedly "free" market periods throughout history.]
    
  The French have enough confidence in their economy to make time for family and leisure. Americans \apparently haven't.\ Americans are still willing to [make] working people [neglect their families with a 1940-era workweek or longer].
  So who's crazy?!
  [Great article, marred only by Zuzel's encomium's to the minimum wage in the middle (omitted). Evidently he doesn't realize that shorter worktime creates a perceived shortage of labor hours and raises wages automatically. In other words, it replaces wage controls (and many other controls) and avoids the negative effects thereof. The timesizing program regards money per job (wages) as the province of the free market anyway. Income (money per person) is different. It will eventually have to be controlled within a wide range, but money per job is now and ever shall be the province of freedom, wildness and even volatility. Mapping this per-job vs. per-person distinction back into the employment dimension, we get hours per job (decontrollable, ungovernable, divergent, unbalanceable, volatilizable) and hours per person (controllable, governable, balanceable, equalizable within a range). Timesizing's Phase 2 does control hours per job but only on the upper end, only relative to per-person, and only as a useful first step (gets on-the-job training programs revved up) towards balancing per-person working hours without reference to corporations in Phase 3.]

• [Parade Mag rarely comes up with anything but ephemera, but here's a little something this weekend -]
  You can find the time - Ever feel as if your schedule is in control of you, instead of the other way around? Here's how some very busy people found a way to slow down and enjoy life more. - "We didn't have time for each other," says Richard Erickson of Nebraska. "The way we were living had to change", by Sue Shellenbarger, Parade Magazine (Boston Sunday Globe insert), 10.
  ...Studies show that the adults in the average American household work more hours than they did 20 years ago. And technology has only increased our ability to cram even more into our lives. Many Americans are just too rushed to enjoy what they have....
  [Good start but then they have 11 Suggestions Lite -]
  Gain Control of your life -
  1. List your...priorities and goals...
  2. Keep a log of your spending to identify ways to reduce financial pressure
  3. Set aside time each day to reflect on what's important
  4. Explore flextime or work-at-home options
     [But flextime just reshapes the blivvy (or blivvit = 10 lbs of sh*t in a 5-lb bag) and working at home can just give your employer a completely blank check on your life.]
  5. Restrict TV viewing
  6. Turn off your cell phone, pager and fax at the end of the workday
     [The workday has an end?]
  7. Limit your Internet use to the purposes you really care about
  8. Develop relationships by allowing yourself time....
  9. Analyze your schedule to see where it might be simplified by reducing commuting time, errands and chores
     [Reducing commuting time during a decade when people have traded bigger houses for longer commutes? - see tomorrow's revelation (8/06, #2) from the Census preview.]
  10. Sell or give away possessions you haven't used for six months
      [Better make that 12 so you don't give away your winter clothes.]
  11. Allow your children only one extracurricular activity at a time
      [Presumably so you can avoid the great American hobby of chauffeuring kids.]
  [To really get somewhere and make it stick, we would add, Tell your employer about Timesizing, not downsizing. Does s/he really want to stay in firing/hiring mode with all its demoralization, productivity hit, sabotage risk, & contribution the Big Downward Spiral For Us All - and then, if in the mercy of God there is a miraculous recovery, cost of orientation (if not training)? Tell your union to get back "on issue," jab to the jugular and push for shorter hours, instead of drowning management in yet another grocery list of detailed demands that their lawyers can juggle better than yours.]

• Text - CDAF/Reuters French services indices for July, Reuters 02:49 08-03-01 via AOLNews.
  PARIS...- Following is the commentary on the CDAF/Reuters French services sector indices for July provided by NTC Research, which compiles the indices. Business activity remained buoyant in the French service sector in July, according to the latest CDAF/Reuters survey of the sector. Furthermore, a rise in the seasonally adjusted CDAF/Reuters Business Activity Index from 55.3 in June to 57.0 in July signalled an increase in the pace of expansion to the fastest recorded for five months....
  [The Gallic Tiger (France) roars on. Bet it will soon eclipse the Celtic Tiger (Eire). This news suggests that the June uptick in French unemployment from four months' worth of 8.7% to 8.8 is just a blip - unless France finally begins to get dragged down by the US&Japan-led slump.]
  With new business continuing to rise strongly in July, service sector firms still had no respite in which to clear current backlogs of work. In fact, many panel members reported that the situation had been made worse by the introduction of the thirty-five hour working week....
  [Honest to God, the French will complain about anything. Are we really hearing COMPLAINTS about a BACKLOG OF ORDERS??? Most companies worldwide today would KILL for a backlog of orders in the face of the global economic slump. And as for the "situation that had been made worse," can these French guys spell H-I-R-I-N-G??? The whole point of their shorter workweek is to reclaim 12.6% of the French workforce who, as unemployed workers in 1997, represented lost markets. Now that the shorter workweek pulled their unemployment rate down to 8.7% before the Japan&US-led downturn pushed it back up to 8.8%, they have 12.6-8.8= 3.8% more people employed (nearly 1% for every hour cut from the workweek), secure and creating markets for French business. The statement above is nothing but whining by some businessmen who think markets come from magic, from nowhere, while their short-term strategies force themselves and their fellow CEOs into chronic slump.]
  ...Growing uncertainty about the future economic environment caused an increasing number of respondents to be pessimistic about the level of business activity in a year's time. As a result the degree of optimism sank to a three-year survey low..\..
  [The French must love to worry. Everyone else in the world is already in the midst of the Frenchies' pessimistic scenario for next year. They've discovered the key to avoiding it - namely, cutting the workweek and spreading the national income to those who go out and spend it - and most of them are still too stupid to realize what they've discovered!]
  In order to cope with higher levels of new business and to bridge the shortfall in capacity left by the thirty-five hour working week, service sector firms continued to recruit additional staff in July. Furthermore, with over a quarter of all panellists reporting higher employment levels than one month ago, the rate of increase of employment picked up marginally during the month....
  [That pretty well clinches the "blip" nature of the June unemployment uptick.]
  Service sector employment continued to rise sharply overall in July. Furthermore, the rate of increase of employment picked up marginally compared to that seen in the previous month. Over a quarter of all panel members reported that they had recruited additional staff during the month, nearly five times the number that reported lower employment levels. The majority of respondents reported that they had increased employment at their concerns in order to cope with higher levels of incoming new business, although many also took on new staff to fill the shortfall in capacity left by the thirty-five hour scheme....
  [= a grudging admission from a time-blind reporter. And lest we miss the point, the more employment, the more markets. And all because France, unlike us total morons in the rest of the world, is timesizing, not downsizing.]

• Kimball International, Inc. reports fourth quarter and fiscal 2001 results; record share repurchase, company press release via Business Wire BW2118 AUG 02,2001 8:13 EASTERN via AOLNews.
  JASPER, Ind...- Kimball International, Inc. (Nasdaq:KBALB), [yester]day announced consolidated sales for the fourth quarter totaled $287.7m, down from sales of $326.1m reported during the comparable fiscal 2000 fourth quarter. Sales were lower in the current year fourth quarter in both the Furniture and Cabinets and Electronic Contract Assemblies segments. Kimball reported a net loss for the fourth quarter of $13.6m....
  Over the second half of fiscal 2001 Kimball aggressively took actions to align its cost structure with lower sales levels and sales mix changes. Actions included
  • intensifying its global procurement and supply chain efforts,
  • an overall heightened focus on discretionary spending,
  • operating with shorter work weeks
  • and an approximate 1,800 or 16% reduction in its worldwide workforce from January 1, 2001 to June 30, 2001....
  [Presumably their workforce reduction would have been greater with the shorter workweeks, but unfortunately we are given no details of those workweeks. We also noted that Kimball was doing this back on 3/15.]

1. French jobless rate rises to 8.8 pct in June, by Joelle Diderich, Reuters 04:46 07-31-01 via AOLNews.
   ...from 8.7% in May, its first monthly rise in almost three years, indicating the euro zone's second largest economy is struggling amid a U.S.-led global economic slowdown.... Brisk economic growth has helped France trim dole queues [US: "welfare lines"] almost continuously since June 1997, when the Socialist-led government inherited a 12.6% jobless rate.
   However a rash of corporate lay-offs has intensified public concern that the global downturn could trigger a recession in France, until now the euro zone's star performer.... Analysts nonetheless expressed confidence that the job market could soak up some of the damage, pointing to resilient job growth in sectors like services and to the positive impact of the introduction of a shorter working week....
   [Note today's NYT version of this story completely avoids mention of the shorter working week, whether on instructions from top editors or just time blindness. The story, "France: Unemployment rises," by John Tagliabue, NYT, W1 contains these sentences, "It had hovered at 8.7% for the previous four months. [meaning May, Apr, Mar, Feb. So February's UE rate must have been adjusted down to 8.7%.] This was the first rise in French unemployment since August 1998, as companies, which were encouraged to hire in recent years by an expanding economy, lay off workers in response to falling demand for goods and services, notably abroad." A magical "expanding economy" - with no mention of the sharing of the fixed or diminishing lump of labor via a workweek reduction and the resulting reversal of the concentration of income. Even the Reuters article quotes a time-clueless economist -]
   "I don't have a good feeling about the French economy's momentum as it seems to be losing speed rapidly and more quickly than expected," said Patrick Mange, senior euro zone economist at Merrill Lynch. "If consumers begin saving, this would mean that the added revenue generated by tax cuts [no mention of workweek reduction?!] will be diverted into saving rather than consumption. I imagine the government is not feeling very comfortable," he said....
   [Well, a contractor colleage of colleague Kate has heard that the government is already thinking about a 32-hour workweek, which would continue the "French miracle." Hopefully we will pick up something from AOLNews on this.]

2. Michelin slashes target, poor markets to persist, by Tom Pfeiffer (in London?) with additional reporting by Veronique Tison in Paris, Reuters 05:16 07-31-01 via AOLNews.
   ..."This is worse than expected and the guidance [i.e., company reports] is also lower than we would have thought," said Jim Collins, an analyst at UBS Warburg in London.
   [US and UK economists are the only timeblind observers. They also exist right in France.]
   Net profit was boosted by the 282m exceptional gain, which included profit from the sale of its 2.8% stake in PSA Peugeot Citroen, less charges linked to the French 35-hour working week law and a fine from the European Commission....
   [So here we have Michelin in the French auto industry trying to act like a little American company and talk only about the negative impact of a shorter working week, in contrast to the article above. And never mind the additional domestic demand generated by the shorter workweek that has so far largely inoculated France from the downturn - by contrast with Germany whose purely workyear reduction policies are simply not powerful or flexible enough to generate the recession-proofing effects that France has been enjoying. And speaking of Deutschland -]

3. Interview - German employers seek labour market reform, by Gernot Heller, Reuters 14:51 07-31-01 via AOLNews.
   BERLIN...- A leading member of Germany's BDA [??] employers group called on the government on Tuesday to reform the labour market in the face of expected lay-offs because of the economic slowdown. Christoph Kannengiesser [i.e., cannongooser? (-fodder?)], managing director of the BDA and chairman of Germany's Federal Labour Office, told Reuters in an interview that more flexibility was needed and a programme of tax reform should be speeded up.
   [No mention yet of reversing the concentration of work and income.]
   But he did not expect major job losses in Germany, despite announcements by top German firms, including chipmaker Infineon AG and Dresdner Bank that they would cut their workforces....
   [You wish, Christoph!]
   After two years in which unemployment fell consistently, the number of people out of work in Germany has climbed for the past six consecutive months to stand at 3.85m in June, putting Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder under pressure ahead of a general election next year. Schroeder has said his government would "not deserve to be re-elected" in 2002 if it did not cut the jobless level significantly.
   [Same goal as Jospin in France, but Jospin hit on the obvious and commonsense solution - workweek reduction to share the limited and possibly diminishing employment - and delivered bigtime. Schroeder, by contrast, despite his rhetoric and his rap about a Third Way in economics, has been treading water and getting swept out to sea with the rushing tides of technological disemployment and downsizing. But our boy Kannengiesser is hanging in there -]
   Kannengiesser said Schroeder's goal was still possible.... He wanted the government to stick to its goal of cutting unit wage costs...
   [Brilliant - that will only choke off domestic demand.]
   and urged it to bring forward tax reform....
   [probably meaning cutting or flattening taxes in the income-concentrating, circulation-strangling American definition.]
   and get rid of a tax on fuels....
   [Well, in general, we agree there should be no sales taxes because they have no effect on dynamism-dampening income concentration, and they do have the dynamism-dampening effect of encumbering transactions. However, if the fuel tax revenues were being channelled into sustainable energy development, Kannengiesser is short-sighted and off the mark.]
   Kannengiesser said he doubted that any reforms of the jobs market would come soon but he hoped Schroeder realised the need for change.
   [All Schroeder has to do is look over at the French model and behold all the added labor market flexibility that accompanied the four-hour workweek reduction. But Kannengiesser is totally clueless on the work-sharing/income-spreading front -]
   Kannengiesser said continued moderation in wage demands would do much to help boost the labour market but that shorter working hours, as sought by the German trade union federation DGB, were not a realistic option given the current rise in unemployment....
   [Boy has he got his head screwed on backwards. How about they raise the German workweek then, and see what that does for rising unemployment?! "None are so blind, as those that cannot see."]

4. German "wise man" calls for moderate wage increases, Reuters 05:02 07-31-01 via AOLNews.
   BERLIN...- A senior adviser to the government said on Tuesday German unions should accept pay increases below the rise in productivity as fears grow that wage costs will rise in Europe's largest economy....
   [What guarantee do they have that productivity isn't, as usual, being grossly undercounted?]
   "Real wages ought to increase less than productivity, because otherwise no additional jobs will be created"..\..Wolfgang Wiegard, one of a panel of five government advisers dubbed the "wise men," said in an interview with Bild newspaper....
   [Oh really? Then who buys the extra productivity, extraterrestrials?]
   Fears of wage inflation have mounted in Germany after the government said it was considering legislation to limit overtime and a top trade unionist warned of an end to wage restraint. We could intervene and, for example, place legal limits on overtime," Peter Struck, parliamentary leader of the ruling Social Democrats, said on Saturday.
   [A definition of share per person - e.g., of natural, market-demanded employment - is absolutely essential to every sustainable game. That's why every sports league resets "games won" by every team back to zero at the beginning of every season. And the only thing that's been doing that recently on a worldwide scale in economics has been war. France has begun to do it on a merely nationwide scale by more strictly defining employment per person per time unit, but their design is still inflexible and arbitrary, as compared to flexible adjustment of the workweek against unemployment. So Peter has "Struck" upon a crucial component for the sustainability of the economic "game." But check out the raging reaction of shortsighted German businessmen -]
   At a time when many top German firms, including chipmaker Infineon AG and Dresdner Bank AG have announced heavy layoffs and many economists have slashed domestic growth forecasts, industry leaders denounced the suggestion as "economic nonsense."
   [Apparently they want all the cards - never mind if it shuts down the game. And never mind the economic prosperity exactly this overtime-limiting strategy has brought about in France. "Don't bother us with facts, our mind's made up!"]
   If the government decides to go through with its suggestion and limit overtime it will raise wage costs in Germany at a time when the domestic and international economic climate looks increasingly precarious, employers say.
   [How about the costs of employers' own salaries and stock options and perks? Oh, they don't count? They're excluded from the discussion? Says who? The whole reason for the precarious domestic and international economic climate is the fact that labor is so weak it cannot stop employers from taking such a large share of income that it's suctioning the markets away from its own investments. "The more concentration, the less circulation." Keep overall wage costs the same but spread employers' unspendable excess out to employees who actually spend it and maintain domestic demand.]
   The chief economist of Germany's DIW economic research institute, which forecasts German growth of only one percent this year, said the government's overtime proposal was a "non-starter."
   [That's exactly what chief economists said about the French government's proposal to cut the workweek from 39 to 35 hrs/wk four years ago. Mainstream economists have a huge blindspot right in the middle of their thinking. They ignore worktime as an economic variable, let alone a control variable, let alone the control variable.]
   "The one thing that would help is really a long-lasting upswing with growth rates in the region of around three percent. Only such an upswing would encourage employers to take on people and reduce the numbers unemployed," Gustav Horn told German radio on Tuesday....
   [What a Dummkopf! He's basically saying that their only hope is an Act of God, a miracle, a magic hat-trick. Is this moron an economist? Could he possibly lay claim to being a scientist, if only a social scientist, with such superstitions? In fact, the only thing that would help Germany is to copy France, cut the workweek and spread the income beyond the executive boardrooms to the multitudes of people who spend it - and spread the leisure of their wives to give everyone time to spend it in - and we don't mean just once or twice a year with those 5-6 week German vacations.]
   IG Metall [big German union] is...planning to seek the introduction of a 28.5 hour working week in several steps by 2003 to help reduce unemployment, Bild newspaper said.
   [Well, they're on the right track. And that level of workweek would put them ahead of France and make Germany the world leader in economic modernization and the constructive assimilation of technology.]