Timesizing® Associates - Homepage

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Timesizing News, August 16-31, 2001
[Commentary] ©2001 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 117, Harvard Sq, Cambridge MA 02238 USA 617-623-8080

8/30/2001  glimmers of timesizing -

• [America (and American) awakens slowly to the centrality of the worktime issue -]
  Inquiry opens over rules on pilot rest - FAA is accused of sidestepping issue, by Laurence Zuckerman, NYT, C4.
  ...Kenneth M. Mead..\..the inspector general of the Transportation Dept...after receiving a 14-page letter...from Richard Rubin, a 767 captain at American who has been leading the fight to persuade the FAA to enforce longtime regulation that limits pilots to 16 hours of duty in a single day..\..has agreed to review allegations that the FAA failed to enforce safety regulations at American Airlines....
  [Don't you feel safer going on a plane now you know the pilot may have been on duty 15-16 hours straight? Or going under the scalpel when American surgeons aren't even limited to 16 hours? This is sooo primitive, so backward - let's just go by train and stay out of hospitals.]
  A regulation...requires pilots to have at least eight hours rest during the 24 hours before they fly. Many airlines had allowed [don't they mean "pressured"] their pilots to work longer if the airline's flight schedule was disrupted by delays. But last year, after a request for a clarification by Captain Rubin, an FAA lawyer said this was a violation.
  The FAA's clarification resulted in strong protests from the airlines which said that the agency had issued a new regulation without proper notification. They filed a lawsuit against the FAA which is working its way through the courts.
  In the meantime, Captain Rubin and the Allied Pilots Assoc., which represent[s] American's 11,000 pilots, contend that American continues to violate the rule.... Last month, Capt. Rubin filed a complaint under the federal whistle-blower statute accusing American of pressuring pilots to fly without proper rest.... But the FAA's southwest regional office, which oversees American, subsequently pronounced the airline's scheduling practices as acceptable.
  "The investigation was a complete whitewash," Capt. Rubin said in a telephone interview yesterday. Last month the FAA fined American $285,000 for violating federal regulations regarding crew rest 38 times. But Capt. Rubin contends that the FAA was aware of 825 violations between Dec/99 and May/2000 and did not take action. He also said that FAA officials in Dallas knowingly disseminated false information about the agency's clarification of the rest rules to help American continue to violate the regulations....
  [America awakens slowly to the centrality of scheduling in the skillpack of managers. Scheduling should be taught at business schools instead of takeovers.]

1. Accenture in Tokyo offers staff up to 12 months' leave, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   Accenture Ltd., the world's largest consulting and project-management company, offered 2,000 staff members in Japan leave on reduced pay as it prepares to cut about 1,500 worldwide [previously announced]. Accenture will allow its employees in Japan to take leave ranging from 6½ months to a year on 30% of annual salary for the first four months and 20% after five months.... The company blamed slowing demand in the U.S., where 1,000 consultants will lose their jobs, and a drop in the number of employees retiring or resigning last year.
   [Hey, it's a pretty weird form of timesizing, but it's still cutting worktime to reduce the amount of job cutting.]

2. Accord at VW signals a shift for Germany, by Edmund Andrews, NYT, C1.
   [Yeah, a shift down.]
   Striking a blow against Germany's rigid work rules, Volkswagen reached an agreement today with the country's biggest labor union that should permit VW to demand longer workweeks and higher productivity....
   [Think about it. If productivity is output divided by working hours, longer workweeks might mean more output - into a global downturn where more output is not what's needed (but more spending, more purchasing, more demand) - but it cannot possibly mean more productivity. VW is repeating the tragic history of
   • Kellogg's, which implemented a 30-hour workweek in 1930 but gradually switched back to 40 over the next 50 years
   • the whole American economy, where a 30-hour workweek bill passed the Senate in 1933, but got watered down to 44 in 1938, 42 in 1939, and 40 in 1940. The 38-hour week of 1941 never arrived, but war did. And war replaces workweek reduction with a much grislier and stupider method of withdrawing excess labor hours from the job market.
   Hey, at least it's broken the news blackout on workweek reduction. This is a NYT story.]

3. [And more news about workweek reduction and the back&forth of introducing it -]
   France's Jospin to ease 35-hour rule - media, Reuters 06:34 08-28-01 via AOLNews.
   PARIS...- French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin is to announce on Tuesday that a controversial law capping the working week at 35 hours could be relaxed for small companies, various French media said.
   [We TOLD you that the French government should have led this advance by example, instead of requiring big companies, excluding the gov't, to do it first. "Do as I say and not as I do" seldom works.]
   Jospin will make the announcement, unlikely to please partners in his left-leaning coalition, during a prime-time evening TV interview aimed at reassuring a French public concerned about an economic slowdown and rising crime rates....
   [Note the corelation between unemployment rate and crime rate.]
   Jospin...can no longer rely on the once booming French economy as a vote-winner. It has finally succumbed to the global slowdown and joblessness is rising....
   ["Succumbed" perhaps, but less than anywhere else in the developed world, and only because Jospin implemented a rigid form of timesizing. He should shift the gov't to the 35-hour week immediately, impose 35 hrs on all employees (entrepreneurs can still kill themselves because they reinvest like banshees anyway) in January, and move big companies to 34 hrs immediately. And get the whole thing referendum-driven so it's no longer interruptable by employer whining. And implement overtime-targeted cross-training throughout the economy.]
   The Employment Minisry hinted last week it was considering offering "greater flexibility" to small companies, who fear the law could damage their businesses when they have to apply it from January, a year after large companies..\..
   [This illustrates again the problems with doing any sweeping change at anything but a snail's pace. In the case of workweek reduction, it should not be done in four hour leaps like this, but only one hour at a time. With a smaller reduction, you don't the additional mishigas of having to stagger it for large and small companies (let alone the disgraceful delay for government in the French case!) because you can just poohpooh the adjustment and embarrass any special-pleaders as whiners, and even as unpatriotic, since everyone else was doing/had done it.]
   Newspaper Le Parisien said Jospin would not seek to amend the law itself, but rather offer additional proposals allowing firms with fewer than 20 staff to extend their working week while remaining within the law....
   [Much better than fooling around with law-weakening exceptions at this point would be to just let the small firms come down one hour per year for the next four years. In other words, quit making exceptions and just get them adjusting more gradually.]
   Le Parisien quoted a finance ministry source as saying employees could be allowed to work more "supplementary hours." "Concretely, that means the average working week could be in the region of 39 hours, with little extra cost," it said....
   [Disastrous. That effectively means they wouldn't be part of the national workweek reduction from the current 39-hour week at all. Unless, of course, the 39-hour week itself had already died the death of a thousand qualifications and was mainly political window-dressing anyway...? Guess you gotta be there with your antennae out to discover all this stuff.]

1. Volkswagen, IG Metall Union talk, AP-NY-08-27-01 1126EDT via AOLNews.
   Officials from Volkswagen [VW] and Germany's IG Metall trade union resumed talks Monday on a proposal to create 5,000 new jobs under more flexible rules than usual in Germany's tightly-regulated labor market.... The proposal would give 5,000 workers roughly the same monthly pay as under the current union contract - about 5,000 marks ($2,350) - but without the standard 28.8-hour workweek limit and no overtime or weekend pay. Workers could work fewer hours if production goals are met....
   [Ah, management's eternal, economy-killing quest for a blank check on people's lives.]
   During peak production periods, working weeks could be up to 48 hours and Saturday production is a possibility.
   [For no extra pay. Why don't they just bring back slavery?]
   The idea is to get workers actively cooperating in teams to streamline production and cut costs.
   [No, the idea is for the top income brackets to get far more than they need and everyone else to get far less. Result? - Germany becomes Third-World as USA is becoming.]
   Union officials worry the VW-proposed program could undermine existing collective bargaining deals....
   [No kidding. Isn't it amazing how people can be so intelligent in 1993-94 when VW cut hours from 35/wk to 28.8 to save 30,000 jobs and its hometown of Wolfsburg, and then be so stupid just a few years later. What was that saying? - "The price of liberty is constant vigilance."]

2. Upromise releases new study on the effects of working while in college - While part-time jobs boost achievement, full-time jobs more likely to push students off the college track - Twice as many college students are now working full time, jeopardizing grades and increasing drop-out risk for just a few thousand dollars, PRNewswire 08-27-01 08:03 EDT via AOLNews.
   BROOKLINE, Mass...- Upromise, Inc., the company that helps families save for college, today released the findings of a research study it commissioned, "Learning and Earning: Working in College." The study examines how school-year jobs affect student achievement and graduation rates....
   The percentage of students who work full-time (more than 35 hours per week) has doubled since 1985..\..
   [However -]
   The study concludes that while part-time jobs appear to provide experience and encourage discipline that boosts grade point averages (GPAs) and job prospects, college students who work full-time are more likely to drop out before completing their degree and have lower GPAs.
   More than half of all students have jobs - and those that do, work 25 hours per week and earn $7.50 per hour, on average. This means that a student who works 35 hours a week, rather than 25 hours a week, will earn just $2,250 more, on average, over a one-year period.... Moreover, students who work full-time are more likely to drop out [by] a roughly 10-percentage point differential....
   Students who work 10 hours or less per week, on the other hand, have slightly higher GPAs than other students, and studies show that working part-time is more likely to cut into non-productive activities like watching TV than homework....
   "Since full-time work appears to interfere with academics, it is troubling that more students are working longer hours," said Jonathan Orszag, Managing Director of Sebago Assocs. and a co-author of the study.... For more information, visit www.upromise.com or call 617/582-1400....

1. [feisty Brockton Hospital nurses lead the way again -]
   Brockton Hospital, nurses reach tentative agreement, by Fran Riley, Boston Globe, B2.
   ...The strike, which began May 25, focused on contract language about staffing and mandatory overtime..\.. Julie Pinkham of the Massachusetts Nursing Assoc. said last night..."The nurses are really pleased this is resolved.... It is really a favorable agreement." The 420 nurses who have been on strike will vote on the agreement on Sept. 4....
   [This poorly written/edited squib unfortunately gives no details.]

2. Schroeder - VW job scheme will go ahead, Reuters 12:35 08-24-01 via AOLNews.
   German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said on Friday that Volkswagen's plan to take on 5,000 new workers at 5,000 marks a month will be implemented. "The innovative employment model 5,000 times 5,000 will definitely be implemented," Schroeder said in a speech at the IFA consumer electronics affair [sic] in Berlin.
   [So German leadership remains as dumm as ever, prefering rigid and arbitrary job creation and wages to flexible and natural market-determined jobs and wages achievable by simply, flexibly TRIMMING THE WORKWEEK economywide. "We're going to help labor over labor's and the economy's dead bodies!" Compare Henry Ford's much-publicized friendliness to labor in 1914 when he arbitrarily paid employees a rigid but then-high $5/day "so they could afford their own products," only to descend to beating up labor leaders in the 1930s and telling one of them, "Let's see you unionize these robots!" (Reuther replied, "Let's see you sell them cars."]
   Talks between VW and IG Metall union to create the 5,000 jobs are set to resume on Monday, after collapsing in June in a dispute over working hours.
   [See "German union to resume Volkswagen talks" below on 8/23, #3 which indicates IG Metall is fighting to put some meaning in the 35-hour workweek maximum against this "flexible" program for spoiled management to require 48-hr weeks in some cases - never mind the rigid number of new jobs or the rigid wage. Hey, maybe it's time for those of us who want some real progress before we die to catch on to this wordgame aspect of phony reform. Here it's the catchy "5000x5000" employment model. Back in 1940 America it was the "40/40/40" plan, meaning 40 cents/hr minimum wage, 40 hrs/wk maximum workweek (faulty overtime legislation meant it was never really enforced), in 1940. Oh the magic of coincidence! Oh the mystery! Oh the ease of remembering and the power to persuade! But rigid and arbitrary doesn't work, no matter how catchy. It's time we smartened up and went with flexible and automatic, like the Timesizing program, where every solution is automatically either controlled by a corresponding market-determined problem or by the closest substitute, regular referendums of the participating population.]

1. Situation in state worsening for individuals with developmental disabilities - One year after lawsuit filed alleging State of Colorado violates federal laws, thousands of Coloradans still awaiting services, more added to waiting list - State action termed 'unconscionable', PRNewswire 08/22/2001 05:00 EDT via AOLNews.
   DENVER - ...Colorado has actually caused a substantial reduction in the number of new residential resources for its current fiscal year.... In addition, several community centered boards, which serve as the single point of entry into the state's developmental disabilities service system for adult services, family supports and some early intervention services, have already moved to or are considering going to a 4-day workweek, claiming inadequate funding. This is exacerbating the pressure - financial, emotional and physical - on already desperate parents and other family caregivers to the detriment of persons with developmental disabilities....
   [Again the mistaken assumption that shorter hours are a problem, when even shorter hours, two people on a 3½-day workweek, could completely cover all seven days in the week.]

2. Dry Brazil northeast shuts power plants, but says okay, Reuters 12:!3 08-22-01 via AOLNews.
   Brazil's northeast, the region hardest-hit by a drought that brought on a massive energy shortage, was forced to shift power sources as reservoir levels at hydroelectric plants continued to sink, officials said on Wednesday.... The government has said that if its present rationing plan fails, it would first resort to tougher power consumption limits, then cut the work week to four days and only as a last resort introduce controlled blackouts....
   [Here's a fairly direct case where the environment is applying pressure to get humans to cut the self-important dramatics and stop thinking they have to work their massive technology-amplified production machinery 24/7. The environment does it on the input side. The uncapped concentration of income and consequent strangulation of effective demand does it on the output side.]

3. German union to resume Volkswagen talks, by Geir Moulson, AP-NY-08-22-01 1007EDT via AOLNews.
   BERLIN...- Germany's biggest labor union [IG Metall] said Wednesday it will resume talks [next Monday] with automaker Volkswagen AG [VW] on a project that would create 5,000 new jobs - a plan backed by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to lower unemployment. The ["5000x5000"] plan would see VW employ 5,000 people at a salary of 5,000 marks ($2,350) a month, in a program that would involve levels of job flexibility unusual in Germany's heavily regulated labor market.
   The idea of flexible working hours during peak production periods - with working weeks of up to 48 hours and Saturday production - has drawn objections from the union.... IG Metall made clear Wednesday it hasn't dropped its concerns, stressing in a statement that "on average working hours, an excess about the 35-hour a week model is out of the question."...
   [Seems like German labor may actually realize how absolutely important it is to share the vanishing work. What they don't realize is that the only people we have to stop from working overtime is the people who are just doing it for the money. If people are willing to work overtime and reinvest overtime earnings in making the overtime unnecessary in future - by putting it into training and hiring, then there's no problem. In fact, there's an advantage, because it harnesses the volunteerism in an economy to create market-demanded instead of allowing it to continue to compete with them. We consider the proper design of overtime so important that we place its two phases, the corporate phase and the individual phase, before the actual workweek adjustment phase in the Timesizing program. It's the workweek adjustment phase that links the workweek to the unemployment rate on a gradually fluctuating basis. But it's all too tempting to just jump to that phase without cleaning up the often self-defeating design of the laws governing what happens with overtime.]
   In July, Germany's jobless rate rose to 9.2% [higher than 35-hr/wk France's 8.8%], with 3.2m people out of work. German firms including electronics giant Siemens and truck maker MAN have in recent weeks announced thousands of job cuts....

4. Ex-Genoa protesters to target Greek economy speech, by Jeremy Gaunt, Reuters 08:46 08-22-01 via AOLNews.
   Greek anti-globalization activists [of] Genoa 2001-Globalise Resistance..\..who mobilised 2,000 supporters to protest in Genoa [plan] to target...Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis's..\..annual state-of-the-nation speech...in Thessaloniki..\..in northern Greece...on Sept. 8.... "We will be there
   • to oppose
     • privatisation,
     • NATO's involvement in the Balkans,
   • to ask for
     • 35-hour week
     • and higher wages,"
   group organiser Petros Konstantinou told Reuters. He said the group had applied to charter a 500-seat train to take Athens demonstrators to the northern city....
   [Seems like some people in Greece are keeping their nation's ancient democratic traditions very much alive.]

1. [Buried in this bad news is a glimmer of hope -]
   UK workers do longest hours in Europe, TUC says, Reuters 10:02 08-21-01 via AOLNews.
   LONDON...- British workers put in the longest hours in Europe and almost half of them have no flexible working arrangements, the Trades Union Congress [TUC] said Tuesday.
   [Brit morons must be copying their erstwhile colonies way across the Atlantic, when, oh horror, they should be copying their old enemies/allies just across the Channel.]
   Launching a campaign for a better balance between work and social life, it said Britain's long-hours culture damages social stability and does little to improve productivity. A spokesman for the TUC, which has over 70 member unions, said..."The long hours culture is bad for individuals, bad for families, bad for relationships."
   [Our heart bleeds. Cut the soft stuff and do the figures that prove it's bad for business. That in fact it's the prime factor underlying our current worldwide drift into recession. Unions have the resources to do the research. What are they waiting for? Long hours in the context of incessant automation turns ordinary employees into a common and cheap commodity, and where does the huge income from the productivity go? It funnels into the top 5-10% of the income brackets, where they can't possibly spend it. Result? Far more productivity than can be supported by actual spending. A concentration of income so tight that it actually suctions the markets away from its own huge investments. Economists are too self-important and time-blind to do the figures on this. Apparently the unions are too.]
   Britain is the only country that allows employees to opt out of a European directive limiting the working week to 35 hours, the TUC said.
   [There's a European Union directive on this??? Then why the HUGE fuss over the French 35-hour workweek??! And where can we get a copy?!!]
   It said surveys showed that
   • the average British worker puts in 43.6 hours a week
   • while Germans work just over 40 hours.
   • Belgians have 5.2 hours a week more free time than Britons [meaning a workweek of 43.6-5.2= 38.4 hrs].
   [Now correct us if we're wrong, but isn't 40 and 38.4 greater than 35? And ifso, what was it they were saying about "Britain is the only country that allows employees to opt out of a European directive limiting the working week to 35 hours"??? What is this all about? Another unenforceable pronouncement by an irrelevant supra-national body?]
   "Europe has a different cultural approach. It is a more family-oriented society and better-managed. A white collar worker in France is better paid and just as productive," the TUC spokesman said. Among the worst offenders are newer companies that assume all their employees are young, single and utterly committed [ie, have no life] with their "Work hard, Play hard" philosophy....
   [Somebody on the campaign trail last year said to Phil Hyde, "Our parents fought hard for the 40-hour week and the two-day weekend, and now the kids are throwing it all away." What this ignores is that our parents also dropped the ball bigtime once they got the 40-hour week, as if it was perfect and permanent for all time.]
   Flexibility could be increased by staggering working hours for parents, introducing flextime and job-sharing, he said.
   [Staggered hours make no structural difference if there's still 40 of them, and same with flextime.]
   "Too many workers in the UK are expected to work long hours...for no return...," TUC General Secretary John Monks said in a statement. Will Hutton of the Industrial Society said in a statement: "Balancing work and life is crucial to better workplace performance and productivity...." The society, a nonprofit body that campaigns to improve people's working lives, joined the TUC in launching the campaign.
   [British labour tries to pick up where they dropped the ball during World War II.]

2. [On a happier note -]
   French tourist industry enjoys bumper summer, Reuters 11:47 08-21-01 via AOLNews.
   PARIS...- As summer draws to a close and people return home from holiday, France's tourist industry is counting the profits of yet another bumper season with more foreign visitors than ever, the government said on Tuesday. The Ministry of Tourism said initial figures indicated that yet more foreign tourists had flocked to France in 2001 than last year when the country [had] 75m...visitors from abroad....
   [In terms of French vacationing in their own country -]
   Changes to employment laws reducing the working week to a maximum of 35 hours had slightly changed the demographics of the summer holiday period, the ministry said, with more people opting to take a break in June than previously.
   [That should relieve the pressure on August, France's traditional holiday month.]
   Other changes in holiday habits were noted by the country's tourist industry, including a growing tendency to take shorter holidays spread more evenly throughout the year rather than bunching [them] together in the summer and booking last minute.

1. New workforce survey reveals expense control is most critical business challenge facing employers in 2001 and beyond, BW HealthWire BW0408 AUG 20,2001 14:54 EASTERN via AOLNews.
   EMERYVILLE, Calif...- Expense control, specifically [against] rising healthcare, disability and labor costs, was revealed to be the most critical business issue impacting employers over the next 2-3 years, according to a just released, new Productive Workforce Survey.... [One] key finding...from the survey [was],... among private employers, 48% said employee health problems were the top cause of absenteeism, while 40% blamed employee attitude and 38% blamed employee responsibilities. Other top reasons included dependent health problems, dependent personal responsibilities, and longer work hours....
   [So shorten them.]

2. France eyes easing 35-hour rule for small firms, Reuters 10:53 08-20-01 via AOLNews.
   PARIS...- The French Employment Ministry said on Monday it was considering loosening rules on the country's 35-hour workweek to allow small firms to get around restrictions they say seriously threaten their business. The Ministry, which oversees the implementation of the flagship reform of Socialist PM Lionel Jospin's government, said it was studying ways to give firms with fewer than 20 staff more leeway in allowing overtime work.
   Small firms have to implement the law in January, a year after large companies were required to introduce it. The government passed the law to force companies to hire more workers, something the small companies say could ruin them.
   "(Labour Minister) Elisabeth Guigou has always said it was possible to imagine greater flexibility could be given to small companies within the framework of the law, without changing it," a ministry official told Reuters. "It is something being considered at the moment."
   The Finance Ministry has long backed calls...from small firms..\..for more flexibility, [firms] often privately-owned by entrepreneurs unable to afford extra staff or make investments needed to be able to run a business in accordance with the law. It wants to see the number of legally-allowed hours of overtime per year raised to 180 from 130. This would represent a compromise between employers, who are demanding the number of overtime hours per year be raised to 260 hours, and unions wanting to stick to 130.
   [A workweek maximum is no good unless you enforce it. That's how the USA zapped its 40-hr workweek. It immediately started sliding in multiple exceptions to it during World War II. This difficulty illustrates the superiority of (A) adjusting the workweek downward more gradually, as France intended to do in 1982 when it went from 40 hrs. to 39 (but bogged down again at 39) and (B) introducing a self-resolving overtime design, whereby overtime automatically triggers its own resolution in terms of cross-training, before you start lowering the workweek.]

• [worktime in the news]
  The bookshelf - Workplace, corporate world score low marks with authors, by Martha Mangelsdorf, BG, H17.
  The American workplace...this year [is] a threat to democracy [according to one author]. Paula Rayman...in her book "Beyond the Bottom Line: The Search for Dignity at Work" [writes] "Business as usual, which is organized to take people away from families and individuals away from social responsibilities...is a threat to our democratic values." Rayman considers her book a "wake-up call" for our society to explore the costs of long hours in the workplace on families, the care of children and elderly people, and our ability, as a culture, to sustain democracy through community involvement.
  [But this is but another form of the "tragedy of the commons" (see Garrett Harden's famed 1960s-era article by that name). Everyone in a shortsighted, loosely knit society imposes on common property until repeated disasters across the decades and centuries slowly burn disaster avoidance into cultural institutions.]
  ...It could be that [working as a free agent] looks good primarily because the state of the contemporary work world looks so bad.
  [Note another article today touting working at home, "Minding their home, business - Enterprising parents find ways to stay at home and work," by Teri Borseti, BG, H1.]
  ...Paula Rayman argues that there are societal costs to the way we do business that standard economic measures fail to convey.
  [Or even capture in the first place.]
  These costs, she writes, included "increased family stress, a sense of loss of time, environmental decline, emerging violence among children, and financial insecurity."... Rayman is not the first person to write about time scarcity among contemporary Americans.... On one page, Rayman alludes to the Book of Proverbs, Adam Smith, and Charlie Chaplin; two pages later, it's Martin Buber, Immanuel Kant, and Aretha Franklin. ...The most interesting sections of Rayman's book...describe research the Radcliffe Public Policy Center has done about workers and the contemporary work world.... Those human stories add freshness to Rayman's narrative. [For example] Rayman and FleetBoston CEO Terrence Murray launch[ed] an experimental project to see if Fleet could boost productivity while improving its employees' work-life balance. "The immediate reaction from most employees upon hearing about the experiment...was one of disbelief [because] the tough culture of the organization made employees feel that the company cared little about their lives, families and communities."
  [Yeah, America slides into a pervasive "migrant worker mentality."]
  The results Rayman describes from that Fleet project are modestly hopeful [and] Rayman tries to end the book with...a number of "signs of hope."...
  [Hey, this is all part of our 'glimmers of hope' section, though some days it's a strain to find any.]
  Still, fundamentally, [Rayman] ends with a question for all Americans: Will we ever develop an economy that takes into account people's need to have time to care for their families, parents and community?...
  [Aha, Paula pops one form of The Big Question. And the answer is - only if we start by designing one.]

• France: Slow job growth, Bloomberg via NYT, B3.
  [Hey, everywhere else is talking negative job growth because they haven't cut the workweek to share the vanishing work and activate the funnelling income.]
  French companies added fewer workers in the second quarter than at any time in the last two and a half years as declining orders spurred them to scale back production. Payrolls, excluding government and farm work [most of which does not cut to the 35-hour workweek till next year anyway], grew 0.4% from the previous quarter, to 14.9m, the Labor Ministry said. That was half the first quarter's pace. Wages rose 0.5% after gaining 0.9% in the first quarter.
  [And it's these market-starving shorter-hours boosted wage hikes that are keeping France's domestic demand up and making it the most recession-resistant economy in Europe and the industrialized world. Now if they could wean themselves from nuclear power....]

• [Strike just starting over desire for shorter working hours -]
  US Airways flight attendant strike could begin at Express carrier 12:01 am, Sept. 16 - US Airways plan phase 1: countdown to CHAOS(tm) begins, PRNewswire 08/16/2001 14:55 EDT via AOLNews.
  ...If [no] agreement by [deadline] the flight attendants..\..at US Airways Express carrier Piedmont Airways...represented by the Assoc. of Flight Attendants, AFL-CIO, will be free to begin CHAOS strike actions. Create Havoc Around Our System(tm) includes a series of random, unaccounted strikes. Management and passengers won't know ahead of time when or where a strike will take place....
  Peidmont flight attendants have been negotiating for a new contract for more than two years.... Express flight attendants do the same work, often have more duties, work longer hours, wear the same uniform and are employed by the same company as their counterparts at US Airways mainline, yet their pay is drastically lower...up to a 40% difference....
  Aviation Week and Space Technology recently reported that the new pilot contract at Comair would cost the company "an additional $21m...in the first year.... The $21m does not include the cost impact of the provision for an extra day off each month"..\.. "Our entire [Piedmont] contract proposal will cost US Airways just over $1m in the first year," said..\..Betsy Tettelbach, AFA US Airways Express Master Executive Council President [a little title inflation there?!] and Piedmont flight attendant....

• [Strike that started over unwanted shorter hours ends with same long hours -]
  Vegetable workers end strike, AP-NY-08-16-01 1921EDT via AOLNews.
  Union workers at a California vegetable processing plant have ended a two-year strike after reaching a tentative contract agreement with the company's new owners giving them raises and pension benefits.... Workers walked off their jobs in July 1999 aftrr the company asked the union for a three-year wage freeze, reductions in workweek hours and the right to subcontract some jobs..\..
  [Looks like the company wanted to cut hours and pay. Offers like this are blessings in disguise because they share the vanishing work and mop up the wage-depressing labor surplus without war, but labor seldom has the long-term perspective or the financial resources to take advantage of them.]
  About 750 workers, members of Teamsters Local 890, could start returning to their jobs at the Basic Vegetable Products plant in King City, Calif., on Labor Day.... ConAgra-owned Gilroy Foods bought Basic Vegetable in November and began contract negotiations. The plant makes dehydrated onions and garlic, which is sold to other food manufacturers.
  The tentative agreement calls for wage increases of 5% next year and 3% in 2003, and workers will get pension benefits with increases scheduled every year.

• Credence reports results for the third fiscal quarter of 2001, PRNewswire 08/15/2001 16:15 EDT via AOLNews.
  FREMONT, Calif...- Credence Systems Corp. (Nasdaq: CMOS), a leading manufacturer of automatic test equipment (ATE) for the worldwide semiconductor industry, [yester]day reported financial results for its third fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2001. Net sales were [down] 91% from...the third quarter of fiscal 2000. Net sales were down 57% sequentially from...the Company's second fiscal quarter of 2001. The net loss for the third quarter of fiscal 2001 was $22.4m...compared to a net income of $41.0m...in the third quarter of 2000....
  "With the low production levels that we were experiencing this quarter, we actively re-deployed some of our critical manufacturing employees into R&D [research & development] and G&A [??] projects within the Company, resulting in about $1.5m in the quarter being re-directed from what is normally cost of goods sold to operating expenses," said John Detwiler, senior VP and CFO of Credence. "In addition, in order to further reduce our expenses to better match the lower revenues, we have reduced our headcount again this month, bringing the total reductions in the last six months to about 26%."
  Mr. Detwiler added, "We have instituted further pay cuts, and we have moved a signficant number of our employees onto a four day work week. These steps have brought our recurring cash operating expenses down about $4m this quarter, with a decrease of another $1-2m expected next quarter."...
  [So, a 26% downsizing, but a 20% timesizing for a "significant" number, without which the downsizing would probably have been higher. We recommend doing it ALL with timesizing for ALL employees including top executives. We praise Credence's redeployment of employees, similar to Lincoln Electric, but there should have been significant reployment into sales and marketing as at Lincoln. We also recommend bringing the workweek down slowly and companywide and using the incidence of overtime pressures to target cross-training.]