Timesizing® Associates - Homepage

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

10/31/2001  today's spontaneous examples of primitive timesizing -

1. Acterna Corporation reports second quarter results, Business Wire BW2668 OCT 30 2001 20:57 Eastern via AOLNews.
   BURLINGTON, Mass...- Acterna Corporation Corp. (Nasdaq: ACTR), the world's largest provider of test and management solutions for optical transport, access and cable networks and the second largest communications test company overall, reported...net sales for the second quarter of fiscal 2002 were $315m, down 12% from pro forma net sales of $359m for the same period last year....
   The company announced an expanded cost reduction plan, which includes a reduction of 500 positions or 9% of its total workforce, excluding ICS Advent [unit to be sold]. The company will also consolidate some of its development and marketing offices, institute a reduced workweek at selected manufacturing locations and reduce capital expenditures....
   [A reduced workweek to avoid further reduction of workforce = timesizing, not downsizing.] Contact: Allan M. Kline 781-272-6100 or Frank Walter 301-353-1560 x1626 or Monika Veiser 001-33-607-891-136.
   [A Reuters item gives another detail -]
   UPDATE 2 - Acterna posts net loss, cuts jobs, Reuters 12:31 10-31-01 via AOLNews.
   ...Acterna said it will consolidate some offices, cut the work week at some U.S. and German plants, and reduce capital spending....

2. BMC Industries, Inc. reports third quarter and nine-month 2001 financial results, Business Wire BW2190 OCT 30 2001 8:45 Eastern via AOLNews.
   MINNEAPOLIS...- BMC Industries, Inc. [yester]day reported...a consolidated net loss of $4.1m...for third quarter 2001. This compares to net earnings of $2.7m...in the third quarter of 2000.... Third quarter 2001 revenues for the Buckbee-Mears group, which includes both [computer monitor] Mask Operations and Micro-Technology Operations, were $39.7m, a decrease of $13.6m, or 26%...from $53.3m in the third quarter of 2000....
   In response to the external pressures facing the business, the Buckbee-Mears group temporarily shut down all aperture mask production lines at its Cortland, NY manufacturing facility for a three-week period beginning July 19, 2001. The shutdown of lines in Cortland represented extensions of annual maintenance shutdowns typically scheduled during the third quarter. Following the shutdown period, two of the five manufacturing lines in Cortland remained idled for the duration of the quarter. Buckbee-Mears Europe, in addition to its regularly scheduled annual maintenance shutdown, instituted "short-work weeks" during the quarter in response to lower demand for its products. It is expected that the group will continue to idle two lines in Cortland due to soft market conditions for the foreseeable future....
   Contact:... Kathleen P. Pepski, 952/851-6030.
   [So, two kinds of primitive timesizing in play here -
   • one-time 3-wk workmonth reduction for 3 manufacturing lines in the US (the other 2 lines appear to be idled indefinitely)
   • ongoing short workweeks in Europe, far preferable to the jerky US practice of workmonth manipulation
   [The Buckbee-Mears group did also reduce its headcount by more than 500 positions (25%) since the beginning of the year but with the worktime reductions, this more drastic type of reduction would clearly have been higher.]

3. Cymer firings, Bloomberg via BG, C2.
   ...The top supplier of lasers to make semiconductors fired 98 workers, or about 11% of its staff, and will temporarily close factories this year to reduce costs. The [San Diego-based] company will close factories for a week at Thanksgiving and for two weeks at Christmas and New Year's.
   [So, a one-time workmonth reduction in Dec. to avoid further firings.]

4. Degussa warns on profits, cuts another 1,000 jobs, Reuters 10-30-01 via AOLNews.
   FRANKFURT...- Germany's Degussa AG on Tuesday became the latest big chemicals group to issue a profit warning and said 1,000 more jobs would go to counter a recent sharp deterioration in its markets.
   [...thus guaranteeing its markets will deteriorate still further. When are these chimpanzees going to notice the connection? It's like when Mr. Timesizing was up in the Northwest Territories, fishing on Lac LaMartre back in '89(?). He hooked something but had difficulty reeling it in. Then he noticed that every time he pulled back on the rod, a tern in the distance went underwater. There couldn't possibly be any remote connection, could there? Duh. You bet. Fishing in the NWT had effectively "given him the bird." Gently he reeled in as they moved the boat closer. He picked up the startled tern and started gently to remove the hook from the webbing in one of its feet. Then the "gentle" giant, Big Frank, grabbed the bird and tore out the hook. Argggh. The bird sh*t all over him. Tho '2 wrongs don't make a right,' one bad turn often leads to another. Diiisgusting. Now back to Degussa -]
   The Duesseldorf-based group, which currently has about 44,000 employees, also said it would accelerate the planned closure of 8 unprofitable plants, slash investments and introduce short-time working conditions at 3 other plants.... Short-time working conditions included less overtime and a temporary reduction in working hours....
   [Presumably they'd be having even more jobcuts if they weren't cutting overtime and straight-time hours.]

1. Investment banks pay some workers not to show up, by Suzanne Kapner, NYT, C4.
   ...A handful of investment banks are experimenting with..\..flexible leave...programs for the first time this year..\.. These programs...have become a way for consulting firms and other businesses for which people are the main expense to reduce overhead in a time of economic uncertainty. ...Programs are intended to help companies react to a business cycle that has sped up in recent years..\.. But for the cutthroat business of investment banking...these programs are a novelty.
   ...Merrill Lynch is offering employees who have been with the firm for at least two years the option of taking sabbaticals of six months to a year. Those who participate get a fifth of their salaries plus full benefits....
   Although a 12-month sabbatical may seem like a dream come true for many, it can be a strain on the pocketbooks of recent graduates [if it takes the form of deferred hiring of new employees]..\.. J. P. Morgan Chase...offer[ed] to pay..\..Jamie Odell, a recent graduate of Princeton University...who was supposed to start training as a financial analyst last month...$20,000 up front, roughly a fifth of his salary, if he would defer joining the firm for a year. As an added incentive, the company said it would pay $5,000 extra if he worked for a nonprofit organization. Otherwise he would be free to spend his time any way he liked, as long as he did not work for a competitor. Mr. Odell now teaches math and social studies to fifth and sixth graders at Our Lady Queen of Angels in Manhattan. About a tenth of J. P. Morgan Chase's 600 college recruits in the U.S. have taken up the deferral offer...often called..\..voluntary deferral....
   Such programs are not without their risks, said John Bowmer, CEO of Adecco, a Swiss company that is one of the world's largest recruiters of temporary and permanent employees. "What happens if the economy doesn't come back next year?" he asked....
   [That's why less jerky methods of timesizing are better - like corporation-specific workweek adjustment for all employees including top executives and not just corporation-specific worklife adjustment.]
   "The cost isn't just dollars," Mr. Bowner said. "it's the cost of a company's reputation"..\.. The programs do help these banks save face \after contracting with new hires\ in what is proving to be a globally synchronized recession.... But..\..deferral programs mean these companies will have fewer spaces for 2002 college graduates....
   [And that's another reason why we need to get rid of our rigid and outdated idea that the workweek has to be the same 40 hours per person or more that it was over two generations ago. Rigid-workweek economies are going the way of the dinosaur. They are unsustainable in the context of mounting work savings of inrushing technology.]

2. [And here's one chap who's showing the way -]
   An urban hermit, pointer summary (to A10), NYT, A2.
   The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia has formally recognized Brother Richard Withers as a hermit. The 46-year-old man has taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and lives alone, not in some remote desert or forest but in a row house in a struggling urban neighborhood. And he works one day a week [at a company that makes scientific instruments to make ends meet and] "earn a living."
   [Here's a guy who really works to live, not lives to work, a rarer and rarer thing in an America that has taken the grim "laurels" for the longest annual working hours in the developed world away from karoshi-hobbled Japan.]

3. [And here's a company doing both leaves and shorter workweeks -]
   PSi Technologies reports third quarter 2001 results, PRNewswire 10/29/2001 16:00 EST via AOLNews.
   SANTA CLARA, Calif. and MANILA, Philippines...- PSi Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: PSIT) a leading independent provider of assembly and test services to the power semiconductor market, [yester]day announced...net income for the third quarter amounted to a loss of $2.21m, compared with a similar loss of $2.25m in the previous quarter and a profit of $2.6m in the same period last year.... "We experienced our lowest level of business activity in the third quarter as our customers continued to scale down their loadings with us, even as they themselves worked down their inventories...," said Arthur J. Young, Jr., PSi Chairman and CEO.... Throughout the third quarter, PSi continued to implement concrete measures to lower costs such as workforce reduction through attrition and early retirement, a compulsory leave without pay scheme for everyone in the Company, and shortened work weeks....
   [The important principal PSi has practiced here is captured in the phrase "for everyone in the Company." Lincoln Electric puts a finer point on it, "All sacrifice together, starting at the top."]

• Strikers unchain gates to Louvre, Reuters 07:07 10-27-01 via AOLNews.
  PARIS...- Striking workers unchained the gates to the Louvre, home to the Mona Lisa, on Saturday after the museum won a court injunction to stop them keeping visitors out. The museum said only nine of the Louvre's 1,8080 staff had voted to continue a blockade that began on October 18 in a dispute over the introduction of a shorter work week in France.... The riverside museum is among a clutch of publicly-owned tourist draws in Paris that have been hit since March by industrial action. Workers want more staff hired so they can enjoy the benefits of a 35-hour working week.
  [Apparently the French government has yet to really get serious about the 35-hour workweek. Not only is it overloading existing employees instead of practicing its own stated goal about using the shorter workweek to create more jobs, hire more people and force down France's 9% unemployment rate, but it's not even uniformly applying the shorter workweek to itself until next year along with small corporations (fewer than 20 employees). So, the usual B.S. from government = leading from behind. Here's another version of the same story -]
  Louvre reopens after workers' strike, AP-NY-10-27-01 1115EDT via AOLNews.
  PARIS - The Louvre Museum reopened on Saturday after a strike by workers protesting the way France's shortened work week has been implemented kept it shut for eight days.... The...government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin introduced a new law that reduced the work week from 39 hours to 35 hours. Museum workers say they cannot take the extra time that is due to them because no one has been hired to fill the gaps.
  The strike at the Louvre is a follow-up to a similar action in March. Officials at the Louvre said Thursday that it has lost $2.1m and has turned away hundreds of thousands of visitors as a result of the two strikes....
  [Then simply practice what you preach and HIRE MORE PEOPLE, you morons! The 35-hour workweek is something that the whole world should have had back in 1930, but some people just don't get it. They've lived miserable workoholic lives and goddammit, EVERYBODY is gonna live miserable workoholic lives too - FOREVER - regardless of worksaving technology!]

1. Veeco says profits down, cuts 15 pct of staff, Reuters 07:37 10-26-01 via AOLNews.
   ...Woodbury, NY-based..\..Veeco Instruments Inc. (VECO.O), which makes equipment to manufacture microelectronic products, on Friday said its third-quarter profits fell nearly 44%, hurt by a decline in bookings and customer cancellations.... Third-quarter net income was $1.8m...compared with $3.2m...a year ago.... Veeco said it plans to consolidate some plant operations, reduce management salaries and do selective work-week reductions to cut costs....

2. ICOS Vision Systems reports financial results for the third quarter of 2001, Business Wire BW0737 Oct 26 2001 2:03 EASTERN via AOLNews.
   ICOS Vision Systems Corporation N.V. (Nasdaq and Nasdaq Europe: IVIS), a world leader in [machine] vision solutions, [yester]day announced...revenues for the three months ended September 30, 2001 were $1.95m, down 69% sequentially, and down 93% from $28.2m for the same period in 2000....
   The fourth quarter plan is intended to reduce quarterly operating expenses by 15%, beginning in the first quarter of 2002, through a combination of salary and headcount reductions across all geographies and functions, shortened workweeks, and general and administrative expense cuts....
   ICOS' headquarters are located in Heverlee, Belgium and it has sales and support offices in Japan, in the USA, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan. The German subsidiary is, besides having its sales and support function, also active as an R&D center....

1. California Micro Devices reports Q2 financial results, Business Wire BW0530 OCT 25 2001 16:04 EASTERN via AOLNews.
   MILPITAS, Calif. - California Micro Devices Corp. (Nasdaq: CAMD) [yester]day announced financial results for its second quarter of fiscal 2002, ended September 30, 2001.... The second quarter net loss of $8.3m...included restructuring and other charges totaling $4.6m related to the Company's previously announced strategy to outsource a significant portion of its wafer manufacturing. As part of this strategy, the Company plans to consolidate all of its wafer fabrication activities into its Tempe, AZ facility with selected high-value backend manufacturing operations continuing at its Milpitas headquarters....
   The Company noted that the positive effect of higher distributor sell-through on gross margin dollars was offset by mix and variances largely related to die business.
   [Ooh, we LOVE it when they talk like that!]
   Gross margin continues to be affected by the reduced build schedule offset partially by shutdowns, a reduction in workforce and a change to a four-day work week in Tempe....
   [Bottom line - they're using shorter worktime to constrain workforce reduction = timesizing vs. downsizing.]
   Contact: California Micro Devices Corp.
   Robert V. Dickinson, 408/934-3172 (President and CEO)
   John Trewin, 408/934-3103 (Vice President and CFO)

2. Germany's Lufthansa cuts service, AP-NY-10-25-01 1317EDT via AOLNews.
   FRANKFURT...- German airline Lufthansa said Thursday it would idle another 15 planes, bringing the total to 43, and cut its service on more routes because of the fall in passenger traffic after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.... It is in talks with its employees about further cost cutting measures, saying it might seek to move some to a four-day workweek, though no agreement has been reached....
   Chief executive Juergen Weber said the company lost $80m in September alone and has seen passenger traffic fall by 20%....

3. German union boss urges 4-day week, not job cuts, Reuters 06:20 10-25-01 via AOLNews.
   BERLIN...- A top German trade unionist has called on employers to bring in a four-day working week to prevent the slowing of economic growth leading to mass lay-offs.
   [Doesn't he mean "to prevent mass lay-offs leading to further slowing of economic growth"? (and to further mass layoffs = death spiral). There's not much choice unless you like big wars.]
   Juergen Peters, deputy chairman of the powerful IG Metall union, told the weekly Focus Money magazine this would be a "fairer way to spread out the burden in a time of massive unemployment" for Europe's largest economy. "Everyone (among employers) should first take a look (at it), before they make stupid dismissals," Peters told the magazine. He said employers would gain from a shorter working week by avoiding costly severance packages and benefits....
   [Good point, but Peters should stop trying so hard to sell it to employers and make sure his own union side is uniformly pushing for it. What's the big holdup in the four-day workweek at Lufthansa, for example (see story above)? Have the Volkswagen employees in Brazil accepted the 4-day week that management is pushing for (10/02, #3)? What about all the labor unions irate about a shorter workweek bill in Brazil (10/12, #3)? How's the 4-day workweek doing at Air Canada (10/02, #2)?]
   Some companies such as automaker Volkswagen have already moved to a similar model for some workers to forestall job cuts.
   And Juergen Weber, chief executive of German flag carrier Lufthansa AG, has said that a four-day week would be a sensible way to deal with the drop in passenger numbers since the attacks in the United States last month [see story above]....

4. [And a less flexible model, cutting the workyear instead of the workweek, but this time not by longer vacations -]
   South Korea: Cuts at Hynix, by Don Kirk, NYT, W1.
   All 14,000 employees of Hynix Semiconductor will have to go on a one-month unpaid leave sometime in the next five months so the company can reduce its labor costs by 30%. Hynix Semiconductor said the plan had the approval of its labor union....
   [Well, yeah - it's share the vanishing work by cutting worktime or lose jobs and union members. We saw Hynix cut to a 6-month workyear at an Oregon plant back on 7/19, #3.]

1. Amkor reports third quarter 2001 results, Business Wire BW0642 OCT 24,2001 16:17 EASTERN via AOLNews.
   CHANDLER, Ariz. - Amkor Technology, Inc. announced...total revenue was $335m, down 48% from the third quarter of 2000 and down 4% sequentially.... "Since earlier in the year, when it became evident that the semiconductor industry was experiencing a significant downturn...," said Ken Joyce, Amkor's CFO... "we have undertaken a comprehensive program of cost reductions, including reductions in our worldwide workforce, shortened factory work weeks, improved operating efficiencies and negotiated material cost savings....
   [Additional downsizing avoided by timesizing.]
   Contact: Jeffrey Luth, 480/821-2408 ext. 5130, VP Investor Relations, jluth@amkor.com
   [or]
   Patrick McKinney, 480/821-2408 ext. 5179, SVP Marketing Communications, pmcki@amkor.com
   [Boys, you'll get more investors if you include your stock symbol in your press releases.]

2. R. R. Donnelley reports 3rd-quarter 2001 earnings; revises 2001 guidance, PRNewswire 10/24/2001 09:00 EDT via AOLNews.
   CHICAGO... - R. R. Donnelley & Sons Co. (NYSE: DNY) reported...net income was $54.3m compared with $84.4m a year ago.... Across all its businesses, the company also is realizing the financial benefits of idling equipment and reducing work hours to adjust capacity to current activity levels, and streamlining the delivery of general and administrative services. Announced actions will reduce the total workforce by more than 7%....
   [Again, additional downsizing has been avoided by timesizing. We also had timesizing reports from R.R. Donnelley this year on 4/26, #2 and 6/13 #1.]
   [Followup]
   R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., Republic news services via 8/03/2002 Arizona Republic, D2.
   ...didn't discriminate against 342 older employees when it closed a Chicago printing facility in 1993 after losing a contract to print the Sears catalog, a federal jury found Friday [8/02/2002]. Chicago-based Donnelley, which prints such publications as TV Guide and Sports Illustrated at 52 plants worldwide, was accused by workers of failing to find jobs for older workers at other facilities when it closed the facility.
   [Followup - oh-oh, our timesizer is contracting the merger cancer -]
   Big printers to merge, a $2.8B stock deal, by Andrew Sorkin, 11/10/2003 NYT, C1.
   R.R. Donnelley & Sons agreed yesterday to acquire Moore Wallace...of Mississauga ONT..\..creating a printing giant that manufactures everything from magazines like Sports Illustrated and TV Guide to billing and shipping labels for companies like UPS and J.C. Penney. The deal is expected to transform Donnelley, which was founded in 1864 when Richard Robert Donnelley, a Canadian, joined with two Chicago publishers, into a full-service printing and logistics concern.... Moore Wallace...popularized the carbon copy in the early 1900s when it was [just] Moore. [It's] now one of the world's largest printers of business forms and labels....
   The transaction...a merger of equals, will result in a combined company with more than $8B in annual revenue and about 50,000 employees worldwide.... The combined company is to be called R.R. Donnelley and to remain in Chicago....

1. Disney World offers employees 4-day week, pay cuts, Reuters 17:29 10-23-01 via AOLNews.
   The Walt Disney Co.'s {DIS.N} Walt Disney World theme park in Orlando, Fla., in an ongoing effort to cut custs, has offered salaried employees the option [of] a four-day work week with a corresponding drop in pay. In a statement issued on Tuesday, Disney World said the offfer was made to workers on a voluntary basis and, so far, the number of interested employees "has been minimal."
   [This is in contrast to the surveys which show that two thirds of American employees would give up pay for more free time. But maybe Disney employees are not working the 50, 60, 70-hour workweeks that some others are working, and maybe the paycuts imagined by other employees were not as much as 20%.]
   The offer comes as the theme park business in general, and Disney World in particular, has been grappling with lower attendance following the Sept. 11 air attacks.... Disney World said it would continue looking for way to manage its costs. Walt Disney Co. already announced large cuts in its global workforce earlier this year.
   [An AP story gives further details -]
   Disney asks workers to cut back jobs, AP-NY-10-23-01 1058EDT via AOLNews.
   Eds: TOPS with 5 grafs to reflect only some salaried employees being asked for concessions, includes total number of employees at Disney World, more comment from Disney spokeswoman; Picks up 4th graf pvs bgng, "Disney also...."
   ORLANDO, Fla. - Walt Disney world officials asked some of their salaried workers to volunteer for a 20% cutback in hours and salary. The company wants some of the resort's 7,400 full-time salaried employees to scale back their work week to 32 hours, saying it will save some jobs and preserve insurance and retirement benefits for employees, spokeswoman Marilyn Waters said Monday....
   [Bingo, the classic reason for shorter hours under stress - to avoid layoffs and keep some money in people's pockets. Perhaps if Disney had been been modeling this behavior during good times, America would have more free time for leisure pursuits that would strengthen leisure industries like...Disney World.]
   The offer of voluntary reductions was make only to Orlando-area workers, not to those in California. Orlando's theme park has been hit harder by the drop in tourism because it relies more on visitors who traveled on airplanes..\..
   Walt Disney World, until recently, had about 55,000 full-and-part-time employees.
   [How about giving us a comparable figure like the number of the resort's previous full-time salaried employees to compare with the current 7,400?!]
   Waters said the voluntary work reductions were "an opportunity" to employees "because some people would like to do that for lifestyle reasons."
   [Perhaps a 20% lifestyle enhancement is a bit too much at one time.]
   "In no way is anybody being pressured to take it," Waters said.
   Disney also fired an unspecified number of highly paid contract workers in its technology department on Monday and reduced the hours of some attractions, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
   Work schedules for about 40,000 hourly employees had been reduced after the Sept. 11 attacks that devastated the tourism industry. About 1,000 salaried Disney workers in California and Orlando were laid off before Sept. 11.... Other cost-cutting measures were also taken. Some live shows will be eliminated on certain days, including MGM Studios' Beauty and the Beast, and the hours of a handful of attractions at Epcot were reduced.
   [Whoops, and here's the original Orlando Sentinel story forwarded to us by RadioTony -]
   Disney asks workers to cut hours to save money, by Robert Johnson, Oct 23 2001 Orlando Sentinel via OrlandoSentinel.com's tourism page.
   [Robert Johnson can be contacted at rwjohnson@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5664.]
   Thousands of salaried workers at Walt Disney World were asked Monday to cut their work week to 32 hours as the company stepped up cost-cutting efforts. The move will mean 20% less in their paychecks for 7,400 workers at Disney's parks, hotels and administrative offices....
   Also Monday, Disney..\..trimmed the hours of some attractions and restaurants and fired an unspecified number of...highly paid contract workers in its technology segment. The company would not confirm the estimates by other Disney employees that about 40 contract workers, some at the attraction for as long as five years, were dismissed effective Oct. 19..\..
   [Hey, being surprised at termination when you're a contract worker is like being surprised your husband is hit when he's in the army.]
   The company's higher-paid employees join the ranks of the attraction's 40,000 hourly workers, who have seen their work schedules sharply reduced since the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks in New York and Washington, DC, that devastated the tourism industry.
   Disney spokeswoman Marilyn Waters said the reduced workweek was a way to "save some jobs" and that employees would be able to keep insurance and retirement benefits. Waters said the voluntary work reductions were "an opportunity" to employees "because some people would like to do that for lifestyle reasons." However, she said if there weren't enough takers it would not automatically mean that some jobs would be abolished. But that possibility was clearly implied. About 1,000 salaried Disney workers were laid off before Sept. 11. They were caught up in cutbacks that included Disneyland in California.
   The Monday offer of voluntary reductions was made only to Orlando-area workers, an indication that Disney World has been harder hit than Disneyland by the fallout from the terrorism attacks.... The disparity has much to do with the demographic differences in the two parks' markets. Disneyland draws huge attendance from a steady supply of West Coast visitors who drive there. Disney World relies heavily on tourists who fly in from the North, Midwest and overseas. Reduced airline schedules have hit hard at Disney World's so-called "destination" trade.
   Among the cost-cutting measures Disney World has adopted are eliminating some live stage shows on certain days, such as Disney-MGM Studios' Beauty and the Beast.
   And Monday it went further. At Epcot, most of the Future World section in the front of the park will be open for three hours less each day. The hours were trimmed to 10 am to 7 pm, compared with 9 am to 9 pm.
   [So, trimmed 25% from 12 hours a day to 9 hours a day. This exceeds the 20% cut wanted in employee hours and pay.]
   A handful of Future World attractions will remain open until 9 am. The Spaceship Earth and Test Track rides, Honey I Shrunk the Kids show and Innoventions pavilion. One Future World restaurant, Coral Reef, will also remain open until 9 pm.
   Epcot's World Showcase section, which consists largely of restaurants and shops representing nations throughout the world, will open an hour later - at noon - and still close at its usual 9 pm.
   "We still have more entertainment than guests can experience in a day," Waters said. Waters said Disney World's Yacht and Beach Club resort, near MGM Studios, has closed its Galley restaurant but still has three other restaurants....
   [Note previous story on Disney below on 10/17.]

2. CCH survey finds employee absenteeism rises slightly, while employers struggle with high cost of 'sick time', PRNewswire 10/23/2001 08:02 EDT via AOLNews.
   ...In fqact, 43% of those surveyed consider unscheduled absenteeism a serious problem for their organization..\.. When it comes to reducing absences through specific absence control programs, the survey..\..conducted by *CCH Inc. [of] Riverwoods, Ill...provider of employment law and HR information..\..found that Paid Leave Banks (also known as Paid Time Off Programs) continue to be seen as the most effective, with an overall rating of 3.6..\..
   [So, shorter worktime reduces absenteeism. Sounds fairly obvious in light of some previous statements -]
   With the downturn in the economy,...as companies reduce their workforce, the responsibilities of remaining employees will likely increase..\..said Nancy Kaylor, a workplace analyst for CCH....
   [Why should responsibilities be increasing when it's a downturn because sales and output are decreasing? No wonder employees are sicking out - employers are taking advantage of the downturn to cut jobs, raise job insecurity and impose longer hours on survivors, instead of merely adjusting the workweek for everyone to falling demand (i.e., timesizing).]
   Employers found Disciplinary Action to be the next most effective program (3.4), followed by Bonus (3.3) and Buy Back (3.3) programs. Most employers reported using multiple programs to help control absenteeism, with the most common being Discplinary Action, in use at 93% of organizations. Yearly Review and Verification of Illness are the next in use at 81% and 71% of organizations, respectively, while 58% of employers indicated using Paid Leave Banks....
   [That's weird. They use the most effective program least.]
   The 2001 CCH Unscheduled Absence Survey [available for $29.95 by calling 800-449-9525] surveyed 234 HR executives in U.S. companies and organizations of all sizes and across major industry segments in 42 states and the District of Columbia. The survey reflects experiences of randomly polled organizations with an estimated total of 1,371,261 employees.
   [Ah, maybe they could round that off at least to 1,371,000 if it's just an estimate anyway.]
   The survey was conducted from May 31 through June 21, 2001....

1. Ripple effect from attack: Suppliers have no demand - In the garment district, layoffs and challenges, by Cathy Horyn, NYT, C18.
   ..."Every single factory that we've had contact with has laid off workers or reduced their hours," said Steven Weingarten, industry development director at the Union of Needle Trades, or Unite, in New York....
   [Cutting hours, not jobs seems quite common in New York's garment district.]

2. Tough times for hotel workers - [Gov. Jane] Swift pushing wage share program, by Kathleen Kingsbury, [Boston] Metro, p.05, noticed by our intrepid (but shy) Cambridge correspondent.
   ...A news conference [was] held yesterday by acting [Massachusetts] Gov. Jane Swift to tout two state programs that employers can use to ease the pain of the current economic downturn.
   The first, the state's WorkSharing initiative, allows employers to preserve jobs by reducing an employee's hours by 10-60% for up to 26 weeks.
   [At this point, looks like a variation on France's 1995-96 Robien Law (for more info, click here and scan down to heading "Nations") - French wisdom spreads to America! But if this idea came from the Dukakis administration back in the 1980s, as indicated elsewhere in the article, it preceded the Robien Law in France by at least 5-6 years. So maybe the French got the idea from us? At any rate, this could be another small step toward the thorough-going system we need - one that lets us share the vanishing work and maintain our markets.]
   The state will make up the lost wages with unemployment insurance benefits....
   [At this point, looks like Fred Best's 1988 book, "Reducing the Workweek to Avoid Layoffs - The economic and social impacts of unemployment-insurance supported work sharing" (Temple Univ. Press, Philadelphia).]
   "WorkSharing is a win-win," Swift said. "Employees keep their jobs and benefits while employers avoid rehiring and retraining new workers."
   Where layoffs cannot be avoided, Swift also outlined a program in which the state pays up to 80% of the health insurance of workers who lose their jobs
   These programs that Gov. Swift spoke abaout will significantly help my members"..\..Janice Loux, the president of Boston Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local 26...said....
   Both [programs] have been on the books since [Democrat] Michael Dukakis was governor in the 1980s. [Even so,] Democratic lawmakers criticized Swift for promoting these programs....
   [Massachusetts Democrats aren't too smart. They've been in power so long they've become lazy, dull, inbred and corrupt.]
   "I don't think we should be penalized for the fact we already have the right programs in place to deal with economic dislocation of our workers," Swift responded....

1. Lufthansa eyes 300 mln dmk cost savings - paper, Reuters 10:45 10-21-01 via AOLNews.
   FRANKFURT - ...Citing a management board document, German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said Lufthansa was losing 5m marks per day.... The company has cut flight capacity and raised prices in an effort to counter the additional costs. ...Lufthansa's cost-cutting measures would also include a freeze on hiring and investment and a renegotiation of contracts with suppliers. The introduction of shorter working times and the abolition of wages supplements were also planned, and temporary contracts would not be renewed, the newspaper reported.
   Asked to comment on suggestions in the report that job cuts were likely if the crisis worsened..\..a spokeswoman for the company...said Lufthansa would continue to work with unions to prevent redundancies [= layoffs].... Lufthansa CEO Juergen Weber had previously said revenues were 50m euros per week lower since the Sept. 11 attacks, and suggested a four-day week to deal with the subsequent drop in passenger numbers.

2. [A propos of odd reasons for shortening the workweek (see 10/13/2001 #6) -]
   U.S. Capitol offices stay closed for anthrax checks, by Donna Smith, Reuters 19:36 10-21-01 via AOLNews.
   U>S. Senate and House of Representatives office buildings will remain closed on Monday.... They were shut at the close of business last Wednesday after an anthrax-laced letter was received by the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a SD Democrat.... Both the House and Senate are scheduled to be in session on Tuesday.... House leaders have taken considerable heat in the news media for cutting short the work week because of the anthrax scare. The Senate remained in session through Thursday....

1. Lufthansa {LHAG.F} says job cuts may be unavoidable, Reuters 04:34 10-19-01 via AOLNews.
   BERLIN...- German carrier Luftahansa AG will not be able to avoid redundancies unless it introduced a four-day working week, a Lufthansa executive said late Thursday, adding talks with union officials would start Friday. ...Management board member Wolfgang Maryhuber said...passenger numbers had dropped by 20% since the September 11 attacks on the United States. "We hope to be able to make it without job cuts," Maryhuber said, adding that this depended on whether employees were prepared to accept flexible working hours....

2. [The trouble with "furloughs" -]
   Hotel layoffs take human toll since Sept. 11, by Doug Young, Reuters 18:20 10-19-01 via AOLNews.
   LOS ANGELES...- Celia Talavera went to work thinking things were looking up at the swanky Los Angeles area hotel where she worked, following several abysmal weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. The Mexican immigrant and two-year employee in the housekeeping department of Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, was called in on one of her days off. ...She was led to believe that the ongoing travel crisis was easing and business was picking up....
   But business was anything but usual when she attended a mandatory meeting at 4 pm that day. Instead of being put back to work, she learned that her furlough had become a firing.... Loews...has taken a number of steps to help its laid-off employees get new jobs and free or low-cost health care. But the fact remains that the hotel laid off about 50 people, in the kind of move seen throughout the industry....
   [Sustainable, "we're all in it together" workweek fluctuation is much better than furloughs, which are easy to abuse.]

1. Etc., Boston Globe, C2.
   Facing sluggish sales, General Motors, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler are closing several plants for one to two weeks starting Monday, affecting 14,400 employees.

2. Kimball International, Inc. reports first quarter fiscal 2002 results; Operating cash flow improves, Business Wire BW0093 OCT 18,2001 7:44 EASTERN via AOLNews.
   JASPER, Ind. - ...Several actions taken by the Company include streamlining and consolidating manufacturing operations. Intensifying its global procurement and supply chain efforts, a heightened focus on all discretionary spending, operating with shorter work weeks and fewer shifts, and an approximate 2,000 or 18% reduction in its worldwide workforce from January 1, 2001 to September 30, 2001.... Kimball International, Inc. [*kimball.com, Nasdaq: KBALB] provides a vast array of products from its two business segments: the Furniture and Cabinets Segment and the Electronic Contract Assemblies Segment.... Contact: Robert Schneider, 812/482-8264, e-mail rschnei@kimball.com

3. CorVel announces record revenues and earnings, PRNewswire 10/18/2001 09:00 EDT via AOLNews.
   IRVINE, Calif. - ...During the quarter CorVel was able to strengthen margins in its patient management services. Improvements in productivity, as well as in pricing, combined to increase field profits. Revenues were impacted by reduced work hours caused by the national events and the bankruptcy of Reliance Insurance. The current shortage of nurses continues to push costs for case management services....
   CorVel Corp. (*corvel.com) [Nasdaq: CRVL] is a national provider of leading-edge services and solutions in the field of managed healthcare....

4. Philippine electronics exports seen off 15 pct y/y [year on year], Reuters 06:46 10-18-01 via AOLNews.
   ...reeling from the industry's worst downturn in 40 years.... Electronics items are the lifeblood of Philippine exports, making up around 60% of total shipments.... Semiconductor and Electronic Industries in the Philippines (SEIPI)...Exec. Dir. Ernie Santiago said companies were now operating at just 40 to 60% of their capacity, the working week had been reduced, and about 15,000 jobs of a total sector workforce of more than 300,000 have been lost this year. To cushion the slump, companies have been taking the opportunity to upgrade and re-engineer operations, besides cutting costs....

1. Plimoth Plantation planning layoffs, AP via BG, C9.
   ...More than two dozen employees will lose their jobs and seven full-time positions will be reduced to part time as part of a plan to cut $2m from the historic site's budget.
   [= Cutting hours to avoid additional layoffs.]
   The layoffs [and hours cuts] come as a result of a slowing economy and [9/11]... Museum director, Nancy Brennan said...70 school and adult tours have been canceled. Walk-in traffic was down almost 30% for Sept. and Oct.

2. Louisiana-Pacific to sell a mill and cut 190 jobs, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   ...The company will also suspend production at some lumber mills in North America for two weeks.... The company, based in Portland, Ore., said more production halts might be necessary.
   [= Cutting worktime to avoid deeper cuts in workforce.]

3. Burnt-out British family doctors want to quit, by Patricia Reaney, Reuters 06:09 10-17-01 via AOLNews.
   A quarter of British family doctors are fed up with their working conditions and want to quit in the next five years, according to a survey released on Wednesday. Nearly half plan to retire before they reach 60 and more than 96% are frustrated with excessive workloads that prevent them from doing their job properly and limit the time they can spend with patients.... Two-thirds of doctors describled morale as low and 65% said it had fallen in the last five years. More than 20% said stress levels were excessive and unmanageable and nearly half said they wanted to reduce their work hours..\..
   "The survey shows a profession in poor heart with general practitioners (GPs) paying an unacceptable personal price for their commitment," said Dr. John Chisholm of the British Medical Association (BMA).... Chisholm described GPs as burnt out and exhausted..\.. The survey conducted by the BMA is the biggest poll of the country's 42,360 family doctors working in the state-funded National Health Service.... Nearly 55% of GPs responded to the postal survey that included 50 questions about job satisfaction, morale and suggestions for improvements..\..
   [Physicians, heal yourselves!]
   The doctors called for radical action and a new contract with the government which they hope will be finalised by next April. If doctors' demands are not met, many are prepared to walk....
   [Actions speak louder than words.]

4. AFL-CIO offers plan to stimulate U.S. economy [Oh boy, is this something new and creative, like Timesizing?]
   WASHINGTON - [Part of] the American labor movement unveiled its own brand of economic stimulus on Wednesday that has as its core a $60B package of direct support for unemployed workers....
   [Nope, guess this is just more handouts, and the AFL-CIO is still clueless about the source and stay of its power, tightly controlled worktime per person, which it still regards as negative, not positive -]
   For workers who lost their jobs or have been forced to work reduced hours, the federal government should pick up the cost of continued company-provided health care coverage, which federal law now allows laid-off employees to continue at their own expense for 18 months, the AFL-CIO said..\..
   [And why? Because they're still only comparing it to the worst "solutions" of the top income brackets, not the best solutions of the 1930s -]
   In sharp contrast to Republican-backed measures that rely almost entirely on tax cuts to give the shaky U.S. economy a boost, the AFL-CIO's package would enrich unemployment insurance benefits and pay the cost of continuing medical coverage for recently idled or underemployed workers....
   [Will it ever occur to them that the solution for "under"-employment is a fluid concept of "full" employment that adjusts to the realities of automation and robotization, instead of squawling for handouts to maintain a pre-technology workweek, frozen in the pre-war era at 40 hours a week? Until it does occur to them, they will continue to lose power and membership.]

1. Universal Orlando lays off workers, AP-NY-10-16-01 via AOLNews.
   ORLANDO, Fla. - Universal Orlando on Tuesday laid off about 100 workers as the company faces a drop in theme park visitors after last month's terrorist attacks.... Florida's tourism industry has been ailing since the attacks. Walt Disney World and Universal [Orlando] already have reduced the work week to 32 hours for most of their full-time hourly employees and eliminated hours for part-time workers....

2. Conti {CONG.DE} sees drop in Q4 US tyre business, Reuters 6:53 10-16-01 via AOLNews.
   German tyre and car parts maker Continental AG on Tuesday said it expected a significant decline in its fourth quarter United States tyre business, which analysts said could jeopardise 2001 profit targets.... The Continental Tire North America unit will cut production of tyres for new vehicles by about 15% and introduce a short work week in the U.S. in November, said the company....
   Meanwhile, Continental Teves North America unit will cut production of tyres for new vehicles by about 20%, adjust working hours and introduce an unpaid leave programme. "The company plans massive efforts to cut costs, to counter the fall in production and its financial effects," said Conti [i.e., Continental AG], referring to Teves....
   [Reminder - why the funny spelling? With the exception of tyres and jeopardise, this is Canadian and British spelling. The y and s in tyres and jeopardise are just British.]

3. Lessons from the Great Depression come into focus, by Charles Jaffe, Boston Globe, D7.
   Every week, I get mail from people who describe themselves as a "child of the Depression." ...The lessons learned by the children of the Great Depression are coming back into focus in the current economy.
   Today's youngsters have never lived through a recession [what does he call 1982 and 1991?}. The 1980s were "the greed decade" [or the "me" decade], only to be surpassed by the bull market-fueled avarice of the 1990s. But current economic downturn is hitting home for many. If it's not layoffs at your [own] employer, it's cutbacks affecting [your parents or] schoolmates. Reduced hours, salary cuts, frozen pay raises, and elimination of annual bonuses all can contribute to palpable tension about money..\..
   "Child of the depression" [is] a term that has become shorthand for someone who is frugal, conservative, afraid of too much debt and excessive stock market volatility....
   [And reduced hours!]

1. Canada 3000 may soon run out of cash - chairman, by Charles Grandmont, Reuters 17:52 10-15-01 via AOLNews.
   ...John Lecky, chairman of ["Canada 3000" , now] Canada's second largest airline, told Reuters..\..on Monday \that the\ no frills airline...would run out of cash in a few months if it does not get loan guarantees from the Canadian government to help it through the traditionally weak period before the Christmas holiday \as it\ feels the effects of the sharp downturn in air travel since the Sept. 11 attacks and faces a price war with Air Canada's new discount service....
   [What an unintuitive and arrogant name for a company, let alone an airline in a recession begging for a handout from taxpayers. The good news is that so far, they're timesizing, not downsizing -]
   So far, Canada 3000 has not announced job cuts among its work force of 4,400. Management is seeking to lower costs through reduced work hours and other cutbacks. By comparison, Air Canada has said it will chop 5,000 jobs, or about 12.5% of its 40,000 workforce..\..
   [But Air Canada's cuts would be much higher if they were not timesizing too, via a four-day (32-hour) workweek. See story below, 10/02/2001 #2.]
   Already struggling with North America's economic slowdown, Canada's four major carriers - Air Canada {AC.TO}, Canada 3000 {CCC.TO}, WestJet {WJA.TO} and Air Transit {TRZ.TO} - have been hit by a plunge in air travel after attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and U.S. reprisal bombings in Afghanistan.... Canada 3000's woes are compounded by Air Canada's announcement last week that it would launch a discount service, called Tango, that will start flying domestic routes on Nov. 1..\.. Industry analysts see Canada 3000 as the most threatened carrier because of its financial situation. The airline had little more than C$80m in liquidity as of July 31 and it has been losing money on a daily basis since the attacks in the United States by suicide hijackers....
   Lecky criticized the meager government support so far and pressed Ottawa [nation's capital, metonymy for the government] to beef up its help or see Canada 3000 disappear. Ottawa pledged C$160m to the four airlines to compensate for business lost while all North American air travel was shut down following the Sept. 11 attacks. Canada 3000 will receive about C$15m from the package.
   "That's nothing - this is a C$1.5m business," Lecky said, pointing out that..\.."there is no bank in the country that will lend to the airline industry" [and] that Washington has already agreed to help U.S. airlines with loan guarantees....
   [In fact, $10 billion in loan guarantees plus $5B in cash (9/22/2001 NYT, A1, C5). But then, there are a lot more, a lot bigger, U.S. airlines.]
   "Tango is a serious threat, but it would not be if we were not already wounded by the events of Sept. 11," Lecky said. He said the new [Air Canada] service is aimed directly at pushing Canada 3000 out of business because it is tailored along the same Canadian routes and price structure.... Canada 3000 said it will ask the federal government to veto the launch of Tango because it would amount to predatory pricing by Air Canada, which holds 70% of the domestic airline market. Accusations of predatory pricing against Air Canada by discount carrier WestJet were upheld by antitrust authorities last year.
   [Air Canada, the MicroSoft of Canadian air travel?]
   An Air Canada spokesman refused to comment on Canada 3000's complaint because it had not officially been filed as of Monday. But the spokesman said Tango was only a reaction to the "new reality of the marketplace", in which travelers, stung by the economic slowdown, are paying closer attention to the price of their air tickets....
   [Perhaps if John Lecky changed just one letter in his name. But then, "Lucky" Lindy found success in his historic solo trans-Atlantic flight only to lose his firstborn to kidnappers and his reputation to Hitler hobnobbing.]

2. [Here's the first African timesizing example we've found -]
   Zimbabwe changes economic plan, AP-NY-10-15-01 1356EDT via AOLNews.
   HARARE...- Zimbabwe is abandoning market-based economic policies and returning to a socialist-style economy, Pres. Robert Mugabe announced Monday. Businesses opposed to the move should "pack up and go," he said. Mugabe said a price freeze on basic foods imposed Friday will be strictly enforced [and] ordered price cuts of 5% to 20% on corn meal, bread, meat, cooking oil, milk, salt and soap.... A main bakery chain in Harare said the set prices did not take into account transportation, power and other cost, and it had put 200 of its workers on shorter working hours as production was cut..\..
   [There it is, shorter hours to avoid layoffs. Unfortunately, the bakery chain is not named. And here is timesizing in opposition to socialism. In fact, Mugabe should be using timesizing to avoid micromanaging socialistic price controls.]
   In recent years, Zimbabwe's economy has become crippled by out-of-control inflation and unemployment and a crushing shortage of hard currency..\..
   [Well, as we know from US experience, fighting inflation can just be a cover for protecting the spending power of the unspendable concentration of income and wealth among the top brackets. And fighting unemployment with micromanaging socialistic jobs programs didn't work in the Great Depression until "coincidentally" World War II mopped up the wage-depressing labor surplus in its own grisly way. And as for a shortage of hard currency - use timesizing to flexibly share the available employment (whether there's much or little) and spread the funneling income and your resulting solid consumer base will attract hard currency without backbends.]
   Zimbabwe dropped its socialist economic policies [in 1990] a decade after it gained independence in 1980, and embraced Western-style economic reforms.... Analysts say the [current] crisis began with the country's expensive military involvement in the Congo war and worsened when ruling party militants began occupying white-owned commercial farms, which generate much of the hard currency in this agriculture-based economy.... Independent economist Howard Sithole said Mugabe's remarks set "a depressing outlook for private enterprise" in the country. "We are putting the clock back to shortages and food lines we had in the 1980s. Manufacturers will have to scale down, forget about any new investment at all and hope this is a temporary political measure that can be removed" after presidential elections early next year, he said....
   Over the weekend [in the wake of Mugabe's price controls], bread, cooking oil and margarine were unobtainable across the country and there were bread shortages in Harare on Monday.... [However,] ruling party lawmakers have accused white-owned firms of raising prices in a bid to undermine the government and triggere civil unrest. Production of tobacco of tobacco, the main hard currency earner, and corn, have been disrupted by the farm occupations, and the government's program to seize more than 4,600 white-owned farms to hand over to landless blacks. Foreign investment also has dried up and Western financial institutions have frozen loans to protest the land confiscations, economic mismanagement and government overspending..\.. [From farms to firms -]
   The government will [now] seize firms that shut down [because of the price controls], withhold their goods or engage in illegal profiteering. "Let no one on this front expect mercy.... The state will take over any businesses that are closed," Mugabe said. "We will reorganize them with workers and at last that socialism we wanted can start again."...
   [So, back to the "shortages and food lines we had in the 1980s." Poor Zimbabwe is ricocheting between two inadequate economic theories - capitalism with its Great Leak Upwards in terms of the uncapped concentration of skills, employment, and unspendably compacted spending power - and socialism with its arbitrary and stifling micromanagement. Mugabe is power-rich and idea-poor. He needs a third way, timesizing.]