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Timesizing News, January 1-10, 2002
[Commentary] ©2001-02 Phil Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622, Porter Sq, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080

1/10/2002  Timesizing in the news -

• [one of the NYT's rare mentions of timesizing phenomena -]
  Bad news keeps coming for Japanese economy, by James Brooke, NYT, W1.
  ..."Japan's deflation and debt crisis now constitute systemic risk to the global economy"..\..according to a study released last week by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research...echoing a view shared by many Bush administration officials.
  Making the situation even worse, layoffs and job-sharing are starting to spread among manufacturers that for years had clung to the old norm of lifetime employment.
  [This reporter has uncritically bought a number of mistruths -
  1. He has forgotten that during those years when the "old norm" of lifetime employment was in place, Japan's economy was the booming envy of the world, because it had a robust national consumer base.
  2. He has misnamed work sharing "job sharing." Job sharing is not the same because it tends to assume that a "job" is a rigid number of hours per week, usually 40.
  3. He has grouped work sharing with layoffs as negative. Layoffs apart from Chapter 7 liquidations are indeed negative, and the major factor in inducing recessions. Work sharing, by contrast, is the one and only healthy strategy that can maintain economic vibrancy as automation and robotization pour into the global economy and reduce the working hours necessary for humans to log. After all, this is precisely the life-easing role of technology - to reduce the work, i.e., the working hours of human beings. The unhealthy overall strategy for economic vibrancy in the context of rising technology levels is makework. There are two major kinds of makework - ineffective and effective. The ineffective kind includes government jobs and training programs (enterprise zones, block grants, industrial policy, etc. etc.) and non-military public works. The effective kind (but particularly unhealthy) is militarization and war. We have been relying on both kinds of makework for the last 62 years since we froze our standard workweek in the USA at the 1940 level. High time to replace makework with "sharework." Quit straining to offset all the efficiencies of the private sector with artificial busywork and just share the vanishing work. For God's sake, let technology make life easier for all of us and stop fighting it. Let that workweek come down to where it should be for our high and rising levels of labor-saving technology.]
  Fujitsu said today that it was asking about 5,000 employees to take time off this year at 60% of regular pay....
  [Primitive and unsustainable, but a form of timesizing that avoids downsizing (i.e., layoffs).]
  Last month, Hitachi, Toshiba and Sanyo Electric announced that they would carry out [work]-sharing programs this year, affecting tens of thousands of workers.
  [We picked up the Hitachi, Toshiba and Sanyo story from Kyodo News on 12/21/2001 and their term was the correct one, "work sharing," which this reporter is apparently incapable even of copying correctly. This is bad editing on the part of the NYT, and sloppiness on the part of the reporter. We also picked up Fujitsu and Toshiba, along with NEC whom this reporter omits for no good reason, on 1/05 below.]

1. [The worktime issue flares on British rails -]
   More strikes hit Britain's railways, by Laura MacInnis with Janet McBride, Reuters 13:03 01-08-02 via AOLNews.
   LONDON...- Rail strikes spread across Britain on Tuesday as unions rejected a pay offer aimed at ending a dispute crippling commuter services into London and announced a further walk-out in the north of England.... The Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT), which represents 2,100 rail workers, said it would bring South West Trains serving London to a standstill on January 24-25, dissatisfied with a 7.6% pay rise offered by the company earlier on Tuesday.... It also renewed calls for a shorter working week..\..
   The union took issue with the company's maths.... "Whilst they're shouting that it is a 7.6[%] offer..., it's probably between 4 and 4.2 over 18 months...," Vernon Hince, acting General Secretary of the RMT, told reporters. "It falls way short of what we were asking for."...

2. [some details of work sharing à la Fujitsu - no breakthroughs yet, but 5000 jobs saved]
   Fujitsu to put 5,000 workers on temporary leave, Kyodo via AP-NY-01-08-02 2114EST via AOLNews.
   TOKYO...- Fujitsu Ltd. said Wednesday it plans to have some 5,000 employees take leave from work for periods ranging from some months to a year as part of a work-sharing plan to cut personnel costs amid a slump in the information technology sector. The nation's largest computer manufacturer plans to introduce the temporary leave system for workers at its three semiconductor plants in Iwate, Fukushima and Mie prefectures, company officials said.... Fujitsu will present the plan to its trade union and hopes to implement it in the spring, the officials said..\.. Similar work-sharing plans have been implemented by Hitachi Ltd. and Toshiba Corp., both of which have also been affected by the information-technology slump.
   [Temporary leaves are a rather kludgy (= awkward, ungainly, inflexible) form of timesizing, which is best done on a working-hours or workweek basis, not a workmonth or workyear basis.]
   Workers put on temporary leave will have their pay cut by some 40%, they said.
   [At least they're still getting some spending power even though they're working zero hours for some months, but that just makes the temporary leave approach unsustainable.]
   Employees will be allowed to choose the length of their breaks, which the company hopes will be used to undergo training and obtain qualifications useful for work, according to the officials. Fujitsu will adopt the envisaged system only at times of a slump in the semiconductor market, the officials said.
   [That market and all others are in a long downward trend as employment and earned spending power all over world continue to concentrate to unspendable degrees on proportionately few people, who already have everything.]
   In another move to cut costs, the company is also considering reducing by two-thirds the working hours of employees by changing their work shifts, they said.
   [Too big a big jump all at once, but at least they're talking about easily adjustable working hours instead of workmonths.]

1/07/2002  Timesizing in the news -

• ...The Tikkun Conference of Progressive Jewish Intellectuals, Writers, Artists, Social Change Activists, and People of All Faiths Who Share Our Vision, ad, NYT, A16.
  January 19-21 at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, 30 W. 68th St. (Sat. & Sun.) and B'nai Jeshurun Congregation, 257 W. 88th (Sun. eve & Mon.) in New York City. Speakers include: Grace Paley, Robert Pinsky [poet laureate], M.K. Yossi Sarid, Michael Lerner, Susannah Heschel, Naomi Wolf, Robert Thurman, Amy Goodman, Arthur Waskow, Liz Swados..\..
  Arthur Waskow is the chap behind the *Free Our Time website. He spoke at Chautauqua last summer.]
  The Tikkun Community['s vision includes]
  • A new bottom line [that includes not only] money or power...but also...love, caring, and ethical and ecological sensitivity....
  • A planetary consciousness....
  • Israel must end the occupation and...
  • Palestinians must stop all terror and adopt the principled non-violence of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King....
  [Sounds good to us.]

1. Toshiba, Fujitsu, NEC heads see work changes due to IT slump, Kyodo via AP-NY-01-04-02 0614EST via AOLNews.
   Leaders at three major Japanese high-tech firms see the need for more flexible employment practices...to deal with the protracted slump in the global information technology (IT) market. The Japanese economy is also unlikely to recover soon,
   1. Toshiba Corp. Pres. Tadashi Okamura...
   2. NEC Corp. Pres. Koji Nishigaki \and\
   3. Fujitsu Ltd. Pres. Naoyuki Akikusa...
   told Kyodo News in separate interviews recently....
   
   1. The policy of work-sharing may help guarantee the jobs of factory workers, Okamura said.
      [Not to mention the markets of factory owners.]
      "But we will evaluate clerical workers by performance-based systems" regardless of their hours, he added..\..
      [No problem. Performance will go up when employees are better rested and more secure in their jobs.]
      Toshiba must study incorporating separate payment systems for job type or region for relevant workers, Okamura said....
      [Unclear.]
      Okamura said Toshiba failed to tell investors clearly what sections the company plans to reinforce. Too much attention was given to defensive measures such as job cuts, he said..\..
      [Short-term defensive, long-term suicidal. The only measure that is defensive both short and long term is worksharing, not employee/consumer cutting - timesizing, not downsizing.]
      
   2. "It's a big mistake to evaluate labor by work hours," Nishigaki said. "Management could allow employees to go home if they do a great job in three hours (a day)."
      [Good thinking, but how about you company chiefs designing the workload distribution so employees can do a great job in three hours?!]
      ..\..Nishigaki said NEC has transferred 10,000 employees to other assignments over two years, but suggested there are few countermeasures it can now take.
      {How about listening to Okamura and trying work-sharing?!]
      "There are limits to what a single company can do" to ensure employment, he said.
      [Never mind employment, what about markets?! And all any and every company has to do to ensure that markets won't slump is keep their own employees working, instead of doing jobcuts, even if it takes flexible worksharing.]
      ...The business environment for Japanese firms will be severe [this year] because they have to tackle the task of shifting production from Japan to foreign countries, he said.
      [Well, if they "have to" do that, Mr. Nishigashi - instead of trimming workhours and fully employing every Japanese on reduced workweeks with lots of spending power for everyone, not just you and the surviving karoshi-courters - Japan will never recover. Move long-hour jobs to China and you'll merely help the Chinese economy to recover. Make up your mind which economy you're concerned about.]
      
   3. ..\..Akikusa said management and workers may agree on a flexible rehiring system depending on market conditions at a time when Japan's unemployment rate has kept rewriting record highs for three months since September. It climbed to 5.5% in November. "For instance, when the semiconductor business turns down, we can ask relevant employees to stay away from the workplace for several months," Akikusa said. "Their salaries will be slashed, but management will ensure their reemployment."
      [He's almost there. Just almost realizing that the way he and his fellow corporate heads can make the semiconductor business - and the whole economy - turn up by getting more spending power into more Japanese consumers' hands, and if that takes flexibly restructuring the nation's workload into shorter worktime, preferably workweeks, per person, then that is the price of economic recovery.]
      Akikusa was optimistic about the economy, saying that the amounts that Japanese companies are investing in IT-related businesses have not decreased by much and software services have grown steadily, which will lead Fujitsu to be proactive in the business in the global market....
      [Rather near-sighted thinking, Mr. Akikusa, considering the rest of the world is going through exactly what Japan is going through, so there isn't much growth in the global market. It's not the general amounts that Japanese companies are investing in businesses that counts. It's the amounts they invest specifically in active spending power for their employees and their whole potential national workforce that counts. Active spending power means you spread it as evenly as you can and allow as little concentration as incentives necessary for unpopular jobs allow. And active spending power has evidently been going down or Japanese unemployment would not keep going up.]
      Akikusa said there was a gap between the mentality at Fujitsu supporting continuous growth of IT operations and the reality of the market, which forced the company to restructure itself later on....
      [The least traumatic and destructive way of restructuring the company is to introduce flexible worksharing across-the-board, including and especially the boardroom and the executive suite. And coupling it with overtime-targeted training would be a clincher.]

2. French December services PMI edges higher, Reuters 03:50 01-04-02 via AOLNews.
   PARIS...- France's services sector reversed a 2-month contraction and grew in December, with managers also growing more optimistic about the outlook for the sector, data showed on Friday. The CDAF/Reuters services sector Purchasing Managers' Index, an overall gauge of the sector's performance, rose to 50.1 in December from 48.4 in November.... Said a statement accompanying the survey, "(It) reflected the balance of those service providers experiencing higher activity due to the imminent change over to the single European currency and the 35-hour working week, and those still suffering from the global economic slowdown"..\..
   [Hey, how about some articles on how the 35-hour workweek application to small business and government, as of Jan.1, is going?!]
   A reading above 50 for the PMI index, or its components, signals the sector is expanding.... The incoming new business index jumped to 52.5 from the 48.1 registered in November....
   [However -]
   Despite the upturn and brighter outlook, service sector firms shed labour faster in December than in November. The employment index fell to 49.1 from 49.5 in November....

3. US job cuts slow, raising hopes on economy, Reuters 17:36 01-04-02 via AOLNews.
   WASHINGTON...- The furious pace of US layoffs that followed 9/11 slackened in December but the unemployment rate jumped to its highest level since April 1995, the government said on Friday.... The unemployment rate rose to 5.8%. For November, the rate was revised to 5.6% from 6.7%, a change made as part of an annual overhaul of the series....
   One aspect of the December jobs report that economists found particularly encouraging was a small lengthening in the workweek. Despite the drop in payrolls, the workweek for private workers grew to 34.2 hours from 34.1 in November. "That is often the first indicator that things are going to get better"..\..said economist Ed McKelvey of Goldman Sachs.... He said the number suggested companies were scheduling longer days - and in some cases overtime - for existing workers, presumably to meet a pickup in demand for goods and services. Often during [upticks during] downturns, firms will increase workers' hours before they commit to hiring new people.
   [Sooo, divvying up work lump that grows so that longer hours result is just dandy with economists, but divvying up the work lump that shrinks so that shorter hours result gets ridiculed and labeled "Lump of Labor Fallacy." This is probably THE fatal flaw in the whole Lump of Labor Fallacy rhetoric. Tom Walker, jump on this! Bidirectional flexibility in the workweek is fine, but during an overriding downturn, firms that want to turn an uptick into a recovery would be smarter to hire more people rather than to relengthen the workweek, especially in the situation reported in AP's version of this story, "Unemployment rate hits 5.8%," by Leigh Strope, AP-NY-01-04-02 1009EST, where it states, "A sliver of hope for manufacturing appeared in December's employment report, as the factory workweek increased by 0.4 hour to 40.7 hours and factory overtime rose 0.2 hour to 3.9 hours." This 'sliver of hope' should be seen rather as a glowing coal to fan into flame. We should be using it to target and trigger training and hiring, instead of just work&pay bunchup. Do we want a recovery or don't we? It ain't "an act of God" - it's entirely up to us.]

• Irish 2001 budget surplus down 80 percent on 2000, by Alex Richardson, Reuters 13:23 01-03-02 via AOLNews.
  DUBLIN...- Ireland's exchequer surplus fell to 650m euros ($587.7m) in 2001, an 80% decline from 2000, the Dept. of Finance said on Thursday.... A breakdown of the tax figures showed...income tax was 532m euros below the budget day forecast. "...There may be some element that tax cuts turned out to cost a bit more than was anticipated"..\..Finance Dept. Second Secy. Gen. Donal McNally told journalists at a briefing in Dublin....when asked why income tax receipts had fallen when employment levels were fairly steady. "...There is evidence of cut backs in overtime, bonuses, and that sort of thing, which would tend to be taxed at the higher rate."... [Ergo the Irish cut worktime to maintain employment = timesizing, not downsizing.]

1/02/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news -
today we used 2 stories from 12/29/2001 ##1 & 2 that turned up late (& are now threaded back into proper date-order to lower our huge pile of stories that arrive late)

1/1/2002  primitive Timesizing round the world today -

1. Jobs: A smarter squeeze? - To lessen layoffs, some companies are cutting pay and benefits, by Dean Foust, Michele Conlin, Peter Burrows, Faith Keenan, Roger Crockett & bureau reports, BusinessWeek Online Dec 31 2001 via Joe Polito via Shorter Work Time E-list (email swt-digest-request@swt.org with 'subscribe' as subject & message).
   ...Still, many management experts warn that by imposing across-the-board cuts in pay and benefits, moves that touch far more workers than traditional layoffs...
   [Just like insurance premium payments, including unemployment insurance - that's the concept of sharing the pain to mitigate it - 'all sacrifice together,' preferably 'starting at the top.']
   ...executives could be creating big morale problems.
   [Like, layoffs don't create big morale problems?! Paycuts, however, are demoralizing (but not as much as layoffs) unless coupled with corresponding hourscuts, à la Timesizing.]
   ...That could serve as a drag on productivity during the downturn....
   [Ah, the worship of productivity regardless of saleability. Pray tell, what use is productivity without markets??? This article finally gets around to mentioning the strategy that has none of these problems -]
   ...Other companies are restoring small perks that workers missed most, or doling out other precious goodies that don't cost the company money - especially more free time.... And at Management Recruiters International Inc., which isn't paying a holiday bonus this year, managers are making new efforts to accommodate worker requests for more flexible schedules - and shorter weeks. "People aren't working as insanely," notes MRI spokeswoman Karen Bloomfield....

2. Okuda sees wage-cut agreement between employers, workers, Kyodo News via AP-NY-12-31-01 0327EST via AOLNews.
   Japan Federation of Employers (Nikkeiren) Chairman Hiroshi Okuda said in a recent interview with Kyodo News he expects employers and labor unions will agree to wage cuts in the form of work-sharing to maintain employment.
   [We'd feel more comfortable if this said, "pay cuts in the form of hours cuts," or "in parallel with hours cuts," but we think it means the same thing. Hourly wages will be maintained but weekly pay will decrease because weekly hours will decrease. As the unemployed get absorbed into the newly hungry search for labor to make up the lost hours, market forces will push hourly wages up and weekly pay will tend to resume pre-hourscut levels, similar to Ron Healey's 30-40 Plan = 30 hours of work for 40 hours of pay. But that restoration of pay also restores consumer markets and the whole economy gets healthier.]
   Okuda made the remarks in relation to his new job of chairman of the new Japan Business Federation (JBF), which will be created in May by a merger of Nikkeiren and the Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren)....
   "Companies will try work-sharing in the future, and a sharp rise in the unemployment rate is unlikely," said Okuda, also chairman of Toyota Motor Corp. "There is a variety of work-sharing and management-labor agreements that will take the form of a decline in wages," he said. Work sharing is a system in which a number of workers share a job [i.e., task] and shorten their work hours to maintain employment and create opportunities for the unemployed..\..
   Asked about Japan's unemployment rate hitting 5.5% in November, Okuda said, "The people are prepared themselves for 'pains' since Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi took office (as he has called for tolerance of fallout from his structural reform programs. We must overcome."...
   [If Japan jumps of the work sharing bandwagon and trumps France with a more flexible design, human program could escape from the 'Great Whirlpool' of more and more 'so what' technology and proceed once again down the 'Niagara River' to the 'lake' of ending poverty and hunger worldwide. Japan is well adapted for this role by historical accident, because cooperation is a lot more important in Japan than it is in the English-speaking economies, which despite their permeation with interdependence, like to kid themselves about the importance of independence and the 'rugged individual.' Look how upset they are about an unemployment rate of 5.5% - whereas our central bank (the Fed) used to pursue the ridiculous policy of fostering unemployment of 6% in order to control inflation. Under work sharing in the advanced Timesizing design, inflation is controlled by balancing the aggregate inflationary incentive (money lust) and deflationary incentive (job satisfaction etc.) within an economy. This is done by enforcing the limit on working hours per week in terms of a reinvestment threshold, where only those who are willing to reinvest overtime earnings are allowed to work over the threshold. People who are just doing it for the money naturally quit at the threshold, however many hours per week it fluctuates down to in its role as counterweight to the upward fluctuating unemployment rate. Money-motivated people are thereby nudged to change to a job they have more of an inherent liking for, or, since they can no longer get more money by working longer hours, to upgrade their skills and earn the extra they think they need within the newly reduced workweek without exceeding the reinvestment threshold. And of course, they have to reinvest in training and hiring in overtime targeted skills. This is how all the economies will work in 2102, because the stupidity of our current ramshackle design is totally unsustainable. The contradiction between introducing evermore productivity-amplifying technology and using it, not to make life easier with hours cuts, but to increase the concentration of income with job cuts - necessarily equivalent to decreasing consumer markets even as the output to be consumed is increasing - this contradiction is just too fundamental and unsustainable to go on ignoring - as all our current economists and 'experts' and business schools do.]