Timesizing® Associates - Homepage

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Timesizing News, January 21-31, 2002
[Commentary] ©2002 Phil Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622, Porter Sq, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080

1/31/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news -

1. Asterix, Obelix on entertaining "Mission" - Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (Comedy, France-Germany, color, no rating, 1h:46m), by Lisa Nesselson, Reuters/Variety 02:18 01-30-02 via AOLNews.
   PARIS - It's silly, it's funny, the whole family can go to "Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra" - and Monica Bellucci's asset-enhancing costumes afford some of the nicest views in the ancient world.... Fed up with Caesar's taunts that Egypt ain't what it used to be and Alexandria is no more than "a suburb of Rome," Cleopatra (Bellucci, imperious and sexy) bets Julius that her workers can build him a desert palace (yep, "Caesar's Palace") in three months flat. If she succeeds, Caesar must announce publicly that Egypt is the greatest civilization around. If the deadline is not met, Numerobis will be fed to the crocodiles.... Jokes about contractors and construction delays will amuse anybody who has ever undertaken even minor home improvements. Script gets in some funny riffs about contemporary labor relations and France's 35-hour work week as the slaves negotiate for better working conditions.
   Obelix ......... Gerard Depardieu
   Asterix ........ Christian Clavier....
   A Pathe Distribution (in France)/Miramax (in U.S.) release of a Claude Berri presentation of a Katharina/Renn Prods., TF1 Films Prods., Chez Wam (France)/CP Medien, Erste, Zweite & Vierte Beteiligung, KC Medien, KG Munich (Germany) production with participation of Canal Plus and CNC.... Reviewed at UGC Normandie, Paris, Jan. 9, 2002.

2. [a tool to control overtime -]
   Timera introduces Enterprise Workforce Management for retail market segment at FMI Marketechnics, Business Wire BW0323 JAN 31 2002, 16:12 Eastern, via AOLNews.
   DALLAS...- *Timera Inc. is announcing the introduction of EWM^tm for Retail, its advanced next-generation workforce management solution, at the Food Marketing Institute's Marketechnics® tradeshow in booth 1241 at the San Diego Convention Center Feb. 3-5.... EWM for Retail provides customers the following capabilities and benefits....
   Scheduling.... •Working with the Time & Attendance module, EWM Labor Tracking plots overtime automatically - including imminent overtime hours, punch exceptions and labor-per-job activity....

• [The sleeping giant of Japan powers up on work sharing - watch out, world!]
  Sendai to introduce work-sharing scheme for city employees, Kyodo News via AP-NY-01-28-02 2106EST via AOLNews.
  SENDAI, Jan. 29 - The city of Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture is poised to introduce a work-sharing scheme to cut overtime by city personnel and allow casual employment for young people graduating from high school, city officials said Tuesday.
  Sendai will be the first big city in Japan to introduce work sharing.
  [Guess that means that some small cities have already introduced it!]
  A similar scheme had been introduced in the Hyogo prefectural government, and Hokkaido and Akita prefectural governments are considering such schemes, the officials said.
  [Go, Japan, go!]
  In Sendai's scheme, high school graduates who have no place of employment yet will be hired by the city government for one year each to give them job experience and help their future employment prospects, according to the officials.
  The officials said cutting city employees' overtime by about 5% would enable the northeastern Japan city to hire about 100 high school graduates, targeting students of high schools having close ties with the city or its local residents.
  [Trimming hours to save or create jobs (and consumer markets!)? Baby, that's timesizing! And unlike France, where the government is leading from the federal level, in Japan, governments at the local and county levels have started leading. And they've started in with a percentage cut in overtime, relating it to a specific number of new jobs they hope to create. They will be able to adjust the exact percentage as they see how the corelation works out in practice. And they've started with a low percentage so they're embarking on a course of gradual change, which is good because it gives everyone lots of time to adjust and optimize the situation all along the way. And the fact that they've got a percentage into the design in the first place means they can gradually adjust it upward - 5, 10, 15, 20%...- until they've converted 100% of their overtime into jobs.]
  Helping with the work of checking on tax-payment delays will be among the tasks assigned to the newly hired young people, according to the officials.
  The youths will do a four-day, 30-hour work week, they said.
  [Oh man, that seals it! A futuristic 30-hour workweek on top of everything else. (Guess that's two 8-hr days and two 7-hour days.) Japan is going to teach us a thing or two just as they did in the 1980s, when we were writing three books a week on how to imitate their success. Instead of using the incidence of overtime to spur hiring, rebuild consumer demand and forge economic recovery, here's an example what our arrogant but clueless CEOs are doing with overtime -]
  American Home Mortgage reports 4th quarter results; Achieves record EPS, revenues and loan production for the quarter and year, Business Wire BW2198 Jan.29,2002 8:06 EASTERN via AOLNews.
  NEW YORK...- American Home Mortgage Holdings, Inc., one of the nation's largest independent retail mortgage bankers, reported today record earnings, earnings per share, revenue, and loan production for the fourth quarter of 2001.... Michael Strauss, American Home Mortgage's President and CEO commented, "The 4th quarter was marked by very high loan production due to low interest rates causing record setting refinance activity. Revenue and income benefited accordingly, although operating inefficiencies associated with production levels above normal capacity led to extraordinary expenses, including approximately $1.8 million of overtime....
  [Any and all overtime should be harnessed to target training and create jobs and consumers. Our near-sighted CEOs waste it. Constipated Capitalism. And it's not that we don't have the software technology to deal with it constructively -]
  SmartTime and Control Module form relationship to optimize workforce labor data collection - Combined technologies add Web-enabled connectivity to streamline communication between employees and management, PRNewswire 01/29/2002 08:00 EST via AOLNews.
  FRAMINGHAM, Mass...- *SmartTime Software, Inc., a leading provider of strategic workforce management solutions, and Control Module, Inc., a leader in the design and manufacture of automated data collection and security products, [yester]day announced a technology alliance to deliver labor data collection solutions within strategic workforce management solutions. ...SmartTime will re-market Control Module's products and the two companies will work together to deliver integrated solutions which will provide customers with a variety of labor transaction collection methods.
  "Modular web-based technology is becoming a necessity for meeting industry requirements for secure and accurate management, tracking, and compensation of diverse workforces in centralized and de-centralized labor environments," said Kevin Rhone, CEO and President of SmartTime. "The partnership between SmartTime and Control Module will make this technology available to organizations with evolving and dynamic time, attendance and scheduling requirements such as distributed facilities and mobile workforces."
  "SmartTime streamlines critical workforce management processes and labor transaction-data collection with scalable, web-enabled connectivity. By integrating CMI's modular data collection devices, employee self-service kiosks and biometric scanners with additional wireless/mobile device support, we enable our customers to significantly lower labor costs and optimize the productivity of a diverse and dispersed workforce," added Bob Fabrizio, SmartTime's vice president of research and development.
  ...Said James Bianco, Vice President of Sales for Control Module. "SmartTime's solid track record, impressive customer base and well-established industry expertise in strategic labor management technology allow us to assure our customers that they are using best-of-breed technology to support all their time and attendance data capture, work scheduling, overtime, flextime, and time-recording management needs."...
  [And here's another American industry that could use this technology - to cut mandatory overtime - but they're sooo far back.]
  Workforce shortage, aging population strain ICUs - Issues discussed at the Society of Critical Care Medicine's 31st critical care congress, PRNewswire 01/29/2002 11:00 EST via AOLNews.
  SAN DIEGO...- Intensive care units (ICUs) staffed by critical care experts provide better patient outcomes and are more cost effective than units without these specialists; however, because of the current workforce crisis, many ICUs do not have enough qualified professionals.
  "In the absence of a sufficient number of appropriately trained physicians, nurses, pharmacists and respiratory therapists, patients in the ICU may be placed at higher risk and hospital resources are wasted," says Ann E. Thompson, MD, President of the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM).
  Dr. Thompson and a number of other critical care leaders spoke today at a SCCM press briefing in conjunction with the 31st Annual Critical Care Congress in San Diego.
  "We have abundant evidence that care in the ICU is far from ideal. The more thinly spread specially trained physicians and nurses are, the greater the risk of irreparable harm," says Dr. Thompson, Professor of Anesthesiology, Critical Care Medicine and Pediatrics, and Director of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. "The cost of care is greater than it needs to be and that is probably sufficient to be increasing the cost of care to everybody. A big piece of inpatient cost is related to intensive care."
  Sharon Rounds, MD, Secretary-Treasurer of the American Thoracic Society (ATS), adds that if ICU usage stays the same and if the number of critical care physicians continues to decline, "in the year 2010, it will be virtually impossible to provide appropriate care for critically ill patients." But, ICU usage is expected to increase as baby boomers age.
  Aging population will lead to record number of visits to ICUs
  "In the next 20 years, the people who will need the most intense care are going to be the baby boomers," says Sid ney Stuart Braman, MD, President of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP). "Only about 35% of patients in ICUs have the input of a physician who is specifically trained in providing critical care. According to a recent assessment, more than 75% of ICUs in the country do not have a full-time intensivist. In the future, we are going to be at an abysmally low level of staffing."
  "Though we are facing difficult times, this crisis has brought together the healthcare providers who have an interest in the critically ill," says Dr. Braman, Professor of Medicine and Division Director of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Brown Medical School in Providence, RI.
  The four societies, SCCM, ATS, ACCP and the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) have banded togeth er to speak on behalf of patients who require critical care services. The organizations have authored The Critical Care Workforce Partnership Position Statement: The Aging of the US Population and Increased Need for Critical Care Services.
  "We can cure people, but we need to have detailed scrutiny, careful attention and a multidisciplinary approach in carrying patients through critical illness," says Dr. Thompson. "If there are no people to do this, then we will have a crisis."
  Nursing shortage impacts ICU
  The biggest issue facing AACN today is the nursing shortage. "Some conservative estimates indicate a shortage of 500,000 nurses in the next five to 10 years, while others are predicting a shortage of 750,000," says organization President Michael L. Williams, MSN, RN, CCRN. "These numbers are for the United Sates, but the crisis is global."
  "The shortage is primarily due to the aging of nurses, declining enrollments in nursing schools and deteriorating workplace conditions. The impact of the nursing shortage crisis is widespread, however, it is more pronounced in specialty nursing such as critical care, which requires the most highly skilled and experienced nurses. Historically, critical care has been able to recruit from other units in the hospital. We could shift people around. That strategy will not work this time because there simply are not enough nurses," explains Williams, Assistant Professor of Nursing at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. "As the shortage grows, we will see more surgeries are being canceled, longer emergency department waits and more patients not being admitted because a hospital bed isn't available."
  "Critical care nurses always provide expert care, even in trying times. In the face of the nursing shortage, I expect that the nurse's role could evolve to that of care coordinat ors," predicts Williams. As the shortage worsens, there will be a point where it will not be humanly possible for nurses to provide the level of care they are accustomed to providing for their highly vulnerable, critically ill patients. This is the concern we hear most often from our member nurses."
  Pharmacists also face shortage, jeopardizing patient safety
  "Pharmacists in the ICU save lives and reduce costs," says Maria Rudis, PharmD, a clinical pharmacist practicing in the ICU.  "When pharmacists make ICU rounds with the physicians, there are fewer adverse drug events, fewer medication errors and fewer drug interactions."
  American Society of Health System Pharmacists surveys report hospital pharmacy vacancy rates were 15% in 1999, 21.5% in 2000, and 23% in 2001. Another workforce study reports the shortage is worse in institutional practice, including hospitals, and rural settings show vacancy rates reaching 29%. "This shortage affects a lot of ICU patients," comments Rudis.
  Because a pharmacist-to-patient ratio has not been legislated, hospitals may admit more patients than the hospit al pharmacy can effectively handle. When this happens, clinic al pharmacists are pulled off ICUs to distribute medications elsewhere in the hospital. "When the clinical pharmacist is removed from the intensive care unit, the drug optimization roll falls on physicians and nurses who both already have designated roles that require a 100% effort," Rudis explains.
  Legislation in Congress is designed to increase the number of pharmacists by providing financial aid to students, faculty and pharmacy schools.  If passed, the Pharmacy Education Aid Act of 2001 would also make pharmacists eligible to have student loans forgiven and would provide scholarships to pharmacy students.  "What critical care pharmacists really need is more residencies and fellowship training programs in critical care," Rudis explains.
  Steps to resolve workforce shortage
  The Societies recommend the following:
  
• A multifaceted approach to help ease the workforce crisis. The steps include:
  • Public and physician enlightenment about the workforce shortage.
  • Federal programs to entice more physicians and nurses into entering critical care.  School loans assistance programs and more funding for graduate medical education should be established for those entering the critical care field.
    
  • Take action to improve the working conditions in critical care units and improve compensation in this high stress environment where "burn out" is pervasive.
    
  • An informational campaign explaining the benefits of specializing in critical care aimed at program directors in internal medicine and general surgical programs.
    
  • Fund more training programs.
    
• Strategies of recruitment and retention to curtail nurse shortages by:
  • Targeted recruitment of men and minorities.
    
  • Recruitment of middle school and high school students along with counselor education.
    
  • Federal funding increases and loan forgiveness for nursing students.
    
  • Legislation to address mandatory overtime and workplace quality of life, which affects retention.

1/29/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news -

1. Nurses lobby for legislation to prohibit mandatory overtime, PRNewswire 01/28/2002 10:00 EST via AOLNews.
   OLYMPIA, Wash...- Over 300 nurses and nursing students are expected to gathered in Olympia on Monday, January 28th for the 20th Annual Washington State Nurses Association (WSNA) Nurse Legislative Day, where nursing shortage and legislation to strictly limit mandatory overtime (HB 2601 and SB 6675) tops the legislative priorities. Hearings for the bill are scheduled in Senate Labor, Commerce and Financial Institutions Committee (10 a.m. in Hearing Room 4 at the John A. Cherberg Building) and House Commerce and Labor Committee (1:30 p.m. in Hearing Room B at the John O'Brien Building) on January 28th.
   "The increasing use of mandatory overtime among nurses is a dangerous practice that has contributed to a recent exodus of nurses from hospitals and a decline in safe, quality patient care," warns Louise Kaplan, PhD, ARNP, WSNA President. Mandatory overtime is an issue that nurses are facing throughout the state. Above their regularly scheduled 8 to 12 hour shifts, nurses are sometimes required to work up to 16 hours or more in a day.
   Health care experts tell us that
   • long hours take a toll on mental alertness and
   • requiring nurses to work overtime when they are already exhausted can result in seri[ou]s medical mistakes,
   • medication errors,
   • transcription errors and
   • errors in judgment.
   • Studies have even found that sleep deprivation has the same effects as being drunk, with increased chance for mistakes and
   • less ability to concentrate.
   • Studies have also linked infection outbreaks at hospitals to excessive overtime work.
   • ...Mandatory overtime also takes its toll on the working family. Many nurses are left to make last minute arrangements for childcare or
   • other pre-planned activities such as classes.
     
   The use of mandatory overtime drives nurses away from the profession, thus exacerbating an emerging nursing shortage that is expected to worsen dramatically over the next 10 years. Judy Huntington, MN, RN, WSNA Executive Director, emphasizes that "recruitment alone will not solve the nursing shortage, we must also focus on the retention of our experienced nurse. Strictly limiting the use of mandatory overtime is a first step towards retention by providing a positive working environment for our nurses."
   [Amen. Reducing the workweek, without a 'watertight' overtime policy, preferably with automatic conversion to training and hiring, is seriously flawed.]
   This legislation would:
   • Prohibit health care facilities from requiring an employee who provides direct patient care or clinical services to work overtime in excess of an agreed upon, predetermined, regularly scheduled shift not to exceed 12 hours in a 24 hour period or 80 hours in a 14 day period.
   • Provide protection to nurses who refuse overtime by prohibiting employers from using the refusal as grounds for discrimination, dismissal, discharge, threat of reports for discipline or any other penalty.
   • Include an exception in the case of any unforeseen declared emergencies, when a health care facility's disaster plan is activated, or any other disaster/catastrophic event which increases the need for health care services....
   [Still no inkling of designing an automatic link from the incidence of overtime to training and hiring. And still specific to one profession. Whaddawe gonna do, go through every single trade and profession one by one?   Econoyoda - "Primitive you are."]

2. [Japan forges ahead with what is turning into a diversity of work sharing experiments -]
   Nippon Steel union to propose introduction of work-sharing, Kyodo News via AP-NY-01-28-02 0927EST via AOLNews.
   TOKYO...- The labor union at Nippon Steel Corp. plans to propose in upcoming spring wage talks that the firm introduce work-sharing so staff can be rehired after reaching the mandatory retirement age of 60, union officials said Monday. Under the union plan, Nippon Steel employees would reduce working hours by an average of 200 hours annually to finance reemployment costs. Management at the firm is basically willing to adopt the plan and may introduce it in fiscal 2003, the officials said.
   [So Japan is moving from worksharing in terms of rigid and unwieldy worklife manipulation to worksharing in terms of much more flexible workhours/workweek/workyear manipulation. You've got to draw a line somewhere, and we've been drawing it more on worklife than workweek. The Europeans have been drawing it on the workyear with longer vacations. We all need to move the line down to the most useful level, the workweek (except for seasonal workers like farmers). Tonight we've been watching a program on mummies where people thousands of years after human deaths examine those deaths. Similarly, we're treating all these contemporary economic experiments as if we're looking back on today from a distant future, when all our silly narrowness and unextended self-interest is forgotten history, and we can see all these tentative experiments as tiny steps on the critical path to human progress at the most comprehensive levels. It's all about enhancements in our technology of sharing, and during our lifetimes, it all comes down to jobs. And we have a hunch that Japan wil be taking over the lead from France in this all-points priority area of human experimentation within the next few years. This is beyond sociology. This is reprogramming economies and economics to be a lot more successful for a lot more people.]

1. SHRM says frims see job cuts as last resort, Boston Globe, G2.
   Most companies say that layoffs aren't their first choice when it comes to cutting expenses, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resources Management [SHRM}.
   [Well there's a switch - at least relative to the impression we get in the media.]
   "Layoffs are disrupting and difficult for everyone, and most organizations are taking steps to avoid them if possible," said SHRM president and CEO Helen Drinan.
   [What about it Wall St. pushes layoffs on them to hype the stock?]
   The top 4 steps taken prior to layoffs were -
   1. attrition (63%)
   2. an employment freeze (49%)
   3. not renewing contract workers (21%), and
   4. encouraging employees to take vacations (20%)
      [this is the one that has a slightly timesizing ring to it]
   - according to the survey of 572 HR professionals....
   [It's indicative of the inherently insular and pandering stance of SHRM and HR people in general that "trimming hours" or "workweek reduction" doesn't even register in this survey.]

2. Prognosis: workers needed -...Health care recruiting gets aggressive - Problems with pay, work schedules and what many nurses consider mandatory overtime continue to plague the field, by Barbara Kasselmann, BG, G1.
   [Healthcare? Ha! Don't they mean "Prognosis: SLAVES needed"?!]
   ..."By 2010, demand for nursing care will outstrip supply by about 20%"..\..said Susan Shaw, director of operations for nursing at Children's Hospital..., citing an aging population, decreasing staff levels and a shortage of students....
   [Isn't it outstripped by 20% already?]
   Citing downsizing in recent years, increased work loads, and overtime requirements..\..Karen Higgins, president of the Massachusetts Nurses Assoc...says nurses become harder to recruit and harder to keep. Hospitals that increase staffing, she says, are much better able to hire and retain nurses. ...There are problems with staffing, scheduling and pay in the nursing field....
   [At least this "doormat profession" is finally waking up to the slavery aspects of mandatory overtime. Absolutely the first requirement for any substantial human progress is to abolish overtime and share the employment that, in the big picture, is vanishing as technology erodes it on one side and new population sectors (wives, workfare), overseas sweatshops (imports) and overpopulation (immigrants, births) compete for it on the other. Note squishily indirect and micromanaging approach to getting humane hours for nurses that is explored in another article in this section of the Boston Sunday Globe -]
   Legislation: Calif. sets standards for nurse staffing, by Michael Berens, Chicago Tribune via BG, G2.
   [The headline completely misses the boat on informativeness. It should read "...standards for nurse-to-patient ratios" as clearly announced on the posters of the protesters in the nurses' rally in Los Angeles in the accompanying photo.]
   ...Overall, the law establishes minimum nurse-to-patient ratios in 22 categories,
   [and here's where the ridiculous micromanagement comes in - so much easier to just enforce no-overtime-without-training&hiring approach. Once you start playing the game that every profession is "special," you just start a huge CEO whining contest.]
   such as -
   • 1 nurse for every 6 infant under anesthesia
     [we are not making this up - Calif. stands fair to seize Massachusetts' title of "People's Republic"]
   • 1 nurse for every 6 patients on general medical wards
   • 1 nurse for every trauma patient in the emergency room
   The law is expected to go into effect by late summer. \It\ was passed in 1999, but the state delayed implementation until it could determine what the ratios should be....
   [As if there are any hard and fast - or eternal - ratios. Under the pervasive influence of "I'm superbusy, therefore I'm Very Important," Americans have become sooo clueless about real time management that they'll try every single tangent before they wake up to the simplicity - and necessity (if they want to reverse declining markets) - of timesizing.]
   The Calif. Healthcare Assoc., which represents 500 hospitals in the state, and officials of other hospital trade groups warned that increased payroll costs will ransack the sparse budgets of dozens of struggling hospitals. Minimum staffing decisions should not be dictated by cookie-cutter standards, officials said....
   [Well, make up your minds, you morons. Either cut the dangerous overtime in your field or have good-intentioned road-to-hell pavers trying to solve your creep back to slavery by approaching it with much more stifling regulations.]
   As a result, some hospitals may be forced to reduce the number of beds or cut services....
   [Maybe if they'd done that already and made nursing a little more human, recruiting wouldn't be such a problem now and they'd be increasing beds and services by now.]
   Forced overtime, 12-hour workdays, day-to-day layoffs - sometimes in midshift - and lack of ongoing training have driven nurses away. "If workplace conditions improve, nurses will return"..\..said Julie Pinkum, executive director of the Massachusetts Nursing Assoc.
   [And with wealthy (and the dumb half of other) Americans on one of the biggest "I'm not sharing with ANYBODY jags" in American history, that ain't gonna happen until the nursing and quality healthcare shortage is ACUTE and patient deaths and lawsuits are legion.]

1. Nucor to buy idled steel mill from Trico, Bloomberg via NYT, B7.
   The Nucor Corp., a steel maker, received approval to buy the Trico Steel Co.'s idled steel mill..,.\..in Decatur, Ala., for $120m. A Delaware bankruptcy court approved the purchase of the mill, which makes steel sheet, often used in appliances, Nucor said.... The mill can make 1.9m tons of steel a year, Nucor said.
   [Nucor is America's most profitable surviving steel company and the world's most flexible corporation. It is an experienced timesizer, does little or no downsizing, but coasts at 3 days/wk, $8/hr when without contracts, expanding to as much as 7 days/wk, $22/hr when it's rolling in contracts. See our working models page. The employees who used to work at this mill will probably now be rehired and with Nucor, their jobs will be secure.]

2. Hispanics in US send less money home since Sept 11, Reuters 13:46 01-25-02 via AOLNews.
   EL PASO...- The economic fallout from the Sept. 11 U.S. attacks is trickling down to Latin America as Hispanics in the United States - many of whom are a financial lifeline to their families back home - are squeezed by layoffs and pay cuts.... A recent study commissioned by the Inter-American Development Bank showed that for 56% of the Hispanic immigrants living in the United States, these remittances dropped in the aftermath of 9/11. HOURS DOWN
   The poll of 1,000 Latin American migrants also found that 7% of the Hispanic immigrants had lost their jobs after the attacks, while 26%...saw their number of working hours reduced.
   [Hey, at least this 26% just lost a few hours' employment and pay instead of their whole jobs.]
   Job losses and reductions in hours are being seen in the figures from Western Union. The volume of money transfers fell off after Sept. 11, but returned to normal about 10 days later, said Western union spokeswoman Wendy Carver-Herbert....

3. Blair says Tories 'talking down' public services, by Mike Peacock, Reuters 05:35 01-25-02 via AOLNews.
   LONDON...- Prime Minister Tony Blair launched a savage attack on his Conservative opponents on Friday, accusing them of talking down public services as a precursor to dismantling them.... Blair said the Conservatives, contrary to recent signs, had not changed and still believed in the Thatcherite solution of cutting back on investment to fund tax cuts..\..
   In a speech in the northeastern city of Newcastle, Blair promised to deliver sustained investment for hospitals, schools and transport - the pledge on which he staked his political future at last year's election and on which he will be judged.
   But he mentioned the country's crumbling transport infrastructure only fleetingly and issued a veiled warning to trade unions. Rail strikes in recent weeks have heaped misery on millions of commuters, adding to chaos cause by the bankruptcy of the privatised rail network.... Blair...warned trade unions not to stand in the way of reforms he insists must accompany the government investment, now going in after years of strict spending restraint....
   [For all his talk about reform, Blair doesn't seem to realize that non-superficial reform starts with enforcing a ban on overtime, preferably by automating overtime reinvestment in training and hiring. And the railway unions have already unilaterally implemented a ban on overtime -]
   On the railways, widening strikes and an overtime ban have hit travellers across England and Scotland. Thousands of passengers in the north of England had their journeys disrupted on Thursday when guards and conductors went on strike. And more are to follow....

• Short-staffed, editorial, BG, A22.
  It's pink-slip season at [Massachusetts]'s human service agencies. To cope with deep cuts in the current budget, the state's departments of welfare, mental health, and mental retardation are laying off hundreds of staff people....
  The Welfare Department expects to lay off 160 social workers just as its caseload is rising.... The Legislature slashed the account that pays the social workers' salaries..\.. Commissioner Claire McIntyre...tried to ease the blow in December by encouraging voluntary layoffs, unpaid leaves, and part-time work....
  [In short, primitive timesizing to avoid further layoffs.]

• French doctors strike, challenging Jospin, by Nikla Gibson, Reuters 05:46 01-23-02 via AOLNews.
  [France - until Japan gets going on its worksharing experimentation - is conducting the most significant experiment in human progress on the planet right now. And these are the kinds of problems we can expect when we Americans finally get smart enough to jump in and grab ourselves some real progress and freedom in terms of more financially secure free time. Of course, we can learn from France's mistakes and avoid these problems too. In this case, all it requires is implementing overtime-to-training&hiring conversion before you starting messing around with actual workweek reduction.]
  PARIS...- Doctors across France staged a 24-hour strike on Wednesday aimed at wringing concessions on pay and [working] conditions from Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's government in the run-up to elections. Three out of four family doctors, as well as dentists, surgeons and ambulance staff heeded union calls for a "Day Without Doctors," leaving stretched emergency services to cope with the sick.
  France's medical sector has been rocked by months of on-off industrial action but the breadth of Wednesday's strike has deeply shocked a country long proud of its health service. The action is [also] an embarrassment to Jospin, a Socialist preparing to challenge conservative President Jacques Chirac in presidential elections in April and May.  Parliamentary elections are also due, in June. "At just three months from presidential elections, this hoo-ha puts the government in greater difficulty as 71% of the French support (the protests)," Le Parisien daily said.
  Having quelled other public sector protests with the promise of more money, Jospin is under pressure to fund medicos' demands for more staff and better pay. But, with just over one month to go before the start of election campaigning, Jospin finds himself between a rock and a hard place.
  • If he concedes to medics' demands he risks incurring the wrath of his euro-zone partners for relaxing budgetary discipline and being accused by his rivals of electioneering.
  • If, on the other hand, he does nothing, a crisis in the health service could dent his hopes of beating Chirac....
  GOVERNMENT INSISTS ITS HANDS ARE TIED
  Health Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Wednesday that while he understood family doctors' grievances, the French health service remained the best in the world with 10% of Gross Domestic Product spent annually on the sector.
  [What about the Mass. General for heart surgery and the Mayo Clinic for cancer(?)?]
  He said the government could do no more than mediate between family doctors and the funding body that pays their fees, since the government has direct control only of hospital spending. The rest is paid via a complicated system of employee contributions to health funds. "It is not state money. We cannot transfer it," Kouchner told Europe 1 radio. "There is a little tinge of electioneering in all of this, which I don't blame doctors for making use of."
  Health service workers' grievances are many, including poor pay, understaffing and lack of public recognition. Hospital workers complain that a key policy of this government introducing a 35-hour working week leaves them desperately short-staffed. They say government promises of 45,000 new posts are insufficient. Family doctors, who have refused to be on call almost every weekend since last November, complain that their call-out and consultancy fees have not been increased in years, meaning they have to work long hours to earn a decent wage.

1/22/2002  Timesizing in the news -

1. France: Doctors and nurses strike, Reuters via NYT, A6.
   Hospital doctors and nurses went on strike to begin 3 days of protests over deteriorating working conditions.... Hospital workers say Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's policy emphasizing a 35-hour workweek is leaving them desperately short staffed..\..
   [Teaching us once again that before you shorten the workweek, you must have, in place and fully operational, your system for smoothly converting overtime and overwork into training and hiring. That's why these matters are dealt with in Timesizing.com's economic recovery program BEFORE workweek reduction (Phase 4) and why they take TWO phases (Phase 2 and Phase 3) instead of just one.]
   The protest is to culminate in a national strike on Wednesday involving family doctors and other medical workers....
   [It also teaches us again that the government must implement the innovation along with the first wave of private-sector implementations, or it stands to be very embarrassed. The French government for some reason imposed implementation on medium and large private-sector companies in Feb. 2000 and delayed implementation on itself until it imposed it on small companies (fewer than 20 employees) this month. Big mistake. Here's hoping Japan doesn't make the same faux pas. Here's more on this from an Aussie story -]
   French doctors and nurses to walk off the job, Australian Broadcasting 22 January 2002 10:56am AEDT via AOLNews.
   The people of France are facing a chaotic week with doctors and nurses taking industrial action. France is considered to have one of the best health systems in Europe, but doctors in the country say their working conditions have deteriorated considerably over the past few years and their fees have not changed in more than 14 years. Now, their call for nationwide industrial action has been supported by employees from all sectors of the health system.
   On Monday, hospital workers walked off the job and a nationwide nurses strike will begin later today. The trade unions representing health workers are demanding the creation of at least 80,000 new jobs to compensate for the recent shortening of the working week to just 35 hours in public hospitals. The highlight of the week, though, will be a national "no doctors" day on Wednesday when general practitioners will close their doors for 24 hours.
   [And more on this No Doctors Day -]
   French hospital doctors, nurses start strike, Reuters 11:27 01-21-02 via AOLNews.
   PARIS...- Hospital doctors and nurses across France went on strike on Monday in the first of three days of action in protest at deteriorating working conditions and pay. The protest is due to culminate in a "Day Without Doctor" national strike on Wednesday involving family doctors and other medical staff and is expected to put a huge strain on emergency services, themselves running on depleted manpower. Unions said by late afternoon significant numbers of staff had stopped work.... This week's strikes, which follow on-off industrial action over the past few months, have been called over a variety of grievances and could damage Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's expected bid for the presidency in April. Hospital workers complain his policy to introduce a 35-hour working week, a flagship measure in his winning 1997 manifesto, is leaving them desperately short-staffed as no money has been made available to hire extra staff.
   Hospitals stressed services, while stretched, were continuing. "The emergency ward, like the other services, is working normally because people have been requisitioned," Chantal Massieu, senior emergency ward nurse at the Hospital of the Conception in the southern city of Marseille told France Info radio. Detailed national figures are expected later on Monday.
   Monday's national strike followed another weekend of chaos in emergency wards, already battling with influenza and bronchitis epidemics, as family doctors again refused to be on call on Saturdays and Sundays, saying call-out and consultancy payments had not been increased in years.... The sight of exhausted medical staff, patients left in hospital corridors for hours and waiting rooms bulging with the sick has shocked France, long proud of its health service.
   With French public spending reined in by commitments made to join the euro single currency [premature window dressing - ed.], cash to boost the health service is in short supply. Medical costs in France, where patients pop more pills than just about anywhere else in the world, rose sharply last year to beyond the government's [health spending] ceiling, new figures on Friday showed.
   Almost every medical union has called a 24-hour national strike for Wednesday, January 23, which could leave a minimum of staff running emergency services from 8.00 a.m. (0700 GMT).
   ["Haha, those silly French," sez you. "Always on strike. Us English-speakers in the US and the UK are much smarter." Well, here's The Other Side of the Story -]
   Ironically, the protests coincide with broad media coverage of nine Britons who, in a bid to avoid long waiting lists in Britain for routine operations ranging from hip replacement to removal of eye cataracts, are being treated in a private clinic in the northern French city of Lille. Faced with a million people on waiting lists, Britain's National Health Service decided to send the group to France as part of a three-month trial which could open the way for more British patients turning up in foreign hospitals.

2. Japan steelmakers seen deepening ties with China, Reuters 04:03 01-21-02 via AOLNews.
   TOKYO...- Japan's steelmakers will likely expand their tie-ups with Chinese rivals as international cooperation in the industry widens...to respond to falling orders, overcapacity and intense price competition, with recent agreements centering on ties with European rivals. ...Chinese steelmakers...have contributed to the cut-throat price competition battering the industry.... "The construction of a system for providing identical products globally is likely to continue to widen," said..\..Japan Iron & Steel Federation Chairman Akira Chihaya...also president of Japan's leading steelmaker, Nippon Steel Corp....
   Chihaya also said the work-sharing schemes being considered by some top Japanese manufacturers such as Fujitsu Ltd and Sanyo Electric Co Ltd to reduce costs and avoid job cuts would likely not be instituted any time soon by Japan's steelmakers. "We are not in a situation in which we have to institute a work-sharing scheme," said Chihaya, who added that such a scheme would be difficult to introduce.
   [Already it starts - the usual clamor for exemption. In the USA after the 40-40-40 Plan (40 hrs max workweek, 40 cents minimum wage, in 1940) was instituted, the war industries started as soon as they could in late 1941 demanding exemptions from the new nationwide workweek maximum. And Japan's steel industry is starting even as it continues the industry consolidation that, along with the ensuing downsizing, is responsible for the tanking of the Japanese (and global) economy in the first place -]
   The Japanese steel industry, looking to cut costs in the face of a dismal domestic economy, overcapacity and international competition, has been rapidly consolidating into two major groups. Kawasaki Steel Corp and NKK Corp are set to form a holding company known as JFE Group in October, while Nippon Steel has tie-ups with Sumitomo Metal Industries Ltd and Kobe Steel Ltd.

3. ADVISORY - Columns and features for the week of Jan 20, Reuters 14:40 01-18-02 via AOLNews. The following [is] planned for Reuters Business Report in the week ahead.... Monday Jan 21...
   Workplace - Countless Americans suffer from "overwork" afflictions, says...columnist Sherwood Ross....
   [And here's the real article -]
   Workplace: How to downshift in your career, by Sherwood Ross, Reuters 16:00 01-21-02 via AOLNews.
   ...(Sherwood Ross is a free-lance writer.... E-mail him at sross1@ntelos.net)
   CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va... John Drake remembers vividly the day...his wife, Delia, handed him a letter she found that had been lying in the bottom of a drawer for 15 years.... There it was, in his own handwriting...how he wanted to spend more time with her and the children and to be a better father and to do the things they always dreamed of doing.... Sadly, though, the years slipped by and he never did.... The incident...helped Drake...resign as CEO of HR firm Drake Beam Morin to spend more time with his family working as a consultant....
   Like Drake, countless Americans also face the overwork affliction. They can empathize with what he felt on many a New York night when he looked down onto Park Avenue from his office window and thought, "something is missing" \despite the firm's becoming\ a global concern with revenues of $300 million annually.... Figures supplied by the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency, suggest what's missing could be home and family.
   Americans work longer hours than any other nationality on Earth -- an average of 1,979 hours a year, the ILO says. Drake's latest book, "Downshifting - How to work less and enjoy life more" (Berrett-Koehler)...includes stories of people too involved in their work to leave the office.
   Bob Duncan was an account manager for Northern Telecom who never quit work before 8 p.m. until one day he told himself, "It's six and you should be out of here."
   In many offices, it is the managers who set their employees' clocks to overtime. As Drake wrote, "If the boss comes in each Saturday morning, or works until seven every evening, these work patterns soon become the unspoken norm. No one in authority says that you must stay late or be present on Saturday morning, but you feel the pressure to do so."
   Drake's remedy is to downshift, which he defines as "to change voluntarily to a less demanding work schedule in order to enjoy life more." Notice the word "voluntarily," which means, he said, "If you seek more time for self or family, you will have to take the initiative."
   And why shouldn't you? Isn't Drake describing the lot of millions of us when he writes, "We work faster, log more hours, eat at our desks, take work home, call in while on vacation, and still fear for our job?"
   [In a world of carefully groomed job shortage and labor surplus, sealed with a frozen 62-year-old pre-technology workweek, no one wants to be the first to leave the office.]
   Asked why he wrote his book, Drake replied, "The main point is, "You can do it." He recommends beginning by subverting the workaholic culture in little ways.
   
   • "Start with Wednesday lunch and don't work at your desk. Maybe you want to write that letter to Aunt Minnie or work out at the gym or go to the library, instead of squeezing errands in on the weekend," he said.
   • "If it works for one day you can expand it through the rest of the week.
   These are easy ways to begin gaining some time for yourself."
   It's not easy to do, since downshifters are sometimes regarded as not being team players. "Employees are reluctant to ask their employers to help them make the downshift move," Drake said.
   [No kidding.]
   Downshifting strategies, he wrote, can take many forms, such as negotiating for longer vacations and personal leaves, flex-time, part-time, and job-sharing, transferring to a less demanding job, telecommuting and quitting your job and going to work for your company as a consultant.
   To win your employer's approval, though, will require solid written arguments on your part to show how the company - not just you - will profit from your initiative.
   [We'll tell you right now. This is too hard for most people and will just not happen, because there've been books like Drake's for decades and it hasn't happened. Check the spate of books 10 years ago, e.g, Arlie Hochchild's "Second Shift," Juliet Schor's "Overworked American".... But here are Drake's suggestions that maybe 2 people in the entire country are going to act upon -]
   Drake suggested these steps:
   
   • Be specific about the hours and days you propose to work and how you will interface with your co-workers.
   • Show how you will continue to meet your performance goals as this likely will be your boss's prime concern.
   • Show how the company will gain from reduced costs (taking a salary cut and less office space are examples) and improved productivity and morale on your part.
   • Offer to try the new arrangement on a trial basis, "particularly if you encounter resistance to your plan," Drake said.
   He stresses that the purpose of downshifting is to gain more free time to strengthen family relationships, which "deepen in proportion to the time we allocate to them." In his own case, "When I let the company go, we sold our big house and furnishings and moved to Maine to start life anew," Drake said. "I never felt so free and exhilarated in all my life, and I still feel that way 20 years after leaving the big time."
   [There you have it. The most fundamental freedom is financially secure free time. If you don't have that, you don't have the wherewithal to exercise any of the other freedoms - so they aren't worth a damn. But maybe Drake is talkin' to CEOs - in next story, another CEO "just beats it" -]

4. A change of pace - Papows finds calm at Maptuit after grueling stint as Lotus chief, controversy - ...Jeff Papows slows down at smaller firm, by Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe, F1.
   ..."In 1999, I ispent about 200 days on the road," Papows recalls. "There were weeks when I'd be in 3 or 4 countries and often on a couple of continents." For three straight years, he came down with mild cases of pneumonia.... It all came with the global territory...when Papows was CEO of Lotus Development Corp., Massachusetts' biggest software development company and a key unit of IBM Corp.... But with the power and perks came exhaustion and long absences from home.... Papows...wanted a slower pace at a smaller company.
   ["Slower pace" and "smaller company" don't necessarily go together. But in this case -]
   ...He wound up [as CEO] at Maptuit Corp., a small, privately held company that provides businesses with geographic data in digital form....
   [Now a slower pace (and a longer term view) is more likely to go with "privately held" than "publicly held," that's for sure.]
   ...It's unlikely that Maptuit will ever match the size and influence of Lotus, much less its high-profile glamour.... Still there are compensations, like getting to help his daughter with her homework. "At 5 o'clock I'm going home," Papows says. "At Lotus, in 8 years I didn't go home at 5 o'clock."
   [One more CEO sees the light. "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul"...or never see his own kids growing up. And the CEO sets the standards and expectations. If he stays till 8, gradually a lot of employees start staying till 8. If he leaves at 5, employees leave at 5 and they all have a life.]