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Timesizing News, April 1-15, 2002
[Commentary] ©2002 Phil Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622, Porter Sq, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080

4/14-15/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news - nothing in AOLNews today so we feature a previous story that we discovered late -

• (1/11)   Factbox - Britain's rail strikes, Reuters 07:11 01-10-02 via AOLNews.
  LONDON - Striking train workers have paralysed rail services in the south of England and across Scotland in recent weeks.... The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), which represents non-driving staff like train guards, ticket collectors and station assistants, is at the centre of four separate disputes....
  [two of which involve worktime issues -]
  
  1. South West Trains. ...At the start of January, the union turned down a 7.6% offer...saying the deal did not include a two-hour cut in the working week and left out bargaining rights....
  2. ScotRail. A quarter of all ScotRail services have been cancelled due to an unofficial train drivers' overtime ban.... The drivers - members of both the RMT and ASLEF unions - decided to stage their unofficial overtime ban after their demands for a 22% pay rise were dismissed by ScotRail, which offered 3%.
     Talks aimed at reaching agreement between train operators and union officials ended in deadlock on Dec. 28 and the drivers withdrew an agreement to work on rest days to meet the rail timetable. RMT officials said the real problem was under-staffing. They said drivers had been working rest days and excessive hours to provide services, and that ScotRail had ignored repeated warnings from the union about workers' hours....

• USA Video Interactive Corp. reduces overhead, Business Wire 04/12/2002 19:30 Eastern via AOLNews.
  MYSTIC, Conn...- Mr. Edwin Molin, President of USA Video Interactive Corp., wishes to advise that it has placed 8 of its 20 employees in the Connecticut office on a temporary furlough. All of these employees are on call, continue to be covered under the Company's benefit plan and are available on a per diem basis to fulful sales contracts as required. This cost cutting measure is being done to reduce the Company's current overhead....
  [A very short press release. We'd like to know more about the motivation for these furloughs and their anticipated duration. At any rate, on the face of it, this looks like an instance of timesizing to avoid downsizing.]

1. GM to idle assembly plant, AP 04/11/02 16:21 EDT via AOLNews.
   DETROIT - General Motors Corp. has informed employees of its Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant that the facility will shut down for one week beginning Monday, the company said Thursday. The temporary idling of the plant that produces the Cadillac Seville and Buick LeSabre will affect 3,200 workers. The plant is being shut down for one week to better match inventory with demand for the vehicles, GM spokesman Pat Morrissey said.
   [It's timesizing instead of downsizing, cutting worktime instead of jobs, but it's primitive. Why? Because GM workweek modulation (cutting&adding work hours) is a lot smoother and less disruptive on employee morale and personal schedule than workmonth modulation (cutting&restoring work days or weeks) still doesn't have the level of flexible robotization to transfer work from these other facilities for which it is inefficiently paying time&ahalf -]
   All of GM's other plants in the U.S. and Canada will work overtime all or part of next week, the automaker said.... [Plus GM management skills are apparently inadequate to the task of transfering excess workload to the Linden, NJ plant -]
   A spike in sales for the Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck means a delay in the elimination of one shift at GM's Linden NJ plant. The second shift was scheduled to end April 15, but S-10 sales have been so brisk that the move won't occur until May 24.

2. BART budget challenge for fiscal yeara 2003, Business Wire 04/11/2002 15:01 Eastern via AOLNews.
   OAKLAND, Calif...- BART (Bay Area Rail? Transportation? yester]day announced that it faces...a projected shortfall in the range of $56-61m. Despite proposed spending reductions of $41m in an initial effort to balance the FY03 budget, a gap of $15-20m remains to be [plugg]ed.... The continuing weak Bay Area economyresulted in lower than forecasted ridership, which for March of '02 was nearly 10% below March of last year....
   "Back in January we took several steps to...close a projected budget shortfall of $28.8m we experienced in the current fiscal year. Capital spending was reduced by $14m, labor expense was cut by $5.2m by reducing overtime and eliminating over 70 [ie: 78] positions, and non-labor spending was cut by almost $9m"..\..according to BART General Manager Thomas Margro....
   [So at least BART has been avoiding some downsizing by timesizing.]

3. GNYHA Ventures Inc. and NaviCare Systems Inc. form strategic alliance, Business Wire 04/11/2002 10:00 Eastern via AOLNews.
   NEW YORK...- GNYHA Ventures Inc., a subsidiary of Greater New York Hospital Assoc. (GNYHA), has [allied] with NaviCare Systems Inc, a leading provider of technology-based, real-time workflow and patient-flow management systems.... Benefits result from reduced diversions of ambulances from emergency rooms, increased admissions and bed utilization, increased caregiver and support staff satisfaction [and] productivity, and reduced overtime....
   [Real managers don't use overtime at all.]

4. Analysis - Shorter work hours leave [some] French voters cold, by Mark John, Reuters 04/11/02 05:46 ET via AOLNews.
   [Here we go. This is either the top executives of the megacorporate parent of Reuters reaching down to swap this boon to themselves (in terms of bigger and solider markets due to work spreading), which they stupidly perceive as a threat, or it's just a stupid reporter (ever heard of "Mark John" before?), or it's an honest story about some very clueless French citizens who already don't remember how much more taxes and less security and upward wage mobility they had five years ago when the French unemployment rate was 12.6%. Or maybe it's just a warning about how much public education it's going to take to get people in the age of robotics to realize that higher pay goes with shorter hours, not longer hours. Or maybe it's just a warning against introducing a shorter workweek without first introducing an overtime design that lets people work as many hours as they want - if and only if they directly (or indirectly through a 100% tax on overtime earnings) reinvest overtime earnings in training &/or hiring.]
   PARIS...- Paris bank employee Laurence Pulanecki works 37 hours a week, has 37 days holiday a year and sometimes wonders what to do with all her free time.
   [Well there are plenty of people elsewhere in the world who would know what to do with it. Perhaps we should ship the unimaginative Laurencie (we'll make her name look a little more feminine) to America and train her as a nurse or a medical intern so she could find happiness working 120-hour weeks for depressed pay.]
   "When I go down to visit my family in Brittany for a long weekend they ask whether I actually have a job at all," she says of the new leisure granted to her and millions of other French by a four-year-old law that has shortened working hours.
   [Well, since her farm family in Brittany loves working so much, why doesn't she just go home and slop pigs from 4am to 12 midnight.]
   "But to be honest I would prefer to work longer and earn more," admits Pulanecki, 29, echoing the feeling among many here that cash in the pocket is worth more than time on their hands.
   {These clueless morons apparently can't figure out, or have never been told, that excess labor hours in the job market, which are endemic all over the world, even still in 90% unemployment France, depress wages, and if you worsen that surplus, you don't get more cash in the pocket, you just run harder for less.]
   The policy that swept Prime Minister Lionel Jospin to power in [the] 1997 elections has run into scepticism with workers and employers alike and cannot be relied on to grab votes for the Socialist leader in his bid for the presidency this month. "The election benefit for Jospin this time around is minimal," said Francois Miquet-Marty of the Louis Harris polling institute. "People are altogether much less sure about the whole reform these days.
   ["The prisoners love their cage." Here we have a nation that's the envy of all the rest of the world, and in fact leading the world on this issue that our great-grandparents thought would be long ago resolved much faster - they expected a 30-hour workweek in 1933 and probably 25 hours a week by 1950 and 20 or 16-hour workweeks by the year 2000, borne by the unimaginable productivity of mechanization, automation, cybernetics and robotization. Clearly we their descendants are much stupider than they thought, and if it's true that many (a majority) of the French and not just some (a minority) of the French are represented by this backward-thinking pollster, the French are truly the biggest dopes in the world, totally unworthy of a leader even such a short distance ahead as Jospin. We can only wish on them a dummy like Baby Bush to plunge their born-to-be-slave *sses back to 40-50-60 hour workweeks like those we have doomed ourselves to by not focusing on this issue.]
   Few here deny the profound impact on French life of a law which cut the standard working week by four hours to 35 hours [a week], or allowed firms to negotiate so that workers could take some of the reduction in extra annual leave instead.
   [Sounds imprecise. Probably read "vacation" (US) or "holiday" (UK, as in 1st para.) for "leave."]
   Already in place for nine million private industry workers and soon to be implemented for France's large public sector, the reform is reshaping France's leisure and shopping habits.
   ["Soon to be implemented" for the public sector? This was supposed to happen on Jan. 1 last. Is the Reuters reporter misinformed or are we?]
   "Every weekend a long one"
   [Now finally in para. 8 (with mostly one para. per sentence), our boy comes up with some good news, but trivializes it with phrases like "gleeful" and "impulse buying" and "pop in," despite that being exactly the kind of thing that has made France the most recession-proof economy in the eurozone next to heavily-subsidized Ireland -]
   Retailers gleefully report more impulse buying as employees finish work earlier and pop into shops on their way home. Surveys suggest home life has benefited as workers spend more time with their families.
   [Oh quick. Hide that one. The idea that more family time might mean stronger family values could have serious legs, even with the radical religionists we're supposed to call "conservatives" these days. Quick, back to the trivial -]
   "Now, every weekend is potentially a long weekend," said Frederique Tolila of travel agent Paradox, adding that people were using their extra days off to head for the country or take mini-breaks to destinations from North Africa to Amsterdam.
   [But aren't these the very same BORING long weekends that our prize opener, Laurencie Pulanecki, was complaining about? Apparently not all French employees are as dull, unimaginative and slave-minded as she. But quick, we're getting too positive. Think of something bad, fast. Oh phew! Here's something:]
   But many businesses are furious at having to bear the cost and hassle of applying the law.
   [Poor babies. They have more business than anywhere else in Europe except Ireland, and they're STILL complaining. They think business materializes out of thin air, rather than out of job-secure employees with lots of spending power and lots of time to spend it.]
   Trade unions feel let down, saying its original job-boosting aim has foundered as employees are often asked to do the same amount of work in less time.
   [Let's face it. Many of them can, easily, just by one easy step (prioritization) or another (heading for their desk first thing instead of the coffee machine. Our own preference is to work hard while we're on the job and then get the hell outa there and be free, instead of sorta kinda coating our lives with megahours hanging around the workplace looking busy or just talking/complaining to/with our fellow employees. And as for boosting jobs, France still has just another rigid and arbitrary level of the workweek, albeit slightly shorter. To really boost jobs and eliminate unemployment, you need a flexible workweek that you can adjust downward an hour a year or an hour every six months till the private sector is practically shanghai-ing people off the streets, as during World Wars I and II in America. But look at the degree of bellyaching in France today when the precious whiners have only gone down a louzy 5 hours a week from the "standard" 40. Are they gonna be able to institute "flexible adjustment of the workweek" when so many employees (= "labor"!) as well as employers are still complaining about that relatively small change? This is one nation of big babies who could wake up in heaven and start complaining about the lack of pain when they pinch themselves! Check out this one, as if we don't get this in workaholic America as well, because of burnout -]
   "And sometimes it's really difficult to get hold of the person you want to speak to in another company because they are always off," complained Pulanecki.
   [Oh gee, that's rough isn't it. And try this one on -]
   Any lingering "feel good" factor associated with the policy has further been dampened by the sight of demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of public sector workers who fear essential services will suffer as manhours are cut.
   [Ever heard of technology? You gotta wonder if the French have any computers or other miraculous worksaving devices.]
   They may well be right. With the government eager to tighten its belt [not to mention taxpayers their purse-strings!], it has only offered to create 10,000 new jobs to accompany the application of the measure to the public sector as opposed to the 45,000 that unions say is necessary. [Jospin's failure to get the government leading the way on the 35-hour week has indeed been a big drag on its implementation, but maybe the French public sector is so stodgy and entrenched that it was this way or not at all. But now we have to really stretch to dig up complaints -]
   Less work, more stress
   [Huh? Even with more job security? Aren't you forgetting the not-so-distant past?]
   Polling attitudes to the 35-hour law, Louis Harris found most French thought that while it had benefited overall quality of life [but that don't count, right?!], it had made the workplace more stressful and was having a dampening impact on pay levels.
   [There may be more pressure at work, but there are fewer job candidates willing to do your job for less pay, and if France ever gets its act together to inch the workweek down further and soak up the rest of their 9% unemployed, they'll see market forces driving up pay so fast they'll start complaining about wage-push inflation and calling for wage-price controls.]
   Despite being the flagship policy that brought the left to power five years ago [although the right had a voluntary version of it that was doing quite well on a small scale (the Robien Law)], the 35 hours law is mentioned only briefly in Jospin's manifesto for president ahead of the two-round vote starting April 21.
   [We're getting the strong feeling that Jospin has sensed that the French are trying desperately to adjust to a better life, and it's just sooo hard, because they don't have as much to complain about, so he's got the sense to soft-pedal the incredible advance that French society has taken ahead of all the rest of the world, and just let it slip in, in case, like thanking the elves, you focus on it and it disappears.]
   Not that his rival in the election, conservative Pres. Jacaues Chirac, is daring to campaign on a promise to raise the working week back up to 39 hours [whence, believe it or not, it descended, since the Frogsters had "plummeted" it a whole hour down from 40 back in 1982] - that, his aides point out, would be political suicide.
   [Well, you complainers have zero credibility. Sh*t or get off the pot. If you're not willing to jack it back up even to 39, then SHADDAP and quit your bellyaching. We've got some real problems over on this side of the Atlantic while you hypochondriacs in the frogpond whine and moan. As the only people in the world at the dawn of the Third Millennium with the sense to have an official nationwide 35-hour workweek, the French should drop "liberté, egalité, fraternité" as their national motto and adapt, due to their constant complaining, the motto, "Another shitty day in paradise." ]
   But he is suggesting the law be relaxed so that those who want to work longer, can.
   [Ah, the old Chesterton pan-utopian flaw again = what to do about people who want more than their share. Well sez we, fine, let them - no harm done as long as they're doing it for love, not money. How to tell the difference? A 100% tax on overtime earnings with a 100% exemption for reinvestment in training and hiring in overtime-targeted skills. Simple but effective. We have No Problem/Pas de Problème with people like the Little Toymaker working 24/7, because they are people who "never worked a day in their lives" and would gladly work for nothing if they had enough to eat, because they LOVE their jobs. And they are people who would be willing and delighted to draw others into their passion = reinvest overtime earnings in training and hiring.]
   The Louis Harris survey found that 49% wanted just that option, compared to only 36% in favour of even shorter working hours in return for less pay.
   [Well, sportsfans, unless we're completely innumerate (if not illiterate), 49% wanting to work longer means that 51% don't want to work longer, sortof like the 51% of Québecois in the last referendum who didn't want to separate from Canada. And if 36% want even shorter hours even if it means less pay, that must mean 51-36= 15% are happy just the way things are. At any rate, 51% is still a majority and still means Jospin is going to win.]
   Whether the Chirac proposal would keep everyone happy or undermine the initial reform - as some rivals suspect his secret aim to be - is not clear. Debate on the issue has not figured in a campaign dominated by concern about law and order.
   In any case, many beneficiaries of the law will not be too preoccupied with the election and its decisive May 5 second round. Just recently, May has been the month when the French use their new leisure time to disappear for a late spring holiday.
   [Or maybe Jospin isn't going to win if enough of these dufuses take off and don't vote. If so, they deserve the end of their little bout of world leadership and quality of life and family values, because they have been unworthy of it.]

1. Lockheed cuts shuttle-related jobs, by Alan Sayre, AP 04/10/02 16:55 EDT via AOLNews.
   ..."Any further reduction in the external [space shuttle fuel] tank production would impact the workforce \at\ Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co...beyond the 325 jobs announced today," said Lockheed spokesman Marion LaNasa.... LaNasa said that as a result of cost controls and a reduction in overtime, the company was able to scale back last year's layoffs [from 250 initially announced] to about 100.
   [So, overtime cuts last year helped save 250-100= 150 jobs.]

2. MNA-represented Fairmont Community Hospital nurses vote to strike, PRNewswire via AOLNews.
   ST. PAUL, April 10 - 106 registered nurses...represented by the Minnesota Nurses Assoc. (MNA) have voted to withhold their professional services.... "We are consistently working overtime and/or short-staffed and are deeply concerned about the safety of our patients," said Negotiating Team Co-Chair, Marsha Evans, RN. "The nurses at this facility are tired because this employer plugs the staffing holes by requiring us to work overtime. When nurses are working long hours at the bedside, we worry about our abilityl to give the best care our patients deserve." If the tactic of mandatory overtime hasn't worked, the hospital has been forced to close admissions to units due to lack of staff. [On] April 8th the Critical Care Unit and the Med/Surg unit had to turn patients away because there were not enough nurses to staff the beds....
   [Another group of American nurses put their foot down on mandatory overtime.]

3. [a non-profit exposes some lethal bugs in Bush's latest proposed tax on the poor]
   Minimum wage or 40-hr. work week: NCJIS report shows Bush can't have both; Welfare plan would force states to violate minimum wage law, US Newswire 04/10 14:53 via AOLNews.
   WASHINGTON...- A new analysis of the Bush welfare plan proves that the proposed increased work requirements are unworkable in most states. Fuzzy Math, a report released today by the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support [NCJIS] shows that if welfare recipients complete a 40-hour week, their average pay would be below the minimum wage, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, in all but five states....
   The Bush Administration has announced...that recipients required to work for benefits do not have to work any more hours than the amount of the combined cash assistance and food stamp benefit divided by the minimum wage.... But when the maximum benefit-level is divided by 40 hours per week, only 5 states can pay the minimum wage: AL, HI, NH, NY and WI. For example, a welfare recipient could only work 22 hours in Alabama at the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour....
   Secretary [of Health and Human Services] Thompson [on Apr. 9] told the House Committee on Education adn Workforce that the Bush work requirements were "an important step, since 40 hours is the normal work period for all Americans." "That is just plain wrong," said..\..Deepak Bhargava, Director of NCJIS.... "While the 40 hour work week might be standard for some Americans, it is certainly not the norm, nor even a possibility, for many single mothers." ...The average number of hours worked per week by mothers with children under 18 is 35, for single mothers 36....
   The Bush proposal to increase the hours of work per week presents a number of other problems for states administering welfare programs and recipients receiving cash assistance -
   • ...Proposed increased work participation rates for states would force many recipients to work more than 40 hours per week to boost the average number of hours worked for the entire caseload..\..
     [thus trashing whatever is left of the "maximum" represented by the 40-hour limit and basically reinforcing the character of the 40-hour/week figure as a minimum, not a maximum]
   • Low-income parents working 40 hours per week at the minimum wage would lose their cash assistance grants after the first month in [25 states and DC] because they would be earning too much: AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, ID, IN, KS, MD, MA, MI, MT, NE, ND, OK, OR, PA, SD, VT, WA, WV, WI, and WY....
     [thus turning the "minimum" wage into exactly what many of its original labor critics feared in the 1930s, a maximum wage]
   [This whole exercise illustrates the futility of basing public welfare policy on money per person before leveling the playing field with a fully operational system based on worktime per person such as Timesizing. Plus when the time comes to go beyond timesizing, policy should never be based on the stifling micromanaging level of wage (money per hour per job) but only on the general level of income (money per person per week or month).]
   For a copy of Fuzzy Math, please contact Tyler Prell or Jason Dring at 202-518-8047....
   [Some good news on this today is in a NYT subheadline, "State leaders of both parties are at odds with the pResident." The article is "Republicans rally behind welfare proposals," by Pear & Toner, NYT, A25, which begins, "Bush tried [yester]day to really Republican support behind his welfare proposals, as his party found itself in an uncomfortable position: accused of advocating the very sort of inflexible, Washington-knows-best approach to welfare policy that conservatives have long criticized.... In testimoney prepared for a House hearing on Thursday...State Senator Raymond Meier of New York, a Republican \speaking for\ the National Conference of State Legislatures...says the pResident's proposals, by imposing new work requirements without additional money, could result in "less flexibility for the states"..\..
   Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, a Democrat, told the Senate Finance Committee [yester]day that he feared that the administration's proposals...would force states like Vermont to abandon successful training and job-placement programs. "The White House seems to be insistent of micromanaging the states' affairs," Mr. Dean said in an interview....
   [And so we go on and on with our balking conflicting bouncing between stifling $$concentration in the private sector and stifling micromanagement in the public sector, one side destroying jobs and the other side, too little too late, scrambling to re-create them again. Pathetic! Time we quit straining at makework and switched to spreadwork - to share the vanishing human employment in the context of inrushing worksaving technology and spread the spending power to the people who actually spend it. And the most gradual, complete and market-oriented program for doing this is Timesizing. (Incidentally, a neighboring article reports another setback Bush's Great March Backwards - "House defeats bill over campaign finance," by Alison Mitchell, NYT, A25, which states, "In a blow to the Republican leadership, the House defeated legislation today to ease penalties on taxpayers after critics said the bill included a provision that could open a new avenue for undisclosed contributions to independent political groups....")]

• (2/21)   The Republican layoff conspiracy, by Kevin Shay, *BuzzFlash.com.
  Lost in the excitement last year over Enron and the purported War on Terrorism was this fact: 2001 was the worst year for workers since the early Reagan years. The ranks of the unemployed grew by 2.6 million last year, the most since 1982, according to the US Dept. of Labor. Most of those new [ex-employees] collecting unemployment were laid off - estimates on the number of layoffs in 2001 ranged from 1.8-2.5 million....
  So what do we do about this situation? We stage a nonviolent revolt. We organize politically. We educate people on companies that practice alternatives to layoffs like reducing hours - Phil Hyde of Timesizing.com highlights numerous good examples [see below and working models]. We educate people on studies that show layoffs actually hurt companies' profits due to lower morale, a loss of momentum, and other factors....

1. [first, one of the insubstantials that came up for today - a one-liner -]
   Hundreds of hairdressers carry dummy heads on sticks as they demonstrate Monday, April 8, 2002 in Paris to demand more flexibility in the 35-hour working week and less VAT taxes, caption of AP photo by Francois Mori, AP April 8 2002 via AOLNews.
   [Photo shows a street scene with hordes of people holding up, on sticks, dummy heads used to model hairstyles - very wierd looking, sorta like Mardi Gras with an extra layer of heads. "Flexibility" in terms of exemption from a solid maximum is bad. "Flexibility" in terms of comp time etc. is OK. Less VAT taxation is good - why tax circulation when that's what we want? More graduated income taxes is good - until we've leveled the playing field enough with timesizing and its successors to switch from taxes to fees for service.]

2. [then something more meaty from back in February -]
   [2/28]   Cash-strapped states turn to workers, by Steve LeBlanc, AP-NY-02-27-02 2106EST via AOLNews.
   ...From coast to coast, cash-strapped states are pressing employees to work extra hours for no pay, defer some of their wages, or take unpaid vacations [ie: weeks off] - or furloughs [ie: months off] - to help balance the budget. States are, of course, also resorting to hiring freezes and layoffs. But furloughs are often seen as preferable to layoffs, in part because they can yield more immediate savings. Laid-off workers have to be given severance pay of six months or more in some cases. "In the short term you spend more money on layoffs," said Cheye Calvo of the National Conference of State Legislatures. "You can also lose a lot of talented people."...
   
   • In Indiana, which is facing a budget deficit projected to top $1B by 2003, some agencies will ask employees to voluntarily work 30-hour weeks instead of the regular 37.5..\..
   • In New Jersey, state workers are being asked to voluntarily take unpaid furloughs of up to 90 days to help close an estimated $2.9B deficit. [=notsobad]   The state also plans to lay off part-timers. [=bad]....
   • In Iowa, the state faces a $120m shortfall in this year's budget and Republicans running the Legislature have proposed forcing most state workers to take one day a month off without pay, saving roughly $13m by the end of the budget year. Some workers would be exempted, including prison guards and hospital employees.
   • ...South Carolina['s] Senate is furloughing 113 employees for three days without pay.
   • Massachusetts welfare workers are being asked to volunteer to work two weeks and then defer their pay for up to four years..\.. When the state urged welfare caseworker Jo Irvine to take two weeks off without pay, there wasn't any question of whether to accept. Irvine knew if she didn't, it would mean more layoffs. "The only incentive was to save our co-workers' jobs. We would never do this for any other reason," said Irvine.... "I'll tighten the belt a little, but there'll be food on the table," said Irvine, who will receive three weeks of paid vacation in the new fiscal year as compensation..\.. Irvine is one of more than 700 caseworkers who are doing their part to help ease Massachusetts' budget crunch by voluntarily taking unpaid furloughs or accepting early retirement. The welfare department said those measures will help close a $3m gap and avoid 160 layoffs....
     Also, the state's court system has asked employees to work eight days without immediate pay and either defer their wages to 2003 or take 12 days of paid vacation over the next year. Two unions pushed for the option. "We knew around December that layoffs were coming," said Mary Babic, spokeswoman for a Service Employees Union local that represents 2,500 court workers. The unions criticized the judges because few initially agreed to take the salary hit, despite their high pay and lifetime appointments. A majority of judges eventually agreed to defer eight days' pay....

• [one Japanese provincial/prefectural government cracks down (a little) on overtime -]
  Welfare firm ordered to pay for unpaid overtime work, Kyodo News via AP-NY-04-06-02 1908EST via AOLNews.
  TOKUSHIMA, Japan, April 7 - Two labor ministry offices in Tokushima Prefecture have ordered a social welfare corporation to pay a total of 4 million yen in unpaid overtime wages to its employees, industry sources said Saturday.
  [According to our very-rough (on the generous side) just-divide-by-100 handydandy exchange rate, this isn't nearly as much as it sounds - ¥4,000,000 only comes out to $40,000.]
  According to the sources, the two labor standards inspection offices ordered Kenshokai, which runs more than 30 welfare facilities, such as special nursing homes in Tokushima and Kagawa prefectures, to pay three months in overtime wages to some 80 employees at four facilities, including special nursing homes, in three towns and villages in Tokushima Prefecture. Kenshokai paid the wages by the end of March, they said.
  [Let's see, $40,000/80 is an average of $500 per employee, roughly the same as the much-heralded Bush taxcut for married couples.]
  The labor standards inspection offices found that the amount of working hours reported by the corporation was less than the total recorded on employee timecards and that the wages were not paid, the sources said.
  [Not too smart for a country that's been in the economic toilet for ten years because they're not spreading around the vanishing work (and associated pay=spending power) that their armies of robots still haven't taken over.]
  The president of Kenshokai, Hirohiko Nakamura, has also served on the board of two companies that made donations to a fund-managing organization of scandal-tainted lawmaker Muneo Suzuki in 1998. Suzuki, a House of Representatives member from Hokkaido, left the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on March 18 due to various scandals such as his meddling in Foreign Ministry affairs and involvement with bid-rigging cases.
  [So did Nakamura learn a thing or two from Suzuki, or vice versa?]

4/05/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news -

• Optimism surges in euro zone service sector, by Ruth Pitchford, Reuters 05:50 04-04-02 via AOLNews.
  [That's good, because the mainstay of the service sector is retail, and pessimism is surging in the dollar zone retail sector, according to "Retail sector could face record job cuts," AP via Boston Globe, C2 - see our downsizing news today, 4/05/2002 #0.   Indeed -]
  Thursday's European optimism \riding the Feb-Mar 1.6 rise in\ the Reuters Eurozone business activity index...contrasted with renewed uncertainty in the United States, where share prices fell and the dollar weakened after a comparable business survey on Wednesday added to gloom about conflict in the Middle East. The U.S. Institute of Supply Mgmt survey raised fears that profit margins would be crushed between slack demand and rising interest rates, after the index eased to 57.3 in March from 58.7 in February while companies also reported paying higher prices for goods and services.
  In the euro zone...the service sector accounts for about 66% of the...economy [same percentage as US consumer markets comprise of overall US markets], including public services and retail and wholesale business which are not covered by the Reuters survey..\.. In the euro zone, new business recorded the strongest rise in over a year at 52.8 in March from 50.6 in February.
  [But then Europe isn't nearly as intent as the U.S. on translating worksaving technology into downsizing, homelessness and prisons by maintaining 1940-level workweek and vacation levels.]
  The cautiously upbeat mood in Europe was reflected in comments from the head of French advertising firm Havas [name sounds more like a terrorist organization]. "Without doubt, we have touched the bottom of the recession," Alain de Pouzilhac told La Tribune financial daily.... But he added that recovery had yet to show up in the U.S. advertising sector.
  [Well that makes two parts of the U.S. service sector that still aren't recovering, retail and advertising. Back in the euro zone, the "recovery" is still not roaring, because they still don't have a workweek that adjusts automatically against unemployment to make for easy rehirability and consumer confidence -]
  ...Said Lorenzo Codogno at Bank of America in London, "We shouldn't forget that the current situation is conducive only to a very mild recovery in the second half of this year"..\..
  "Strong competition and price discounting to attract new business served to limit the extent of the overall rise in output prices," said NTC Research, which compiles the survey of over 2,000 companies.... Of the five countries covered by the [Reuters] euro zone survey, the Irish economy has been recovering fastest, followed by France, Italy, Germany and Spain. For the first time since last July, companies in all five countries took on more staff overall, although the upturn remains uneven and some companies are still trimming jobs.
  [Even so, the overall trend would be seen as a disaster of "rising labor costs" by perverse American economists, who seem to think that consumers can live on air.]
  Ini Germany, the service sector bounced back from 10 months of recession in March, with the headline activity index jumping [2.5] to 52.3 from 49.8. New business grew - albeit marginally - for the first time since Jan/2001. But input costs rose at the fastest pace since Nov/2000 and German companies blamed wage inflation and fuel prices...
  [That's because the krautsters don't even have the most primitive kind of nationwide 35-hour workweek yet. But in the country that does have the most primitive kind of nationwide 35-hour workweek, the frogsters have an antidote up their sleeves -]
  NTC said better demand had allowed some French companies to pass on part of the cost increases that they have been forced to absorb over the last three years, including the introduction of a 35-hour working week and the euro currency..\..
  [Bottom line - the shorter workweek, though its design be primitive in the extreme, has given the French easier rehireability and higher consumer spending and domestic demand.]
  The French business activity index rose [1.5] to 54.7 from 53.2 and optimism surged, even though some companies said clients were putting contracts on hold to await the outcome of presidential elections starting on April 21....
  [So the French didn't go down as far as the Germans (let alone the Americans and the Japanese), and recovered to a level a full point ahead of them. Not to rub it in or anything, here's the word on France from another Reuters article yesterday -]
  French services sector recovers pre-Sept 11 levels, Reuters 02:51 04-04-02 via AOLNews.
  The Employment Index showed a third month of expansion at 52.8 in March compared to 52.5 in February. Last week, French labour ministry data showed the country's jobless rate held steady at 9.0% in February.
  [Down from 12.6% in 1997 before they began to introduce the 35-hour workweek.]
  Company costs in the service sector rose sharply again in March, as the 35-hour working week, new euro currency and higher commodity prices took their toll. But with companies now more bullish on prospects (ie: consumer demand), they also felt able to pass these extra costs on to clients to preserve their margins.
  [In short, spreading the consolidating work and spending power, even via a rigid 35-hour workweek, has given France a boost.]
  The Input Price Index rose [0.3] to 59.3 from 59.0 in Feb., while Prices Charged Index was at 54.3 in March up [0.2] from 54.1.
  [So the input hit was nearly a wash. And things being what they are, that input hit in France more than anywhere else will come out of a few executive's pay, where it represents inactive spending power and weakening markets, and go into a lot of ordinary employees' pay, where it represents active spending power and strengthening markets.]

1. MFCI Corporation announces fiscal 2001 and fourth quarter results, Business Wire BW2512 Apr 03 2002 16:50 Eastern via AOLNews.
   ...MFCI Corp...provides leading equipment and innovative technology and solutions to the chemicals, paints, pigments and coatings industries for milling, deagglomerations and dissolving..\.. Irwin Gruverman, CEO and Chairman stated "The Company posted what appeared to be nearly flat quarterly revenue results in the fourth quarter as compared with those in 2000, and a net operating loss resulted for both the quarter and the year. The loss was due, in large part, to the shortfall in sales and reduced profit margins experienced at our Morehouse-COWLES Division.... At our Morehouse-COWLES Division, we have:
   • reduced staff 24% over a twelve month period,
   • reduced the length of the work week,
   • appointed a new Operations Manager,
   • and generally instituted tighter cost and expense controls.
   We are committed to have this division attain or surpass a break-even point in 2002....
   [So this outfit would presumably have done more staff reduction if they hadn't reduced the workweek. We have another story today that mentions a four-day workweek, and half-day Fridays, but we can't be sure that these involved four 10-hour days and comp worktime for the Fridays, so we're mentioning but not featuring it. It occurs in "Ten winners receive Fleet Small Business Leadership Award," Business Wire BW2101 Apr 03 2002 8:14 Eastern via AOLNews, which states, "The winners were selected based up their achievement in predominantly one of five categories: community invovlement, iinnovative business practices, significant revenue growth, technological innovation, exceptional employee relations....
   The winners...are:...Robert Silman Assocs., NYC, for exceptional employee relations. Robert Silman's company has been involved in over 7,500 engineering projects in its 35-year history. Over that time, Silman's company has become well known for the perks afforded its employees - including half-day Fridays, yoga classes in the office, four-day work weeks in the summer and involvement in various intra-industry sports. Retention is extremely high at this firm, as the average tenure of an employee is more than six years...."]

2. Schweiker administration takes action to enhance recruitment and retention of health-care workers for state facilities - Contract with health-care union amended to improve pay for nurses and to heighten their involvement in patient care, PRNewswire 04/03/2002 11:13 EST via AOLNews.
   HARRISBURG, Pa...- On behalf of Pennsylvania Gov. Mark Schweiker, Secretary of Administration Fritz Bittenbender and Kim Patterson, VP of District 1199P [sounds like a tax form!] of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), announced that the union's contract with the Commonwealth has been amended to make state government a more attractive employment option for nursing professionals. ...Secretary Bittenbender said..., "These contract extensions will benefit all taxpayers, since they will help ensure that we employ adequate numbers of health-care workers, thereby reducing expensive overtime charges that could result if our health-staffing needs are not properly addressed."...

1. [the sick sick American healthcare "system" once again stirs the discussion of working hours -]
   Americans don't want to be treated by sleepy docs, according to new poll, U.S. Newswire via AOLNews.
   [Well, let's see, that accounts for Sleepy and Doc. That just leaves Dopey, Grumpy, Sneezy, Lazy ... and that's all we can remember of Walt Disney's 7 dwarves. Easier was their recent rehash of the Snow White saga for TV 2 weeks ago when they just used the names of the seven days of the week.]
   RESTON, Va., April 2 - Grueling work hours for medical doctors makes the American public anxious about their own safety, according to results of the 2002 Sleep in America poll, based on a national random sample of 1010 U.S. adults, released today by the National Sleep Foundation.... Typically, resident [physician]s are [now] required to work 36-hour shifts and as much as 120-hour workweeks, endangering their patients and themselves.... "Research shows that after 24 hours of wakefulness, a person's psychomotor function is equivalent to someone with a 0.1% blood alcohol level. We don't allow these people to drive, yet we allow them to operate...," said Jaya Agrawal, AMSA [American Medical Student Assoc] president and a 4th-year medical student at Brown University..\..
   The Patient and Physician Safety & Protection Act of 2001, introduced by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) in Nov/2001 and now supported by 50 members of Congress, would reduce resident work hours to 80 hours per week and shifts not longer than 24 hours..\.. If Americans learned that their surgeon was on duty for [even] 24 consecutive hours, 86% would likely feel anxious about their own safety and 70% would likely ask for a different doctor, according to the poll. The respondents said, on average, that the maximum amount of time a doctor should work was 9.8 hours per day....
   [These sound like pretty undiscriminating respondents. We sure wouldn't want to be under the scalpel of some clown who'd been on the job for 9½ hours that day!   To learn more -]
   *National Sleep Foundation's Sleep in America *poll online [or]
   Contact: Tim Clarke Jr. of the American Medical Student Assoc [*AMSA], 703-620-6600x207 or 301-814-2678 (mobile)

2. UK government denies lesson planning offer, Reuters 22:30 04-01-02 via AOLNews.
   LONDON, April 2 - The government has dismissed as "speculation" a newspaper report that it is set to offer teachers guaranteed lesson-planning time in a bid to avoid classroom walkouts.... The [Manchester] Guardian report came a day after the National Union of Teachers [NUT] voted unanimously to threaten industrial action [ie: a strike] over working hours. The union wants teachers' hours reduced to 35 a week..\..
   [Compare the doomed focus of American teachers, "Teacher pay just keeps pace - Inflation ate gains of '90s, union finds," by Greg Toppo, AP via 4/08/2002 Boston Globe, A3 - focus on more pay and you get swim against market currents and get nothing, focus on less worktime and you swim with market currents and get everything.]
   The Guardian newspaper reported on Tuesday that Education Secretary Estelle Morris would propose four hours a week be set aside for classroom preparation as a concession to union demands for reduced workloads. But the Dept. of Education and Skills told the BBC's website the claims were "pure speculation."... Morris has consistently ruled out fixed limits on working hours and, speaking at the weekend, described a 35 hour week being introduced in Scotland as "potty."...
   [More apt would have been "NUT-ty." There are always a certain number of people who just don't "get it." They're sort of "future impaired," unaware of the extremes unregulated worktime can get to, as demonstrated in the story above. Morris would probably have freaked out back in 1500 BC when Moses came down Mt. Sinai and told the Hebrews to quit working all seven days a week (Ex.20:9). "Wait a minute, Moses," screams Morris. "That's potty!" The supreme Bible verse on the sighted in the land of the blind is from St. Paul, "For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish, foolishness, but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise.... because the foolishness of God is wiser than men." (I Cor. 1:18 ff.) Shades of the TV series that started on PBS tonight, "Commanding Heights" - the producers got through an entire 2 hours and a 100-year recap of global economics without once mentioning the upsy-downsy adventures of the workweek. Phew. At least the reviewers were smart enough to notice it took quite a while for them to find a theme and the theme (deregulate! privatize!) turned out to be a little outdated due to the dot-com stock collapse and the Polaroid pension crash and the Enron stock collapse and pension crash plus company bankruptcy plus auditor (Andersen) pulldown.... But speaking of foolishness -]
   Delegates at the NUT conference in Bournemouth have blamed long hours for a crisis in teacher numbers. "Workload...is the top reason for leaving the profession," one teacher told the conference...
   [Sounds like the nursing profession in America.]
   ...while Gen-Sec Doug McAvoy insisted any new concessions from the government had to come with limits on teaching time.
   [Oo, tough one. Gov't is so busy coddling employers, it won't want to forego its use of the "education" system as cheap childcare for overworking parents.]

3. Koizumi, Rengo to discuss financial support for work-sharing, Kyodo News via AP-NY-04-02-02 0122EST via AOLNews.
   TOKYO...- Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is scheduled to discuss government financial support for work-sharing with Kiyoshi Sasamori, president of the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo) on Wed. afternoon.... Koizumi and Sasamori are [also] expected to discuss...the extension of employment insurance to those who have lost jobs and reform in the public servant system....
   It will be the first meeting between the two since November last year and follows an agreement made at the end of March between the government, labor and management to encourage companies to adopt work-sharing systems.... On March 29, the Health Labor and Welfare Ministry, Rengo and [Nikkeiren] the Japan Federation of Employers Assocs agreed to pave the way for work-sharing, such as by clarifying job responsibilities and by achieving fair treatment of affected workers..\.. Work-sharing, defined as reduction of work hours aimed at maintaining and creating employment, is hoped to alleviate Japan's severe [un]employment situation.... Under the agreement, work-sharing was classified into 2 categories -
   1. a diversified employment scheme, such as working shorter daily hours or on alternative days...
   2. an emergency job security scheme to prevent companies from laying off workers
   [Funny how tightly people grab onto such simple categories when the whole area is new to them and their problems and hopes are huge.]
   However, the three sides have yet to agree on the government's financial support of companies that adopt work-sharing, and further discussions on the matter are planned. Differences need to be worked out between Rengo, which is seeking expenditures from the general-account budget to promote work-sharing, and the labor ministry, which is eyeing the use of employment subsidies.
   [Sounds like the Japanese are trying to reinvent the wheel that France already invented in 1996 when it came up with the Robien Law to encourage voluntary worksharing among companies. (See nation section of our working models page.) They offered 7-year tax breaks to companies that cut hours to create jobs or to avoid layoffs. They offered them rather jerkily, in two amounts, for companies willing to cut 10% of their workweek to create 10% more jobs or avoid a 10% layoff, and companies will to do 15% and 15% for a higher 7-year taxbreak. Pay they left up to individual companies. It was successful but slow. In the first 5 months (Aug/96-Jan/97), 110 companies took advantage of it and came out roughly 1/3 keeping pay high, 1/3 prorating pay, and 1/3 somewhere in the middle. At the rate of 110 firms in five months, impact on the 12.6% unemployment rate was invisible, so the Right (UDF) who introduced it got tossed out of office and replaced by the Left (Jospin) who immediately started planning a nationwide jumpdown from the current 39-hour workweek to a 35-hour workweek, a change that had been planned for a 1-hr/yr transition from the 40-hr level back between 1982 and 1986 but got stuck at 39 when the Left got tossed out of office in the great Reagan-Thatcher right turn. Basically the right-left zigzag has been going on for 200 years in some form as a kind of careen between stifling laissez-faire over-concentration of spending power and stifling government micromanagement.]

4. [The first step in modernizing our economy is to redesign and enforce overtime legislation, and periodically we scramble around looking for statistics on the evils of overtime, since that's the way it's going to have to be spun if we're ever going to do what needs to be done and justify 'overtime police' etc. This article goes beyond statistics by listing three big disasters where overtime was a key factor. Circadian Technologies says overwork fatigue figured in Exxon Valdez, Chernobyl & 3 Mile Is. disasters + 25% of highway accidents -]
   Drowsy employees linked to performance, health, and safety problems; National Sleep Foundation underscores severe impact of fatigue in the workplace, Business Wire BW2373 Apr 02 2002 via AOLNews.
   ..."Employee fatigue has been linked to many of the most notorious incidents of our time, including
   • the Exxon Valdez,
   • Chernobyl, and
   • Three Mile Island, not to mention
   • up to 25% of all highway accidents,"
   said Dr. Martin Moore-Ede...former professor at Harvard Medical School,...author of...The 24-Hour Society \and\ President and CEO of Circadian Technologies Inc. (CTI), an international research and consulting firm that implements corporate programs to reduce risk from human factors in the workplace..\..
   Fatigue in the workplace costs American industry at least $77 billion per year, \as\ researchers and industry experts have said for years..\.. The National Sleep Foundation's [NSF's] annual poll on sleep in America..\..today released findings \that\ an overwhelming majority of Americans agree that inadequate sleep impairs their work performance and put them at increased risk for accidents, injuries and health problems [and] CTI's most recent..\..annual Shiftwork Practices Survey...finds that operations managers believe employee fatigue to be the direct cause of at least 18% of all accidents and injuries suffered in their facilities.
   Numerous research studies have demonstrated that shiftworkers are two times more likely than the average American to suffer from sleep apnea, which results in constant interrupted sleep and is directly linked to higher workplace accident rates.... Workplace fatigue is also a major factor in the stress levels of many employees, with nearly 75% of American nurses [stat]ing that stress and overwork is the number one concern they face in their jobs.
   What can be done about it?
   According to the NSF poll, a majority of Americans support increased regulation on the number of hours worked by employees in demanding professions - such as doctors, pilots, and truck drivers. Legislators in many states are already drafting legislation to limit the work hours of doctors and nurses, and industry groups continue to debate the federal government efforts to revisit hours-of-service regulations in trucking, motorcoach, aviation, and rail industries.
   Dr. Moore-Ede remarks, "Recent court cases holding companies liable for employees who suffer fatigue-related injuries, as well as the current environment of soaring insurance premiums, are increasing pressure on companies to take proactive steps to reduce the chronic levels of drowsy employees in their workplaces."... The results of CTI's Shiftwork Practices Survey can be found on the publication sector of CTI's website at *Circadian.com....
   Contact:... David Mitchell (781) 676-6905, dmitchell@circadian.com

• LEAD: Graduates enter workforce amid Japan's slumping economy, Kyodo News via AP-NY-04-01-02 0449EST via AOLNews.
  TOKYO...- An estimated 960,000 college and highschool graduates entered the workforce on Monday as firms and government offices nationwide held ceremonies to welcome new hires amid Japan's slumping economy. The recruits faced severe competition for jobs, as companies are coping with the weak Japanese economy, which is in its worst state since a period of turmoil after the end of World War II, by merging and downsizing, leading to fewer openings.
  According to a survey conducted two months ago by the labor and education ministries, 82.9% of university students found full-time jobs, slightly up from a year before.
  [Hmm, this positive spin is quite a different story from the NYT article yesterday. See 3/31-4/01/2002 #2. Guess the diff is, that's just highschool graduates and this rising percentage is just college graduates. College grads aren't doin' so well in the US of A, though, judging from "Have degree, may travel - Many recent graduates of Boston-area schools would like to stick around - But with today's harsh economy, it's not easy," by Beth Greenberg, 4/07/2002 Boston Globe, City Weekly 1.]
  New workers are expected to face different challenges than their predecessors, as more and more firms are switching from traditional seniority-based pay to merit-based remuneration, and some are considering work-sharing schemes to secure jobs....
  Quite a number of graduates who failed to land permanent jobs found part-time work, the ministries said....
  [So as in the U.S., timesizing in Japan is happening anyway, but not under the best conditions. Shades of America during the mid-Clinton years, when he boasted of having created 10,000,000 new jobs, and a woman in the audience stood up and said, "I know all about your 10m new 'jobs' - I've got three of them myself!"]