Timesizing® Associates - Homepage

Timesizing News, April 16-30, 2002
[Commentary] ©2002 Phil Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622, Porter Sq, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080


4/30/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news - nothing in AOLNews today so we feature a previous story we discovered late -

4/28-29/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news - 4/27/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news -
  1. France's shame - The result of France's first-round presidential contest was shocking - but it might do some good, The Economist, 11.
    ...The centre failed
    Mr Jospin destroyed himself.... Yet his record as prime minister had, for the most part, been honourable and competent.... Apart from the questionable imposition of a 35-hour week...he had managed France's economy fairly well, despite shrinking from the bolder sorts of reforms (of pensions, the labour market and health care, for instance) that the country badly needs....
    [As if the 35-hour week was not a "bolder sort of reform that the country badly needed"! Nearly 13% unemployment while plenty of people were working overtime? Sounds like the most central and strategic sort of reform to us, but evidently too bold for the "inside-the-box" thinkers at The Economist.]

  2. After the cataclysm - Jean-Marie Le Pen should get no further, but his success has shaken up France; So it should, The Economist, 25.
    ...Most of those electors who bothered to vote (the abstention rate was a record 28.4%) chose to ignore a 5-year record in government of which Mr Jospin, with some justification, has been proud: [Hey, at least they're admitting here that the employees liked it - which a Reuters reporter was trying to deny a few days ago (see "Analysis - Shorter work hours leave French voters cold" on 4/12/2002 #4). And at any rate, employers certainly liked the extra business and the recession-proofing that it brought them, since it employed more people by spread the existing work instead of dragging government into more tax-supported makework - and spreading the work also helped centrifuge the income of the nation out of the unspendable concentrations of spending power among the top income brackets down to the people who actually spend it - and the more centrifugation, the more economic dynamism. No wonder France has been the most recession-resistant economy in Europe next to subsidy-soaked Ireland.]

4/26/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news - 4/25/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news - 4/24/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news -
  1. Street protests loom after French vote - pollster, by Tom Heneghan, Reuters 04/23/02 11:04 ET via AOLNews.
    PARIS - Street protests against Le Pen's [win] have already started to snowball, with nightly demonstrations in Paris and other cities across France since Sunday. \So\ France could face serious street protests after its May 5 presidential runoff from militant leftists frustrated by the skewed contest [that placed] far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen [beside 'near'-right leader Jacques Chirac in the final May round,] said Sofres pollster Philippe Mechet.... "There was no real economic debate in the campaign, nothing on pensions, on tax, on social issues and especially on the 35-hour work week , he said, referring to the main reform of Jospin's...government....
    [Well, it was Jospin's decision, apparently, to finesse 35-hour week feedback in the campaign and sort of 'back into' the future.]

  2. Chronology - German IG Metall strikes since 1950, Reuters 04/23/02 09:35 ET via AOLNews.
    ...Union IG Metall [has] formally declared that wage negotiation for 3.6m engineering sector workers have failed.
    [What do they expect if they allow labor to become a surplus commodity by focusing on reducing worktime per person in only one of eleven strikes since 1950, and only 7 years ago at that -]
    ...1995 - Strikes in Bavaria in February to IG Metall's 6% wage claim, the first strike action in the west German engineering sector since 1984.... The deal struck was for two years, giving a wage increase of 4%, with working week cut to 35 hours. \But\ employers said cutting the working week to 35 hours would increase wage costs by 2.8%....

4/23/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news -
  1. [Some serious ammo for American medical students to fight ludicrous megahours -]
    Hospitals get ‘wake-up call’ from a study on lighting, by Judy Foreman, Boston Globe, C1.
    [The Journal of Pediatrics published a study in Feb/2002 in which Asst. Prof. Debra Brandon of the Duke University School of Nursing in Durham NC took -]
    62 babies born at least 10 weeks prematurely and weighing an average of 2 pounds [and] randomly assigned them to 3 groups with different lighting conditions. She found that those exposed to cycled light earlier [mimicking the natural rhythm of day & night] grew faster - at least 23 grams more per week - than those who got cycled light near the end of their hospitalization.... Dr. Charles Czeisler, chief of the division of sleep medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston \said\ the Duke study is exciting...because many hospitals still act as though "circadian rhythms don’t represent a biological need,” whether in the way they treat patients or the way they treat doctors in training, who are often required to work 30 consecutive hours every few days.

  2. Analysis - France's Fifth Republic reels from Sunday vote, by Tom Heneghan, Reuters 04/22/02 07:55 ET via AOLNews.
    PARIS...- Like a bloodied boxer, France's Fifth Republic is reeling from the stunning blow voters landed in the first round of the presidential election on Sunday and wondering if and when the knockout punch is coming.... Far-right leader Le Pen knocked Socialist Prime Minister...Jospin out of the running.... Chirac, a conservative bidding for a second term [as President], polled less than 20% of the vote, the lowest of any frontrunner in the history of the Fifth Republic...a "republican monarchy" based on a powerful presidency, a submissive legislature and a centralised state \created by\ Gen. Charles de Gaulle in 1958...during the Algerian crisis that paralysed the Fourth Republic's parliamentary system....
    The first blow came in 1986 when Socialist Pres. Francois Mitterand had to appoint Chirac as his prime minister [thus 'cohabitation' of opposing PM & Prez] because a conservative majority won the National Assembly election. This mismatch arose because the mandates [ie: terms?] of the legislature and presidency were out of step, with five years for the National Assembly and seven for the Presidency. Mitterand had to accept two 2-year cohabitations during his 14-year rule.
    This power-sharing became the norm in 1997 when Chirac, after only two years in office, used his presidential powers dissolve the National Assembly and call a snap election that Jospin's "plural left" unexpectedly won. The president was sidelined in domestic policy for the next five years by a left-wing government that brought in reforms like the 35-hour work week which Chirac could not block....
    [This raises the question of why Jospin wanted to be the less-powerful President in the first place. We haven't heard of anyone he was grooming for the powerful role of Prime Minister.]

  3. France's Jospin to leave politics, by Jamey Keaten, AP 04/22/02 09:33 EDT via AOLNews.
    PARIS...- When Prime Minister Lionel Jospin announced his retirement from politics after a humiliating third-place finish in the first round of France's presidential elections, his supporters cited out in disbelief.... Jospin has been in office since 1997, making him one of the longest-serving prime ministers in decades.... He [had been] an economics professor for 11 years at a Paris university....
    [Which one??]
    Jospin and the leftist coalition that he led took control of the government five years ago, largely riding a campaign promise to cut intractable unemployment levels then hovering at about 13%.
    [And he kept his promise -]
    With a combination of better economic fortunes in France and a controversial, labor-friendly reduction of the work week from 39 hours to 35, the jobless rate came down....
    [The ouster of Jospin from the presidential race is no big disaster for France and the world, which needs visible political leadership along the lines of worktime economics and which he was providing as Prime Minister. But Jospin's retirement from politics is a disaster for France and the world - unless he can be cajoled back in. The trouble with professors in government - as we in America learned from Woodrow Wilson - is that they can be sooo perfectionistic and petulant. Wilson was so goddam rigid and perfectionist and non-power-sharing in his demands that he PO'ed the moderate Republicans enough to prevent America's joining of the League, which the U.S. itself had pushed on everyone else, and which everyone else needed the U.S. to join in order to prevent the kind of revenge-taking on Germany that produced Hitler and World War II. See Thomas A. Bailey's Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal (Encounter/Quadrangle: Chicago, 1963). There is a lot Jospin could do if he stays as Prime Minister -
4/22/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news - 4/20/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news - 4/19/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news -
  1. [Another U.S. company avoids layoffs with shortened workweeks -]
    Valmont announces first quarter earnings, PRNewswire-FirstCall 04/18/2002 17:30 EDT via AOLNews.
    OMAHA, Neb...- Valmont Industries, Inc. (Nasdaq:VALM), a diversified manufacturer of poles, towers and structures and coating services for infrastructure, and [of] mechanized equipment for agriculture, reported Q1 net earnings of $6.8m...versus 1Q01 net earnings of $4.8m....
    With the acquisition of PiRod, Valmont is assembling a premier wireless communication structures and components business. The combination of Valmont and PiRod has created a strong business unit that is well positioned for the eventual recovery in wireless communication..\..
    [Sure, sure. But meanwhile, this is another badnews takeover.]
    Wireless communication sales were more than 50% below last year when PiRod's 1Q01 sales are added to Valmont's. Very weak market conditions persist in the telecommunications industry. During the first quarter, shortened workweeks, ongoing product line rationalization and cost reductions were specific actions taken to downsize the business and improve performance....

  2. Newsmaker - France's Jospin, straight guy of the left, by Mark John, Reuters 04/18/02 06:13 ET via AOLNews.
    PARIS...- The time-honoured electioneering ritual of baby-kissing is not for French Prime Minister and presidential candidate Lionel Jospin. "I don't have the mother's permission," [he] insisted on a campaign stop...to the amazement of photographers hovering expectantly around a conveniently placed baby girl...
    With the French left in disarray after its rout in legislative elections in 1993, no obvious...candidates came forward to run against Chirac for president in 1995. Up stepped Jospin. And while he lost, he led on the first round and polled a better-than-expected 47.4% of the vote in the runoff.
    The high point in his career came 2 years later, as Chirac took the failed gamble of shoring up his wavering popularity by calling early parliamentary elections which ushered in Jospin as prime minister of a coalition [that included] Greens.... Jospin promptly set about a programme of "leftist" reforms [our quotes - ed.], notably the controversial 35-hour week policy, that alienated much of French business, and measures to boost youth employment.
    [This ignorant Reuters reporter, Mark John, keeps trying to spin workweek reduction as a "leftist" policy. In fact, the Republican Party in America championed workweek reduction legislation for the first 75 years of its history, beginning with the abolition of the unlimited workweek of slavery in 1863 under Lincoln and ending with saving 100,000s of jobs in the depths of the Depression by cutting the government workweek down to the 40-hour level in 1932 under Hoover. As recently as 1956, Nixon advocated the four-day 32-hour workweek at a campaign stop in Colorado Springs. And right there in France in the last few years, the right-of-center UDF Party pushed through the Robien Law in 1996, which gave 7-year taxbreaks to companies that would voluntarily cut their workweek 10% and hire 10% more staff, higher taxbreaks if they would do 15% and 15%. In fact, workweek reduction is the antidote to socialism, defined as government micromanagement, because by spreading the vanishing human employment and mopping up the wage-depressing labor surplus, workweek reduction - [As for Mark John's crap about the 35-hour week "alienating much of French business,'" French businessmen sure like - The fact is, Jospin has a lot of business-friendly policies, and even idee-fixe Mark John admits that -]
    Jospin has never felt...bound by Socialist orthodoxy - witness continued privatisations of state assets under his government..\..
    [Mark John tries to say -]
    Jospin has..\..never embrace[d] the "Third Way" politics of more centrist leaders like his British counterpart Tony Blair....
    [but in fact, the real " Third Way" is government-guided private-sector sharework via workweek reduction, instead of government makework via subsidies for jobs programs favored by the left and instead of government makework via subsidies for industries, especially military industries, favored by the right. Blair has nothing of this. Blair has no ideas. He has nothing but a bogus rose-colored unemployment rate that, like America's, excludes most of the non-self-support problem and ignores the deterioration of his economy and his society as the affluent concentrate more and more spending power in amounts they can't and don't spend, and increasingly, can't even invest because they've effectively suctioned the spending power away from all their potential investment targets. Hey, wait a minute. Lazy Reuters has basically just recycled this article from 2/21/2002 #2.   Cheap-*ss b*gg*rs!]

  3. [timesizing a la worksharing gets Toshiba through a bad period -]
    Toshiba to run 4 semiconductor plants during Golden Week, Kyodo News 04:18/02 10:21 EDT via AOLNews.
    ...In addition, Toshiba has decided to thaw the freeze on one of the two production lines at the Yokkaichi plant, thus ending the work-sharing operations at the plant....
    [that is, there's been enough of a recovery to make work-sharing unnecessary for the moment.]

4/18/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news - nothing in AOLNews today so we feature a previous story that we discovered late - 4/17/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news -
  1. [dim realization dawns on Americans that maybe longer and harder is going backwards, not forwards -]
    Business watercooler stories, by Matt Moore, AP 04/16/02 12:37 EDT via AOLNews.
    ...Executive overtime:
    More employees are working longer and harder, including managers, a new survey finds. In fact, says Robert Half International Inc., a staffing service that specializes in accounting , financing and information, more managers than ever believe there just isn't enough time in the work day to get everything done.
    [Thus declaring that without the top management skill of setting limits, unlimited hours are making the next three most important management skills unnecessary. So naturally, American managers are losing these skills too: prioritization, delegation (of tasks), and scheduling.]
    A recent survey of 150 managers and executives found that more than a third said their time on the job has gone up from five years ago. The average time spent working during the week is now 54 hours, according to the people polled.
    [Let's see now.... Our Own Time by Roediger and Foner.... page x.... average weekly hours, 1900-1972.... let's see.... 54...54.... oh yes, 54.9 in 1916. That means that American managers are suuuch geniuses that they are now working at the level of 1917, despite tables and shelves full of 'worksaving' technology. The dumbing of America proceeds apace. That means the workweek This is progress?]
    Because of that, warned Max Messmer, chairman and CEO at Robert Half, more executives need to step back and reassess their own needs and the demands of their jobs, lest they start suffering from burnout....
    [No kidding!]

  2. As part-timers, women earn more, Bloomberg via BG, D2.
    Women who work part-time earn an average of $1.15 for every dollar their male counterparts make, according to a report on 2000 data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS].
    25% of working women work part time, compared with 10% of working men, and
    part-time men's wages are lower because 56% of them are 16-24 years old, an age group that typically has low earnings, compared with [only] 32% of female part-timers [in that age cohort], according to the report.
    There are 29.8m part-time workers in the U.S.; most cite noneconomic reasons, such as child care and family obligations, for not working full time, BLS said.
    [The Netherlands is leading the world in the part-time approach to timesizing. They have legislation that attempts to remove the 'part-time penalty' in benefits, and consequently Dutch part-timers get considerably more benefits than American part-timers.]

4/16/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news -
Click here for news on spontaneous timesizing cases in -
Apr. 1-15/2002
Mar. 21-31/2002
Mar. 11-20/2002
Mar. 1-10/2002
Feb. 21-28/2002
Feb. 1-20/2002
Jan. 21-31/2002
Jan. 11-20/2002
Jan. 1-10/2002
Dec. 16-31/2001
Dec. 1-15/2001
Nov. 26-30/2001
Nov. 21-25/2001
Nov. 10-20/2001
Nov. 1-10/2001
Oct. 16-31/2001
Oct. 1-15/2001
Sep. 16-30/2001
Sep. 1-15/2001
Aug. 16-31/2001
Aug. 1-15/2001
July 16-31/2001
July 1-15/2001
June/2001
May 16-31/2001
May 1-15/2001
Apr.16-30/2001
Apr.1-15/2001
Mar.11-31/2001
Mar.1-10/2001
Feb.16-28/2001
Feb.1-15/2001
Jan/2001
Y2000
1999
1998 and previous years


Top | Homepage