Timesizing® Associates - Homepage

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Timesizing News, May 11-31, 2002
[Commentary] ©2002 Phil Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622, Porter Sq, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080

5/31/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news -

1. Employees told to take days off, Dow Jones via NYT, C6.
   VeriSign Inc. has directed its employees to take some vacation days during the second and third quarters of the year, as the company tries to cut costs.
   [So, timesizing to avoid downsizing - trimming hours, not jobs.]
   A company spokesman, Tom Galvin, confirmed that the company, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., asked its approximately 3,000 employees to take three paid vacation days during the second quarter, which ends June 30. Some employees have already [done so].
   [Guess so! - there's only a month left.]
   In addition, VeriSign asked workers to take three days off during the third quarter. The company expects workers to take these days off during the first week of July, which would give them a full week off because the company had already planned to close July 4 and July 5, Mr. Galvin said.

2. Ireland: Strike grounds airline, by Brian Lavery, NYT, W1.
   Pilots at Aer Lingus, Ireland's state-owned airline, staged a one-day strike as planned to protest cuts in the minimum rest period they have between flights, one of the many changes that the airlines is putting in place as part of a plan to avoid bankruptcy....
   [You don't encourage business and avoid bankruptcy by letting it be known that you're cutting flight safety by cutting pilot downtime. Check out what just came out about the US bridge disaster -]
   Pilot didn't sleep much prior to barge collision, AP via Boston Globe, A2.
   WEBBERS FALLS, OK. - The towboat pilot whose barge struck an interstate highway bridge, killing 14 people, had slept less than 10 hours in the two days before the accident, a federal investigator said yesterday....

1. Lawsuits abound from workers seeking overtime pay, by Michael Orey, Wall Street Journal, B1.
   ...Last year, the number of so-called collective actions brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the federal statute that sets wage and hour rules, exceeded the number of class actions alleging job discrimination. "It's the complaint du jour," says David Ross, an attorney in the New York office of Seyfarth Shaw, which represents employers....
   [The complaint du jour meets the hope du jour. Maybe this shows the beginnings of time awareness in America, the beginning of the end of time blindness.]

2. Number of nurses affects many illnesses, study finds - 'Eyes and ears of the hospital' for problems - The level of nursing staffs proves pivotal in patient care, by Denise Grady, NYT, A14.
   ...The nation has a serious nursing shortage, with 126,000 jobs unfilled, 12% of capacity, says the American Hospital Assoc. The shortage is the result of hospital mergers, layoffs and heavy workloads.
   [I.e., long hours with mandatory overtime - which should be an oxymoron.]
   Many hospital nurses shifted to other work..\.. "I estimate that hundreds or perhaps thousands of deaths each year are due to low staffing," said Dr. Jack Needleman, an economist at the Harvard School of Public Health and the lead author of a study on staffing published today in The New England Journal of Medicine....

3. [A few places in healthcare are doing something right -]
   Physician supply & demand: To recruit physician's in today's hot specialties, employers are being forced to open their minds as well as their wallets, PRNewswire 05/29/2002 07:01 EDT via AOLNews.
   ...In rural areas [of the Midwest] where recruiting specialists is a challenge - as well as in suburban areas, where competition for certain specialists is high - hospitals, HMOs, physician groups and other employers are even entertaining such concepts as job sharing and flex-time. That's because a significant number of qualified candidates in a seller's market ar younger physicians who also want a life apart from medicine and seek part-time....

4. Labor dispute to halt most Aer Lingus flights, by Brian Lavery, NYT, W1.
   Dublin -...The pilots object to new scheduling arrangements that cut the required rest between flights from 12 to 10 hours. Seven pilots have been suspended without pay for refusing to fly after 10 hours off, and a pilots' association has placed large advertisements in newspapers arguing that the reduced rest period threatened passenger safety....
   [Unmentioned how many hours on, possibly as many as 16.]

5. Man's death acknowledged as stemming from overwork, Kyodo News 05/29/02 09:45 EDT via AOLNews.
   OSAKA...- Examiners of worker's accident compensation liability insurance in Osaka have acknowledged that a 21-year-old man died from overwork 52 days after being hired as a part-time worker at a magazine company, the bereaved family's proxy said Wednesday. The examiners' decision overturns a decision on Masaru Hirose by the Temma Labor Standards Inspection Office in Osaka in January 2000 not to approve worker's accident compensation saying it could not be acknowledged that he had worked excessively. According to the proxy for Hirose's family, it is extremely rare for death from overwork, or "karoshi," to be acknowledged in a case in which the duration of employment is as short as this....

1. UK government to criticise long hours culture, Reuters 05/28/02 19:02 ET via AOLNews.
   LONDON...- Britain may have enviably low unemployment rates
   [or low-looking UE rates like the US]
   but its long hours culture is taking its toll on the workforce, a senior British government minister will say on Wednesday. Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt will tell a conference that change must be led by top management who too often encourage employees to go the extra mile for no great point, according to a department official. Hewitt plans to visit European Union partners such as Germany to study their working practices.
   [Hey, just like Japanese Labor Minister Chikara Sakaguchi back in January! - see 1/15/2002 #2.]
   "German companies tend to look at you if you are around after 5:30 pm, and instead of saying 'that's impressive' they say 'why can't you get the work done in time?'," she was quoted as saying at the weekend....
   [Amen to that! With no defined border between business and personal, Parkinson's Law comes into play = "Work expands to fill the time available." Productivity goes out the window.]
   Unemployment levels, at around 5%, are the envy of most of Europe but British productivity levels lag those of many of its EU counterparts..\..
   "Long hours have a corrosive effect on family life and on an individual's wellbeing," she said.
   Trade unions say that is all very well but Britain is dragging its heels on fully implementing a European Union directive on maximum working hours which puts a ceiling at 48 hours per week for most professions. The Trade Unions Congress said earlier this year that nearly 4 million employees - 16% of the UK workforce - work more than 48 hours per week, in contravention of the EU directive.... A February survey found nearly half of Britain's bosses said their companies would not be able to function if both staff and board members [observed] the limit.
   [Poor management!]
   Part of the problem may be that those at the top of the corporate tree worked exhausting hours on the way up and feel the next generation should do the same.
   [Oooh yes, the old "I suffered, now everyone else is gonna hafta suffer too!" How charming and generous. With sociopaths like that, it's a wonder Britain made any contribution to progress at all.]

2. New German labor boss warns employees, by Geir Molson, AP05/28/02 14:13 EDT via AOLNews.
   ...to give unions more political influence, and promised "real trouble" if employers or the government chip away at workers' rights. Michael Sommer, a veteran activist, took over as chairman of the German Federation of Labor Unions after being endorsed for a 4-year term Thursday by 364 of 387 delegates at a national congress of the labor umbrella group.... Once a senior official in Germany's postal workers' union and now deputy head of the ver.di service industry union, Sommer...replaces Dieter Schulte, who is retiring after 8 years as chairman. His arrival at the head of the Federation, which groups unions with a total of 7.9m members, comes in a year of bruising wage negotiations that has seen Germany's biggest industrial union, IG Metall, stage its first strike in 7 years.
   IG Metall earlier this month reached a deal with employers that called for a 4% raise for 12 months starting in June, then 3.1% for another 6 months. Some business leaders have said that will worsen the country's unemployment - currently 9.7% - at a time when Germany is edging out of a mild recession..\..
   Sommer signaled that he would stand up against attempts to "reform" [our quotes - ed.] Germany's rigid labor market and make it easier for firms to hire and fire workers.
   [It'd be nice if he let them make it easier to hire, nicht wahr? But with the kind of strong and flexible safety net provided by flexible adjustment of the workweek, you don't need to "sweat the details" such as discouraging layoffs - the economy is held accountable at the aggregate level by the homeostatic workweek-adjustment system. We're not sure Sommer realizes this when he puts shorter hours in as an "also" -]
   He also said he would fight for shorter working hours.... He insisted that "an important contribution to the battle against joblessness will continue to be shorter working hours."
   ..\..The economy is a key issue in national elections Sept. 22. The center-left government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose Social Democrats traditionally have strong ties with the unions, faces a strong conservative challenge. Sommer said his Federation wouldn't formally back any party. But, comparing Schroeder's 4 years in charge with the long tenure of his conservative predecessor, Helmut Kohl, he added that "the past 4 years have brought more for us, for workers, than the 16 years before."...
   [Here's hoping that German voters are a little smarter about remembering that on Sept. 22 than hissy-fitting French voters were in April about remembering the past 5 years of falling unemployment (vs. the previous 15 years of rising unemployment) when they excluded Jospin from the final ballotting for President.]

1. [Here's a one-industry test case of how Dahlberg's (see bibliography) breathtaking idea - that we could correct most of the evils of capitalism by the single planned adjustment of creating a labor shortage by cutting the workweek - would work.]
   Shortage of nurses spurs bidding war in hospital industry, by Michael Janofsky, NYT, front page.
   ...With the shortage of nurses growing worse by the year, hospitals are stepping up efforts to fill vacanciess...through advertisements, job fairs, even highway billboards. They are also trying to lure nurses with flexible hours, ever-larger signing bonuses and other financial incentives.
   [You can see that when there's a shortage, you don't need bureaucratic government micromanagement - free-market forces take care of the details. No need for minimum wage laws, living wage laws, enterprise zones, block grants, corporate welfare, taxbreaks, swelling prison budgets, - the whole things rebalances itself. "If the sage has done his job properly, when affairs are again prosperous, the people all say, 'We have done it ourselves.'" Lao Tzu.]
   "It's getting aggressive out there, extremely aggressive, and it's not pretty," Ms. \Kaylene\ Opperman...chief nursing recruiter for Washoe Medical System, Reno NV's largest hospital...said. "It's become totally a buyer's market."...
   [Notice that employer's perceive intense pressure, an acute, extreme shortage - when actually the power of employees and employers is only at last balanced. Note that with all these pressures, hospitals are still just offering frills - ever-larger signing bonuses, not ever larger wages. They're still just stealing one another's nurses, not yet back to training their own (remember when every hospital had its own nursing school? - then the doctors wanted even more of the pie and cut those training "costs"). The doctors are still God in the hospitals. It will take a lot tighter shortage to centrifuge the income out of that grasping self-important self-flagellating bunch.]
   Hospitals around the country have 126,000 nursing vacancies, or 12% of capacity, according to the American Hospital Assoc. Health industry experts predict the number could triple over the next decade as baby boomers age..\..
   Ms. Opperman is, herself, a product of the new bidding wars.
   [Ah, "bidding wars"! - the free market at work, in response to the massive cumulative turn-off to the predominantly female nursing profession provided by the arrogant predominantly male medical profession, who - right in line with Chesterton's Flaw - wanted more, much more than Their Share! - and in response to the growing self-respect and assertiveness of women in America, who are "mad as hell and not going to take it any more!"]
   Until she was hired three years ago, she said, Washoe waited for prospective nurses to walk in the door.
   [Aha, the root and source of doctors' strangling power - keep nurses in surplus, keep themselves in shortage. Books should be written on how the techniques these "gentlemen" used to achieve each of these goals! But the initiation rites of 100-120 hours workweeks that doctors put their trainees through is a big part of the second one. "I'm exhausted, therefore I'm important = I deserve a MUCH bigger share than you!" Pathetic.]
   Now, she is one of three recruiters who scour the country for nurses. By July, she said, she will have attended five big job fairs this year and visited dozens of nursing schools.
   [It's amazing there are still "dozens" of nursing schools left in America, after cost-cutters like former Pres. John Silber of Boston University closed them down. The greedy are their own worst enemy - they are sooo boring and unimaginative, they always wind up going too far.]
   ...The problem's roots go back a decade.
   [Oh at least! Back in the early 1980s, a PhD student in nursing at B.U. said to the then-admin. asst. of the grad division, "Phil, nursing sucks." It was the profoundest, most unforgettable thing he heard in his three years there.]
   As the health system shifted toward managed care, hospitals merged, and nurses were laid off to cut costs. Those who remained found themselves working longer hours and caring for more patients.
   [Hence the crisis of mandatory overtime all over the country, a concept that should be an oxymoron.]
   When workloads became so heavy that hospitals had to hire again several years ago, many nurses had moved to work in other fields or to nursing jobs in the calmer [i.e., better managed - ed.] environs of doctors' offices, pharmaceutical companies and neighborhood clinics.
   [And did we mention "not ever larger wages"?]
   Nor has it helped that hospital nursing salaries have stayed relatively flat for a decade, according to the American Nurses Assoc. A recent survey by Allied Physicians, an industry employment service, found that the national average nursing salary was $45,500. Nurses with graduate degrees, those with specialties like cardiac care and those who work in big-city hospitals can make $60,000 and more, but entry-level salaries in may places remain low, $25,000 to $30,000.
   [The need for nurses has forced many states, especially those with fast-growing populations, like Nevada, Texas and Florida, to spend more for nursing schools and recruitment.
   [Oooh nooo, Mr. Bill! - But this brings up another problem - a huge one looming in the background: The need for clear, generally acceptable and strictly enforced population policy, which will never happen except by binding public referendum.]
   In addition, Congress is completing legislation that would generate $136.7m in new federal spending for scholarships, loan repayments and recruitment grants.
   [Peanuts compared to what they pour out for one bomber. They still don't get it.]
   But stuck on the front lines with understaffed wards are hospitals that have now turned against one another in the biggest recruiting frenzy in more than a decade.... "We're recruiting these people into a profession that's broken," said Susan Bianchi-Sand, director of United American Nurses, the country's largest nurses' union. "The system needs to be fixed so people not only want to come in, they want to stay."...
   [Then just keep tightening that shortage, girl! Get control of your working hours first and foremost, and don't let it slip out of your grip ever again. It is your birthright. Don't settle for all the "messes of pottage" that they're throwing at you, all the secondary stuff, the window dressing. Develop and maintain a military focus on eliminating overtime, especially "mandatory overtime," and reduce the workweek in nursing. Create an even more "acute shortage" = a balance of power at last. The boys won't "get" it any other way. And you'll show the rest of America the way ahead - all the people in the following category for example -]
   Working, but still poor, letter to editor by Sara Bethell of NYC, NYT, A22.
   Re "The welfare Washington doesn't know," by Douglas MacKinnon (op-ed, May 21):
   So lang as Americans who are working 40-hour weeks in minimum-wage jobs find themselves coming in short of that lofty $14,630 poverty line, the need for government assistance will remain strong and the ranks of the poor will continue to grow.... We cannot address welfare and self-sufficiency without addressing the fact that we are asking citizens to work full time only to remain firmly entrenched in poverty.
   [Amen. But then Sara makes her big mistake -]
   The time to raise the minimum wage is now.
   [The minimum wage route, instead of the maximum workweek route, was the biggest mistake we made in the 20th century. With no scarcity, it demands a higher price. With no power base, it demands higher pay. It bucks market forces instead of harnessing them. It is forever too little, too late. Sara should have said, "The time to implement fluctuating adjustment of the workweek is now." In other words, focus on workshare per person, not moneyshare per person, and index it to comprehensive unemployment, not inflation. Only in that way will the top income brackets reduce the black hole of spending power concentrated far beyond spendability, and regain stability and sustainability for their investments, from whose supporting markets their current accumulation levels are now suctioning the spending power.]

• [time blindness revisited]
  (4/22) France: Who speaks for youth? - As the economy falters, young people feel locked out of the system, by Carol Matlack, Christina White & John Rossant, Business Week 4/22/2002, 48.
  [Here we have a charming, workaholic Business Week (US) article that really has it in for the silly idea of a shorter workweek - keeps coming back to bash it again - 5 separate whacks altogether.... And of course, they think the anglosaxon economies - the US with 2m prison inmates and at least an equal number of homeless - have the answer.]
  ...Beweb is a $2.5m-a-year business providing software and services to e-commerce companies. It has operations in Britain and plans to expand across Europe.
  But Beweb is saying au revoir to Paris and moving to London, where Wirth reckons payroll taxes will be less than one-fourth the 45% the company now pays.
  [Whoa, now there is a little design flaw in the French full-employment program!   45% tax on your corporate payroll budget?! Fire everyone!]
  The coup de grace for Beweb, though, was a French law cutting the maximum workweek from 39 to 35 hours. Introduced two years ago for major employers, it was extended this year to businesses with under 20 workers.
  Hiring extra staff to make up the lost work hours is impractical for Beweb, which has 15 employees. "It's impossible," says \cofounder\ Jerome Wirth.... "I love France, but I am very pessimistic for my country."
  [So the ambivalent news is that the current employment-taxing and simplistic workweek-adjustment design is losing some employers. The good news is -]
  As fir this spring's presidential elections, he scoffs, "whoever wins, they won't change anything."...
  [In short, even Chirac won't roll back the 35-hour workweek. Now all they have to do is design a way to prevent companies who don't contribute to France's reduced-workweek bolstered consumer markets from taking advantage of them - and get rid of those exorbitant payroll taxes.]
  To the 76m tourists who visit each year, France looks as desirable as ever.... On spring afternoons, parks and cafes are thronged with people, thanks to the 35-hour workweek. Corporate France, once the domain of lumbering state-run enterprises, has a new set of champions: companies such as Vivendi Universal and insurance giant AXA, which are growing aggressively worldwide. True, French growth slowed to 1.6% this year - but that still beats the European average of 1.4%....
  So what's wrong? Plenty, especially if you're young. The cohort between 15 and 40 - the source of economic vitality in any country - is getting a dwindling share of France's prosperity.
  [So we admit it's prosperous, then?]
  The problem starts with a crumbling school system that turns out millions of kids lacking the skills to find jobs. It continues with government policies that discourage job creation and stifle entrepreneurship. And it's about to get a lot worse, as the younger generation shoulders the burden of pensions for retiring baby boomers.... France has the most generous retirement system in Europe, allowing workers to leave their jobs at age 60 with full benefits..\..
  [But at least they have retirement homes, unlike we in the USA who have just trashed a large percentage of ours.]
  The bitter truth is that France, more than most other countries, stacks the deck against its young. Unemployment in France among those under 25 is 21%, one of the highest rates in Europe and more than twice the rate for older French workers. The poverty rate among French in their 20s rose from less than 6% in the 1980s to nearly 9% by the late 1990s, while living standards for the elderly improved.... Youth crime is on the increase, with the number of teenagers jailed for serious infractions now twice as high as in the mid-1990s..\..
  Why don't the young get more of the economic action? Increasingly, the country's corporate icons aren't hiring them. To avoid rigid anti-layoff laws, big companies such as tiremaker Michelin and building-materials giant St. Gobelin are moving manufacturing abroad. Others, such as carmakers Renault and PSSA Peugeot Citroen, have relied on improved productivity to limit hiring. For most young people, the best places to get a job are small businesses, which accounted for 90% of the jobs created in France during the past decade. But taxes and rules are making it ever harder for these businesses to compete....
  Public schools are in crisis, with many classrooms overcrowded and plagued by violence. Although France spends more than the European average on education, critics say resources are unfairly distributed, with a handful of elite schools getting more money and better teachers, while schools serving poorer students get short shrift. ...A recent poll of 18-to-24-year-olds found that 60% thought schools had failed them.
  Universities get poor marks too, for outdated curriculums and rundown facilities....
  [Neither of these would matter if they implemented overtime-to-training conversion throughout the private sector.]
  France is also failing to integrate some 1.5m North African immigrants and their French-born children. Housing projects, hidden from tourists' view outside big cities, teem with young people who feel locked out of society....
  At the same time, an alarming number of France's brightest young people are leaving the country. Since 1995, the number of French citizens living outside the country hsa risen 30%, to nearly 2m, including 240,000 in Silicon Valley. Almost all are in their 20s and 30s. An additional 200,000 or so have fled to Britain....
  In January, the French were shocked to learn that per capita output had fallen from No. 3 to No. 12 among the European Union countries over the past decade. Business startups, which account for 88% of new hires, have declined every year since 1995. The 35-hour workweek makes things worse, says economist Christel Rendu de Lint of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co....
  [Strange how again and again for the human race, "the stone which the builder rejected becomes the chief cornerstone." Yet what is this genius we have for dismissing, ignoring or attacking the one and only route to a sustainable balance of elitism-vs-markets with minimal government?]
  Why does no one speak for the young? For one thing, the system locks out newcomers. Instead of holding primaries, political parties let insiders choose who gets on the ballot.
  [This was written before outsider Le Pen won in the presidential primary that included some thousands of candidates, many of whom got publicity (unlike the several dozen "kooks" in the US who run for president that nobody ever hears about). And like the US system doesn't lock out newcomers? Just try running as anything but Republicrat or Demublican in America. Just ask Ralph Nader about the generous way they welcomed him into the Bush-Gore debates. Business Week editors - cut the supercilious hypocrisy!]
  Chirac and Jospin have each held elected office for more than a quarter-century....
  [Well, Ted Kennedy can beat that, and Strom Thurmond, and a lot of others in the arthritic US Senate, described by Dave Barry as "white male millionaires, working for you." Our whole government is accurately described by Central American newsmen as "cosmetic democracy." Americans are in no position to lecture anybody on stodgy, newcomer-hostile government. "First pull the plank out of your own eye so you can see clearly enough to get the speck out of your neighbor's eye."]
  To be sure, many young French are doing well. Students at elite universities are getting a world-class education free of charge. The nearly 30% of 18-to-25-year-olds who are employed have a pretty good deal, too: generous benefits, tough anti-layoff laws, and that 35-hour workweek.
  [How "easy" it is for young Americans to get a job? Check out a couple of our stories on recent graduates in the perfectly wonderful US of A - "Aerospace industry's money-mouth disconnect" on 5/21/2002 below, which states "The same companies crying about their need for technical talent aren't hiring - or even interviewing - new engineering graduates trying to find jobs this year," and "Students graduate to uncertainty - Firms trim campus recruiting following attacks, downturn" on 10/19/2001.]
  But France's young people are staying away from politics in droves. Turnout among voters under 25 has fallen sharply in recent elections.
  [Oh, like young Americans haven't always stayed away from politics in droves, and opted out of voting? Even Joe Kennedy remarked during his TV debate with Phil Hyde way back in 1996, that only 20% of 20-year-olds vote, while 70% of 70-year-olds vote. The younger Americans are, the less they vote.]
  Jospin and Chirac have both hinted that they might modify the 35-hour rule for small businesses....
  [The way to include young people and everyone else who needs a job is not to go the anglosaxon way of uncapped workweeks, concentrated employment and huge prisons and homelessness, but to cut the workweek further - and couple it with overtime-to-training&hiring conversion (see above).]

• [here is an excellent demonstration of the paradoxical coexistence, nay symbiosis, of long hours and high unemployment]
  More die from overwork in Japan, by Hans Greimel, AP 05/24/02 14:51 EDT via AOLNews.
  [Hans is apparently a German whose English is terrible, so we're going to be making a number of edits on the fly - marked by line-embedded square brackets or three leads.]
  TOKYO - ...The ranks of weary Japanese businessmen, red-eyed shop owners and worn-out professionals being worked to death reached a record high last year, according to government figures released this week.... Since first being recognized by the Health Ministry in 1987, death from overwork, known here as "karoshi," has...increased from 21 cases then to 143 last year. [Four years ago we saw an unofficial estimate of 10,000 cases a year.]
  ...Health Ministry officials say...the jump was largely due to a redefinition of karoshi to encompass up to six months of accumulated work-related stress and fatigue instead of the previous standard of just one week.... Even by the old standard, however, 2001 would have been a record with 96 deaths..\.. "We thought more victims needed to be helped; that's why we relaxed the standards," said Health Ministry official Kazuyuki Matsumoto, adding that it would [also make it] easier to spot victims before their conditions turned fatal.
  But in a land where hard work is a virtue and dedication to the company often means midnight overtime, [fewer] people actually are working...than ever because of Japan's sagging economy, which is fighting through its third recession in a decade.
  [We've seen estimates as high as five.]
  Companies are cutting back on shifts to trim labor costs [5500 Japan jobcuts today alone - see 5/25/2002] and streamlining their assembly lines to churn out more [product] in less time. Yet rising unemployment has only increased [employee's anxiousness to] mak[e] ends meet - and more people are becoming aware of cases of overwork and [are] reporting incidents [of such]. "It's a vicious circle," said Masahiko Okudaira, a doctor who advises victims of overwork....
  From brain aneurisms to strokes and heart attacks, karoshi strikes a wide range of people, but factory workers, doctors and taxi drivers are hit the hardest. It is sometimes triggered by logging as many as 50 overtime hours in one week....
  [Yielding 40+50= 90-hour workweeks.]
  The news comes amid other figures released last week [claiming] that Japanese are spending less time on the job than ever. The average Japanese worker [officially] logged 1,843 hours at work last year - down from 2,356 hours in 1955 when the Health Ministry started taking records. The decrease is in line with the Health Ministry's goal of reducing the figure to 1,800 hours by 2005 - but was sped along by Japan's crumbling economy, which especially eroded official overtime hours.
  Much...overtime, however, may be going unreported, notes Shigenori Okazaki, an economic analyst with UBS Warburg in Tokyo. Japanese corporate culture often guilt [manipulate]s many workers into donating that time or getting only partially compensated.

1. South Korea: Bankers' workweek cut, by Don Kirk, NYT, W1.
   Bank workers got a 5-day workweek, which will begin on July 1, after they threatened to go on strike next week before the opening today [sic] of the world cup tournament.
   [Huh? If you can figure out the timing in that sentence, you're way ahead of us.]
   The government suggested that the workweek be cut from its existing 6 or 5½ days.
   The Korean Employers Federation warned, however, that the 5-day workweek would have a "far-reaching impact on our economy."
   [Presumably they mean, "would cause far-reaching damage to our economy." Yeah, just like the damaging prosperity that "impacted" the United States in the 40s and 50s after it cut to the 5-day workweek in 1940, or the damaging prosperity that has "impacted" France since they cut to a 35-hour workweek over the last two years. Honest to God, these employers are sooo clueless. Bad management has a lot of inertia. And here's the crowning non-sequitur of this poorly written article -]
   Bank representatives said they agreed, since so much business is conducted by Internet banking and automated teller machines.
   [Huh?! If the heavy lifting is being done by the customers and the machines anyway, why the heck would cutting the workweek for the employees make any difference?!]

2. Cendant Mobility named 'family-friendly workplace of the year', PRNewswire 05/23/2002 11:57 EDT via AOLNews.
   ...by Children First, a prominent nonprodit agency in Danbury CT dedicated to child and family wellness.... Cendant Mobility's work/life programs include...flexible work options such as flextime, job-sharing and compressed workweeks....

• Gov't to promote [work]-sharing through subsidies to firms, Kyodo 05/22/02 00:42 EDT via AOLNews.
  TOKYO...- An advisory panel to the Labor Minister decided Wednesday to recommend an easing in conditions for government subsidies for companies introducing work-sharing, ministry officials said.... The size of the subsidies will be between half and two-thirds of allowances companies pay their employees as compensation for their reduced working hours, they said. The officials said the Ministry will implement the change in the subsidy conditions June 1, and will maintain the revised conditions until March 31, 2005..\..
  At present, companies must introduce work-sharing at the entire corporate level. That means all employees must work a shorter day, by one hour or more, for the company to receive subsidies. But the Labor Policy Council will shortly recommend to Chikara Sakaguchi, Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare, that the Ministry start paying grants to companies that partially introduce work-sharing, the officials said. For instance, such grants will be provided to companies that reduce working hours for production line workers only, instead of cutting hours for all workers, they said....
  [This is the way Lincoln Electric handles its workweek adjustment when under stress. It's not a lockstep companywide adjustment, - it's division by division. See our working models page. This type of flexibility is fine transitionally, but eventually on the economywide level, it's a point of fairness to standardize the work-sharing system across all sectors, industries, companies and corporate divisions. There are always going to be some areas of resistance, e.g., professions that think they are special and indispensable (read "poorly managed") such as American physicians, but this has happened at all working hour levels since the first attempts to reduce the American workweek from seven 12-hour days back in the 1790s in Philadelphia. The ludicrous mismanagement, malpractice, backwardness and patient-care hypocrisy of American physicians can be judged from their habit of working trainees ("residents") 100-120 hr weeks - see most recent story below on 5/20 - which they are just beginning to address.]
  On March 29, government [the Health & Labor Ministry], labor [Rengo] and management [Nikkeiren] representatives agreed to promote [work] sharing in Japan as a way to deal with the country's severe unemployment situation. They defined [work] sharing as reduction of work hours aimed at maintaining and creating employment.

1. Parents find more childcare options, by Genaro Armas, AP via AOLNews.
   ...Census 2000 data for 20 states reaffirm a trend of more young children growing up with all parents in their home working.... A wide range of socioeconomic forces during the 1990s expanded child-rearing options for many working parents. Some won flexible schedules from their employers or arranged job sharing with another parent; others decided to open internet-based businesses at home....
   [Nice if true, but sounds like happytalk to us. Job sharing is not the kind of info you can get from the Census, and that seems to be the only source Genaro is citing. True, job sharing is a rigid 40-hrs/wk-based kind of timesizing that creates two jobs of one, and the claim is made for it in a story below (5/14 #1) that 28% of businesses offer it, but as we said then, "sounds wildly inflated."]

2. Nucor in $615m deal for Birmingham Steel, AP via NYT, C4.
   [Nucor is one of America's two premier timesizing companies, the other being Lincoln Electric. Here's hoping Nucor isn't making a costly mistake with this acquisition - the kind of mistake Lincoln made in the early 90s when its top execs succumbed to the fad of expansion in the 3rd world with taxbreaks guaranteed by an unstable gov't (in Venezuela). See details of Nucor's and Lincoln Electric's style of timesizing on our working models page.]
   The Nucor Corp., a steel maker, said yesterday that it had signed an agreement to purchase the financially troubled Birmingham Steel Corp. for $615m.... Although details still need to be worked out, the 2 companies are in exclusive discussions regarding a deal, said Daniel R. DiMicco, Nucor's CEO.... Nucor will not complete the deal unless Birmingham Steel files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to eliminate the threat of lawsuits over three plants the company has sold or closed....
   [Sounds like poison to us, and DiMicco seems to be having an attack of powertripping, like HP's Carly Fiorina recently, and like Fleet's Terry Murray 3 years ago (see bad report card 11/02/2001 #2). The corporate culture of Birmingham Steel is bound to be different from Nucor's extreme workweek adjustability, and that spells big trouble. When Lincoln weakened (in the head) & did some acquisitions, they didn't even try to include the subsidiaries' workforces in their guaranteed lifetime employment cum workweek accordion.]

• Aerospace industry's money-mouth disconnect, Aviation Week & Space Technology *May 20 2002 via *AviationNow.com via Alberto Tabiadon of Italy.
  The U.S. aerospace/defense industry...rarely puts its money where its mouth is. For instance, the same companies crying about their need for technical talent aren't hiring - or even interviewing - new engineering graduates trying to find jobs this year. Employees who were declared "excess" [Brit: "redundant"] when caught by layoffs, mergers, acquisitions and downsizing spend months trying to get hired by the very companies lobbying Congress to raise immigration quotas for technical personnel, citing shortages....
  [This scam, one of the more outrageous areas of CEO malpractice already pushing the US economy into chronic recession, goes far beyond the aerospace industry - ed.]
  At the other end of the workforce spectrum, legal hurdles and corporate policies are forcing the loss of technical talent already in-house. Today's all-or-nothing, inflexible retirement systems are "bleeding human resources on the ground under a very leaky workforce pipeline," said an instructor at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
  A near-term partial solution? Phased retirements, suggests John Chodacki, who is writing his dissertation on the subject as a Ph.D. candidate at Colorado Technical University. Although "phased retirement" is a hazy concept for most, Chodacki says it basically means reducing the number of hours worked and paying a good salary for those hours, while still allowing an employee to draw a portion of his pension during the part-time years.
  This serves several objectives. A company retains access to the skills and knowledge of key people, yet satisfies employees' desires for more time to pursue other activities. It also provides mentors for younger workers. Meeting these mutual goals requires a change of attitudes and dropping legal or policy restrictions, but even the subtle payoffs could be substantial....

• Surgery residents' long hours draw warning for Yale, by Anne Barnard, Boston Globe, front page.
  NEW HAVEN - The decision sent shock waves through medical schools and hospitals. It left young surgeons at one of the country's most prestigious medical centers both alarmed and elated.
  [But mostly less liable to malpractice suits.]
  And to many physicians, it signaled a turning point in the debate over the safety of hospital training programs that make new doctors work up to 120 hours a week.
  The board that oversees doctors' training [Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education] has decided to strip its seal of approval next year from the general-surgery residency program at Yale University's teaching hospital unless the hospital makes major changes to residents' working conditions, Yale administrators said.
  The board is concerned that the surgeons-in-training averaged more than 100 hours a week on duty and sometimes spent every other night at the hospital, say faculty members who have seen its confidential report issued in March.
  [Finally, the US med-ed board wakes up to a national disgrace!]
  Such a grueling schedule has long been considered normal in the the world of surgery, even as doctors in some other specialties move to cut hours, but long hours and heavy workloads have come under increasing scrutiny amid growing public concern about medical errors. For instance, NY officials blamed Mt. Sinai Hospital for inadequate care after a man who donated part of his liver died from inhaling blood while in the care of a first-year resident who was tending 34 post-surgery patients.
  Leaders at Yale-New Haven Medical Center and Yale's School of Medicine vowed to do all they could to reform the program and head off the board's unusual action. Losing accreditation...would no longer give graduates the credentials they need to be certified specialists....
  As a result, Yale-New Haven's leaders promise to spend $1m on new support staff to ease residents' burdens.... But in the meantime, the seriousness of the situation [i.e., the threat] has riveted faculty at medical centers in Boston and elsewhere - not because Yale-New Haven's surgery program is unusual, but because it isn't....
  [ooh, this writer is being sooo undeservedly gentle with these morons!]
  Trying to prevent a crackdown, hospitals such as UMass and Harvard-affiliated Brigham & Women's are now drawing up plans to reduce hours in their surgery programs, even as some program directors remain skeptical of hours limits....
  [There's always some who just don't get it - even when they're socked with one malpractice suit after another. If you want to get really mad, wade thru this piece of crap by a self-important moron at Brigham&Women's that came out four days later -]
  Surgery requires long hours, letter to editor by Dr. Karl D. Pilson of B&W Dept. of Surgery, BG, A22.
  Regarding Monday's frontpage story "Surgery residents' long hours draw warning for Yale": Most of us in the field of surgery feel that overall the pending reduction in the hours a surgical resident must work is a good thing.
  [= the initial disarming sop to the opposition.]
  It must be remembered, however, that surgery is a most demanding field requiring long hours by all involved.
  [This sheltered guy thinks surgery is the only demanding field. Check out wildcat oilmen, forest fire fighters, firefighters period (ever heard of 9/11, Dr. All-Important?), mothers, teachers, and oh yeah, the ones who really do the hospital heavy lifting, the nurses....]
  Imagine going in for heart surgery and finding that your surgeon left in the middle of a case that took longer than 12 hours....
  [This cretin doesn't seem to realize that the thing bugging patients is going in for heart surgery and finding that your surgeon has just completed a case that took longer than 12 hours and the zombie is still going to be operating on you!]
  This reduction in hours is necessary, but being a surgeon requires that surgery become a very significant part of your life, and surely no patient would wish to go to a part-time surgeon....
  [Better a well-rested part-time surgeon than a sleep-deprived "full-time" surgeon! And we have a strong feeling that by "full time" this guy would mean some 70-80 hr workweek from the 1890s anyway. It's the old "I'm work more than anybody else, therefore I'm more important" syndrome, coupled with some really bad management. This prima donna's further opinions are too blood-pressure-raising to repeat.]

• (5/04)  Fitch rates Atlanta, Georgia's $72mm TANs 'F1+', Business Wire 5/03/2002 via AOLNews.
  NEW YORK...- Fitch Ratings assigns Atlanta, Georgia's approx. $72m general fund tax anticipation notes [TANs], series 2002A 'F1+'....
  [Sounds bad, and basically, Fitch Ratings is putting out this press release, apparently without even proof-reading it, to clue investors into Atlanta's poor financial position, but trying to save Atlanta's feelings at the same time.]
  The 'F1+' rating...is based on satisfactory coverage from available general fund cash and the availability of borrowable resources. The rating reflects the city's long-term credit characteristics, including the broad, diverse tax base; a revenue structure that allows the city to benefit from the substantial growth of the surrounding area; moderate debt levels; as well as a deteriorating financial position and recent meaningful efforts to reverse the decline....
  The Mayor and a majority of the city council are newly-elected, and have taken swift and significant action to reverse the city's declining financial position which culminated in a $35m general fund shortfall in 2001 on a cash basis.... In addition to the tax rate increase, actions include
  • eliminating 280 [un?]filled position [sic],
  • instituting a five-day furlough for non-public safety general fund employees, and
  • reducing overtime....
  [i.e., two kinds of primitive timesizing, not downsizing - trimming worktime, not the workforce (and long-term pay, and markets, and investment stability, and economic recoverability...).]

1. [the good news -]
   US Airways tells unions details of cost-cutting plan, by Edward Wong, NYT, C2.
   Executives at US Airways met with union representatives yesterday to lay out a proposed business plan that would cut costs deeply to move the airline toward profitability and help it obtain a $1B federal loan guarantee.... US Airways suffered more than most of its competitors after the terrorist attacks because it relies heavily on East Coast travel. It reported a $269m loss for the first quarter, its seventh consecutive losing one. The airline also has some of the highest labor costs in the industry..\..
   Reductions in labor costs would come from cuts to wages, work hours, pension plans and health care, among other things. The plan did not call for immediate furloughs or layoffs..\.. David N. Siegel, CEO of US Airways, said yesterday evening in a telephone interview [that] he wanted to put together a plan that "takes every opportunity to preserve jobs."...

2. [and the bad news -]
   House passes a welfare bill with stricter rules on work, by Robert Pear, NYT, front page, A18.
   ...as part of a Republican plan to extend the change in social policy brought about by the 1996 welfare law....
   Highlights.... Welfare recipients must engage in supervised activity for 40 hours a week, including a minimum of 24 hours of actual work. (Current law requires 20 hours of work in a 30-hour week.)...
   [More pressure to take any job however poorly paid, longer working hours despite miraculous work-saving technology, less time to raise own children - why not be honest and just criminalize reproduction by non-self-supporting persons? - penalty: child divestment and sterilization (hopefully reversible). The hypocrisy of this legislation is evident in the "Marriage and Fatherhood" section -]
   Government would provide up to $300m a year to promote "healthy marriage" and $20m a year for projects encouraging fathers to be more involved in children's lives.
   ["Be more involved" without spending any more time with them??? OK, so who's bringing up these kids? Check out the "Child Care" section -]
   States could get $26 billion over 5 years for child care, up $2 billion from current levels. In addition, a state could use as much as 50% of its federal welfare grant for child care....
   [This calls to mind an unsigned cartoon on Pullout p.2 of the Spring 2002 issue of Survival News. Four frames, two characters, one a "suit" holding a paper titled "Welfare Reform," the other a mother carrying a baby with one arm and holding a little boy with the other. The "suit" always speaks first. Frame 1 - "You are a bad mother." "Why?" Frame 2 - "You hang around the house taking care of the kids." Frame 3 - "We'll cut you off if you don't take a job." "Doing what?" Frame 4 - "Taking care of someone else's kids." Shades of Michael Moore's characterization of Demublican jailfare - go into a small town, lay everybody off, and while they're getting so desperate they're turning to crime, turn their old plants and offices into prisons; then arrest them all, toss them into confinement and make them do the same jobs as they did before but now for 1/10 the pay.]
   Democrats said the Republican bill would encourage states to create "make work" jobs that would leave welfare recipients below the poverty level....
   [The Democrats should know about makework - they chose to doomed makework route in 1933 instead of the sharework route of the 30-hour workweek bill, and they've stuck to makework malarky ever since, regardless of how far behind they've gotten in "making" enough "work" for everyone who needs it.]

• [First Le Pen in 35-hr workweek France despite leftist Jospin's lower-employment and recession-resistant record. Now another indication that the old Left, with no strategic top-priority focus on worksharing and still clinging to a chaotic grocery list of feel-good issues, will never pull off shorter hours -]
  Dutch veer to right after candidate's killing, by Marlise Simons, NYT, A8.
  THE HAGUE...- Dutch politics took a startling swing to the right in parliamentary elections as followers of the slain populist Pim Fortuyn turned out in force today to push his anti-immigrat[ion] and law-and-order agenda.... The Labor Party of the Dutch prime minister, Wim Kok, appeared to be the biggest loser, with a stunning drop from 45 to 24 seats, its worst results in recent memory.... His party's limp finish still seemed a poor reward for the decade in which he helped turn the Netherlands into one of the best-performing economies in Europe, with rapid growth and one of the lowest unemployment rates....
  [Bear in mind that the Dutch are approaching the work-sharing solution by greater respect for part-time. The powers that be know they will never have to take the next serious step in human progress if they can simply continue the surplus of labor over employment, and they can sound very warm and fuzzy by standing up for poor immigrants, legal or illegal, in trickles or in record-breaking numbers as to America during the 1990s, and talking about how much our economy "needs" them - for domestic long-hours low-wage labor to "discipline the workforce" - never mind that the main need for discipline is on the management side, as Enron, Andersen, the US Congress vis a vis the national debt, Tyco, Global Crossing, etc etc etc, indicate. And surprisingly, the Left has swallowed it. Maybe it's because, though the Right wants private property at the individual level so they can concentrate more and more spending power regardless of starving their own markets, the Right also wants communism at the international level in terms of population flows, so that unions stay weak and wages stay low and hours stay long. Say a word of concern about uncontrolled immigration and you're immediately "anti-immigrant," a phrase that is repeated over and over again in this article, and likely as not "racist," thus gagging needed discussion and debate. For this reason, Timesizing.com recommends only that this whole issue be put to binding public referendum, since people will face unpleasant realities in the secrecy of the voting booth that politicians will never face in public votes in Congress or Parliament. Is the Left capable of realizing that the whole point of shorter hours is to work with market forces by creating a shortage of labor, and letting market forces take care of the blizzard of details instead of self-important micro-managing leftists?]
  Among the most common complaints was that the Dutch had become bored and even angry with the cozy world of consensus politics.
  [Same as in Jospin's France.]
  The left-center-right coalition had made for stable politics, but also for endless backroom dealing in which real political debate was stifled.... Hovering above the crowd..\..at the chic Hotel des Indes, where...Fortuyn [Party] supporters awaited results...was an enormous portrait of the party's slain founder, whom leftist political opponents and news outlets had called a racist, a fascist and worse before he was gunned down../..
  [Lesson for leftists, and the mainstream media - not only did your standard simplistic and self-righteous name-calling trigger a murder, but the murder triggered a huge sympathy vote.]
  "This is a wake-up call...," said Maria van der Hoeven, deputy leader of the Christian Democrats. "People are telling us, do something about our problems, about the lack of safety in the streets, about the problems in the schools and the hospitals."...
  [And as for the "fascist" and "racist" idea that maybe the Netherlands needs immigration laws and maybe its citizens need to respect them, bear in mind that the Netherlands is already the most densely populated nation in mainland Europe with 466 people per sq km. Only eleven nations in the entire world are more densely populated and many of them are tiny islands: Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, West Bank & Gaza, Malta, Bermuda, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Barbados, Mauritius, and South Korea, according to The Economist's Pocket World in Figures, 2002 Edition. Do leftists and the mainstream media ever plan to take up the question of when enough is enough when it comes to population, and if so, when?]

• Saitama Pref. to implement work-sharing system, Kyodo 05/13/02 22:51 EDT via AOLNews.
  SAITAMA, Japan, May 14 - The Saitama prefectural government said Tuesday it will launch a work-sharing system for its employees in September, featuring recruitment of experienced former private-sector workers. Work-sharing systems adopted by other local governments focus on securing jobs for new school and university graduates, but Saitama's will be the first to include former private-sector employees, according to the prefecture.
  Saitama Prefecture will finance the scheme by reducing overtime allowances of existing employees, prefecture officials said. The prefecture plans to use these resources to hire more new graduates, and part-timers in their 30s to 50s who have lost their private-sector jobs but have abundant experience and specialized knowledge, they said.
  Overtime allowances will be cut by about 7%, and the saving thus made will finance the hiring of about 130 such employees, including about 20 people experienced mainly in the financial and information technology areas, the officials said. "Working together with abundantly experienced people will lead to motivating our employees," a prefecture official said.

1. Hewitt study shows work/life benefits hold steady despite recession; Companies recognize value of work/life investment, Business Wire 05/13/2002 10:01 Eastern via AOLNews.
   [Here's some feelgood happytalk from a CEO-suckup firm - not that we don't implicitly believe every word of their cheerleading! -]
   Lincolnshire, Ill... - The recession of 2001-2002 has not had a negative impact on corporate work/life benefits. In fact, a newly released survey of 945 major U.S. employers by Hewitt Assocs., a global outsourcing and consulting firm, finds that nearly all forms of work/life programs enjoyed modest growth in prevalence [sic] over the past year. This contradicts a popular opinion that these "soft" benefits would be among the first cut in an economic downturn.
   [Wonderful what you can conclude by carefully picking who you ask.]
   ...Said Hewitt work/life consultant Carol Sladek, "As employees are asked to do more with less, employers have used these programs to help their people cope with and balance all of the demands on their time and attention."
   [In other words, now you're supposed to be doing the jobs of all the people they've laid off as well as your own, here are some sugar pills to keep you suffering in silence.]
   Group purchasing programs and onsite personal conveniences were the two hottest fields, up 5% and 4% respectively from last year.... Key findings include -
   ...Alternative work arrangements - Nearly ¾ (74%) of all businesses offer flexible work options. The most common arrangements are flextime (59%), part-time employment (48%), [oh they love part-time in America so they can eliminate your benefits]
   work at home (30%), job sharing (28%),
   [although sharing a 40-hr/wk job probably suffers from clobbered benefits as much as part-time - btw, this 28% sounds wildly inflated]
   compressed workweeks (21%), and summer hours (12%)....
   [presumably shorter in the summer]

2. Exhausted doctors, letter to editor by Edwin Williamson of NYC, NYT, A22.
   Re: "Medical students sue over residency system" (front page, May 7):
   As a third-year medical student, I see how overworked and very tired resident [doctor]s can become irritable and less focused, and make poor decisions at the end of a shift. My colleagues and I agree that we don't want to bankrupt hospitals, and we know that the free market might not raise salaries that much and that residency does have a significant educational component that keeps the pay low.
   That said, 80- to 100-hour workweeks are good for neither residents nor patients. According to the American Medical Student Assoc., 41% of residents attribute their most serious mistakes to exhaustion; 24-hour wakefulness results in cognitive function equivalent to a 0.1% blood-alcohol level; and well-rested doctors outperform thier sleep-deprived colleagues in tests of memory, mathematics, visual attention, concentration, and anesthesia monitoring. What more evidence is needed for change?
   [Hear, hear!]

3. German union begins new strikes, by Geir Moulson, AP 05/13/02 08:48 EDT via AOLNews.
   [merely another mention of all the good stuff we already know about IG Metall -]
   BERLIN - Germany's IG Metall union opened a new front in its campaign for higher wages, saying some 4,500 members were on strike in and around Berlin in the northeastern part of the country even as its walkouts in a key southwestern manufacturing region entered a second week.... The union says it wants more money to compensate workers for inflation, productivity increases and [the merely] moderate increases from 2000 to 2001. Members earn an average of 2,000 euros ($1,800) a month, with a 35-hour week, six weeks of paid vacation, and annual bonuses....

• Teams search for China crash continues, AP 05/12/02 03:10 EDT via AOLNews.
  BEIJING - Salvage teams have recovered landing gear and other large pieces of wreckage from the underwater crash site of a Chinese airline...McDonnell Douglas MD-82..\..that went down last week, killing [all 112 people] on board, state media said.... It was the second fatal crash in less than a month of a Chinese airliner and came despite China's extensive efforts to improve air safety after a string of fatal accidents in the 1990s. The Civil Aviation Administration of China on Saturday ordered the inspection of all planes, better management at airports, limits on overtime and other measures to improve safety....

1. Less time for work, more time for life! - The fight for a shorter work week, panel discussion today at 1 pm at Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston St, Copley Sq, Boston MA, admission free.
   Panelists -
   
   • Betty Mendel, welfare rights activist
   • Gary Zabel, National Alliance for Full Employment
   • Jon Bekken, Industrial Worker editor, *Industrial Workers of the World [IWW = "Wobblies" and sponsors of this event, 617-573-8142]
   • Marconi Almeida, community organizer, Workers' Rights Project, Brazilian Immigrant Center

2. Strike shows tensions in Germany, by David McHugh, AP 05/10/02 15:39 EDT via AOLNews.
   FRANKFURT - This week's first pay strike in 7 years by the [2d] biggest German industrial union is just the latest cloud over Europe's largest economy.... The walkouts by the 2.7m-member IG Metall union, which broke for the weekend Friday, are exposing tensions in Germany's "social-market economy." The term means a market economy with a human face: strong unions, few layoffs, generous social benefits and an aversion to what Germans consider the excesses of U.S.-style capitalism....
   
   • For insiders, the system works wonderfully: high pay, six weeks of paid vacation regardless of seniority and a 35-hour week for IG Metall members.
   • For outsiders who can't break into such jobs, the outlook is bleak..\..
   Many economists, though few politicians, say the system contributes to high unemployment and slow growth, making labor so costly it's destroying the very jobs the government wants to protect.
   [Just let them try our system and see how much more family neglect, school shootings and prisons they get. But Europe isn't clear on the solution concept either. Though they are way ahead of us in shorter working hours, they are still clueless about the effects of technologizing the economy and the categorical imperative of instituting a fluctuating workweek that varies inversely with unemployment to yield full employment and a maximum consumer base. German unions need to realize they must represent all German employees, not just union members, and get a shorter workweek nationwide, not just for IG Metall.]
   Growing competition from lower-cost countries, often just across the border in eastern Europe, and the ease of comparing prices in the euro currency have added to the pressure.
   [German unions have the power to plug the leaks in their quality of life. The whole economic and currency unification of Europe was premature, but they can still enforce the principle that countries with lower standards do not get to tap their big consumer markets.]
   Piled on top of the union system are payroll taxes to fund jobless, retirement and other benefits - around 40% of wages, compared to about 17% for the U.S. One result: German factory labor is the most expensive in the industrial world, according to the Institute of the German Economy, a research organization close to German industry....
   [But Germany also has a much bigger consumer base per capita than the U.S. and a much higher quality of life. Check out how many German tourists you meet in the American Southwest. More free time and more money to enjoy it. And anytime Germans smarten up and implement automatic overtime-to-training conversion and automatic free time vs. unemployment adjustment, they will be able to cut their huge jobless-support budget and replace retirement expenses with the concept of lifetime employment at much-reduced hours levels.]