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

6/15/2002  primitive Timesizing in the news -

1. Future bleak for muddled French left, by Rebecca Harrison, Reuters 06/014/02 11:16 ET via AOLNews.
   PARIS - Tipped to take a thrashing in parliamentary runoffs Sunday, France's stunned Socialists have seen their former vote-winning alliances crumble and could face a bleak future if they do not re-form fast, analysts said. The Socialist Pary, the kingpin of the left, did not fare too badly in the first round of the election last Sunday. But it will never clinch a majority in parliament alone and its traditional allies are ailing....
   Amid all the soul-searching, the Socialists also face the question of who should lead them in the longer term. Party chairman Francois Hollande, who took over as stopgap standard-bearer after Jospin's defeat, is seen as more of a loyal workhorse than a dynamic leader. More obvious choices are market-friendly former Finance Ministers Dominique Strauss-Kahn or the more leftwing Martine Aubry, unpopular with some for pioneering the 35-hour work week that proved more controversial than expected.
   [So let them go back to the 48-hour workweek and see how they like that - and the unemployment it engenders.]
   Bertrand Delanoe, elected Paris mayor last year, has also been dropping hints that he is looking for a larger role.
   "Who can represent these different currents?"..\..said Henri Rey, political researcher at the Paris political sciences institute Sciences Po.
   [Now there's an oxymoron for you - "political sciences."]
   "Jospin was the only one who could do it."
   [Ah, the fascination of total annihilation.]
   Despite the bleak outlook, some pollsters note Jospin lost the presidential race by less than one percentage point, and that if he had won, the left might now be headed for victory.
   [They might still be headed for victory if they let the sting of that defeat galvanize them into doing what needs to be done - namely, dynamiting their huge number of abstaining voters' butts out to the polls.]

2. Clouds gather for Le Pen, even in Riviera bastion, by Marie Maitre, Reuters 06/014/02 14:15 ET via AOLNews.
   NICE, France...- Just weeks after its leader's stunning triumph in the first round of France's presidential election, the far-right National Front [NF] looks set to draw a blank in Sunday's runoff vote for parliamentary seats. This is true even in its traditional southern stronghold of Nice [on the French Riviera]. France's fifth-largest city, famed for its sun-drenched Mediterranean beaches and seafront promenade, rallied behind Jean-Marie Le Pen in the presidential election....
   Many blame the drop on record-high abstention, which hit 44% in Alpes Maritimes..\..a region which stretches from the Italian border to Cannes..., compared with 35% nationwide.
   [So both the left and the right are having trouble with lazy voters.]
   "There were a lot of abstentions because many of our voters were scared off by a campaign to demonise us and by the anti-Le Pen protests between the first and second rounds of the presidential elections"..\..Marie-France Stirbois...one of four NF candidates who made it to the runoff in Alpes Maritimes...told Reuters.... Pascal Perrineau, a political scientist and NF specialist, said..."When you have a parliamentary vote following a presidential election, many voters think the key decisions have already been made so it's useless to go and vote again...."
   [Oh those fatalistic French, and yet so much can be done by undramatic damage control.]
   Commentators say that some who voted for Le Pen for president switched to Chirac's Union for a Presidential Majority (UMP) grouping, which looks set to sweep the parliamentary election. They said the UMP caretaker government appointed by Chirac after his re-election adopted a tough stance on crime, a key concern for NF voters. "All UMP candidates have adopted NF themes, from crime to tax cuts and the 35-hour working week," said Jena-Pierre Schenardi, an NF representative for Provence.
   [- presumably meaning a "theme" of watering down the 35-hour workweek.]

1. Manugistics to shut some offices, Dow Jones/AP via NYT, C5.
   Manugistics Group will close its U.S. offices from July 1 to July 5 and force employees to take four unpaid vacation days as part of its effort to reduce expenses. The company, which last month moved into new corporate headquarters in Rockville, Md., told its 1,500 employees about the "unpaid company shutdown" last week, a spokeswoman, Didi Blackwood, said yesterday. Customer service and support operations will not be affected, nor will employees involved in installing software that customers have already purchased, she added.... Brad Reback, a software analyst at the CIBC World Markets Corp., calculated that the weeklong shutdown would save about $2 million in expenses in the quarter ending in August. Manugistics, a vendor of supply-chain software, said June 4 it would take steps to reduce costs and lay off an unspecified number of employees after announcing a revenue shortfall and a wider-than-expected loss for the May quarter.
   [But presumably this weeklong shutdown obviates or reduces that layoff = timesizing, not downsizing. Please patronize our highlighted timesizing companies, rudimentary though their timesizing be.]

2. [setback #1]
   Few firms inquire about work-sharing subsidies, Kyodo News 06/13/02 07:39 EDT via AOLNews.
   TOKYO...- The number of firms inquiring about government subsidies for work sharing has been small, showing that management is generally still uncertain about introducing the system, according to a survey released Thursday by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. The Ministry started offering subsidies June 1 to companies adopting work-sharing policies, but as of last Friday [the end of the first week of the offer], inquiries made for the subsidies by businesses nationwide came to only 70, according to the survey.
   [Hey, if this is only the end of the first week, this is not such a big setback. The Robien Law in France only got 110 takers in the first six months - though these 70 in Japan are only inquiries, not yet takers.]
   The subsidies are for businesses which increase employment of people aged between 45 and 60 by reducing work hours in an emergency job-sharing scheme aimed at preventing unemployment.... To help maintain employment, the Ministry expects to give about 7 billion yen in such subsidies by the end of fiscal 2004 ending in March 2005. The Ministry expects around 3,000 businesses to use its subsidy system in the next three years and to promote it more strongly through advertising, the officials said..\..
   [Timesizing, not downsizing. This is similar to the voluntary Robien Law under the right-center government in France in 1996-97. Scan down our working models page to 'Nations.']
   Of the 70 inquiries made in the first week, 12 were made to the Labor Ministry, while the rest were directed to regional labor bureaus and public employment agencies around the country, Ministry officials said.
   There were 24 prefectures, including Tokyo, Aichi and Osaka, where absolutely no inquiries were made, while 13 prefectures, such as Miyagi, Chiba and Kanagawa, received only one inquiry each.
   [Well, we discovered on 3/07/2002 that Osaka and Miyagi Prefectures were at least considering work-sharing plans. How many prefectures are there all together, anyway?]
   A Ministry official said it was difficult to make judgments based on the first compilation of data,
   [- guess so, when it's only been one week! -]
   but said, "The response has been smaller than we expected."
   [Hey, at least there's people in the Ministry and the media holding their breath on this and pullin' for it! With that kind of spirit, "conservative" Japan, the world's second biggest economy, is going to be leading the world in work-sharing soon. With the resulting solid growth, they'll be kickin' the big butt of America's "black hole economy" of deactivated, tightly packed spending power.]
   The largest number of inquiries on the subsidies was in Hiroshima Prefecture at 12, followed by seven in the prefectures of Saitama and Shizuoka, and five in Kagawa Prefecture.
   ["Hiroshima, mon amour!" What poetic justice if the town we nuked turns around and leads the world in the key strategy for solid economic progress 57 years later!]
   An affiliated organization of the Labor Ministry, the Assoc. of Employment Development of Senior Citizens, which also responds to inquiries, said it received 51 inquiries nationwide....

3. [setback #2]
   Chirac gets second chance - Could he blow it again?, by John Chalmers, Reuters 06/13/02 08:44 ET via AOLNews.
   PARIS...- French President Jacques Chirac may at last have wrestled off the straitjacket of power-sharing with his Socialist rivals but, if history is any guide, he could still squander his new advantage. Haste, improvisation and miscalculation have hobbled the newly re-elected Gaullist president in the past. So too has massive popular resistance to "reform" of welfare and labour [our quotes - ed.], the very things promised by his conservative allies as they now stand on the cusp of power.... He has also promised to ease the strictures of the 35-hour work week laws introduced by Jospin....

1. Accreditors place new limit on hours of young doctors, by Lawrence Altman & Denise Grady, NYT, front page.
   In a move expected to make a significant change in the way doctors are trained, the group that accredits the nation's teaching hospitals said yesterday that it would impose strict new limits on the number of hours worked by medical residents.
   The rules, intended to reduce the risk of dangerous errors by sleep-deprived young doctors, are to take effect in July 2003. They will -
   • limit the workweek to 80 hours,
     [whoah, how advanced!]
   • require at least 10 hours of rest between shifts, restrict duty to no more than 24 hours at a time
     [thank God for America's "health" care professionals!]
   • and restrict work outside the hospital
   • They will also require stricter supervision and accountability from the hospitals that train the residents. Faculty members and program directors will be required to assess the residents for signs of sleep loss and fatigue....
   [Wudda buncha morons! Set up the conditions to make "trainee"-victims as tired as possible and then require teachers to monitor them for fatigue. This isn't training. This is some kind of sick sadistic initiation rite. Ain't it weird how parts of a single diverse society can get sooo far out of line. Even quite presitigious parts. Shades of the current child abuse scandal throughout the RC clergy. "Who monitors the monitors?"]
   [Followup -]
   Sleep-deprived doctors, editorial, 6/14/2002 NYT, C34.
   [This baby has some choice sound bytes -]
   Patients can only welcome the prospect of stricter limits on the number of hours that medical residents will be allowed to work in the nation's "teaching" hospitals [our quotes - ed.]. Nobody wants a bleary-eyed beginning doctor, numb after extraordinarily long hours without rest, to be making critical medical decisions or performing surgical procedures....
   People accustomed to the 40-hour workweek may find it shocking that the new rules will reduce the residents' workload only to an average of 80 hours a week, with no more than 24 hours consecutive. Moreover, the hospitals can boost those numbers to 88 and 30 for certain purposes.
   But even that can be considered progress in a world where many residents have complained that they were working more than 100 hours a week, sometimes even 120 hours, often for 36-hour stretches at a time..\..
   [Wherein are these so-called "teaching hospitals" any different from the criminal conspiracy that the Roman Catholic Church of America has evolved into in terms of endangering and victimizing the helpless and powerless - except that one of their own internal governing bodies somehow [gee, we wonder how] managed to decide to take the absolute-minimum steps before a rash of exposes and criminal charges flared? The RC clergy has long been betraying their parish children, their parish parents and their Lord, and the "teaching hospitals" are still constantly betraying their hippocratic oath - to do no harm - not to mention their responsibility to represent some kind of model of health. What a disgrace. Two of the wealthiest professions in America - out of line and out of touch.]
   The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education...insists...that it will enforce the new rules aggressively, using confidential Internet surveys of residents to ferret out violations. Hospitals that violate the rules could lose their training accreditation and substantial government funding. \But\ the Committee of Interns and Residents, a union with 12,000 members, complains that the Council has been doing little to enforce its existing, weaker standards, so there is no certainty it will get tough now.
   [Exactly the same as the RC bishops.]
   Despite the tough talk, the Council faces an inherent conflict of interest. Its board is dominated by the trade associations for hospitals, doctors and medical schools, all of which benefit from the cheap labor provided by medical residents. The teaching hospitals alone could face million in added labor costs at a time when their budgets are already strained.
   [Read our lips - cut physician salaries.]
   Bills have been introduced by Sen. Jon Corzine of New Jersey and Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, both Democrats, that would set limits on the time that residents can work.
   [Aha, remember above where we wondered how one of the medical professions own governing bodies ever came round to "initiating" this longlonglong delayed reform? This is how - they feared government regulation and decided to try to pre-empt it. Note this pair of legislators represents the most creative combination you can get - a juxtaposition of opposites. Corzine is a wealthy white guy who bought his seat but, like Chester Arthur whose slimeball backers bought him the vice presidency in 1880, making him prez when Garfield got assassinated the following year, Corzine "did the flip" and has been vigorously battling for real reform ever since. (Or maybe Corzine is an even rarer breed, the kind that schemes to get rich and buy power so he can break through our doldrums of non-progress regardless of the boring standpatters/"stalwarts.") John Conyers, by contrast, is a relatively (to other legislators) poor black man. Added bonus: he's probably the most worktime conscious legislator we've got - he has sponsored or co-sponsored a number of bills to regulate worktime, such as, with Mr. Dellums, a 35-hour bill (the Dellum-Conyers Bill, H.R. 1050) in 1997.]
   Codifying the rules into law would be a sensible step to increase the pressure for vigorous enforcement.
   [Additional followup -]
   Limits on residents' hours worry teaching hospitals - Losing a cheap source of labor when budgets are tight, by Reed Abelson, 6/14/2002 NYT, A16.
   [Donchajus LOVE the way the wealthiest professions constantly "cry poor"?!]

2. 700 auto supplier workers walk out - Strikes idle 4 plants of GM and Chrysler, AP via Boston Globe, E4.
   ...to protest what the UAW says are unfair labor practices and antiunion activities..\.. Strikes at four plants operated by [Milwaukee-based] auto supplier Johnson Controls Inc. affected production at two GM assembly plants and two plants operated by the Chrysler Group.... The plants are in Shreveport LA, Oklahoma City, Earth City MO, and Northwood OH. The la[st] is a nonunion plant....
   The UAW says it has filed several unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB for violations at each of the four plants. The charges include -
   • failure to provide legally required information
   • publicly belittling and disciplining union supporters
   • unilaterally changing work rules, job rotations, attendance policy, overtime, insurance packages, and shift-operating times....
   [So a tiny fraction of the peabrained American labor movement has again stumbled, as one item in an unordered list, onto the key power lever. How many decades - or centuries - will it take before they get focused?]

• Analysis - French right sets sights on 35-hour workweek law, by Noah Barkin, Reuters 06/11/02 06:39 ET via AOLNews.
  PARIS...- Heralded as a revolutionary reform that would spur job creation and boost leisure time, the 35-hour workweek law swept the French left to power in 1997 and still stands as its most visible achievement. Five years on, with the right poised to reclaim a majority in parliament and the left in tatters, the bold labour reform looks headed for changes which will significantly alter its effect on companies and the French economy.
  No one expects newly reelected President Jacques Chirac and his centre-right government to scrap a law which businesses have spent the better part of the last three years putting in place after arduous negotiations with trade unions. But with French employers outspoken in their opposition to many aspects of the reform and employees increasingly sceptical whether it can deliver on its original promises, experts say the right will have the wiggle room to whittle away at core aspects of the policy.
  [Deja vu - the same thing happened in the 1930s, thanks to the split American labor movement wherein the clueless CIO split off from the AFL over the latter's worksharing program, and thanks to the clueless employees at Kellogg's who, even though by 1935 in the teeth of the Great Depression they were getting 40 hrs/wk of pay for a 30-hr workweek during which they gave up control, were upset that they didn't have control even over those 30 hours - so they brought in a union which eventually cooperated with management in bumping their workweek back up to 40 hrs. "The slaves love their chains."]
  Over the coming years, it is likely to evolve into a reform that bears only a fleeting resemblance to the law originally formulated by the leftist government of departed Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. "It will not be abandoned completely - that would be too politically risky," said Jean-Francois Mercier, an economist at Schroder Salomon Smith Barney. "But it will be tidied up around the edges to allow companies the flexibility they need."
  [In short, gutted - the same way the 40-hour maximum workweek was gutted during World War II.]
  CHIRAC TO TINKER
  Well before thrashing the left in the first round of parliamentary elections this past Sunday, the mainstream right had signalled its intention to tinker with the 35-hour workweek. "It is absolutely necessary that we lift the useless constraints," Chirac said on the campaign trail earlier this year.
  [What's so useless about achieving a reduction of 1% in the unemployment rate for every 1-hour reduction in the workweek?]
  The government has indicated it plans to increase the number of overtime hours allowed under the law, making it easier for companies to get around it. It could simultaneously reduce the cost to companies of paying overtime, while completely freeing certain sectors of the economy, such as companies with fewer than 500 employees, from its constraints.
  [This raises the advisability of coming up with a leakproof design for overtime (OT) before screwing around lowering the level where overtime starts, because if your OT design is flawed, your shorter workweek is meaningless. The Timesizing program devotes two of its five phases to OT design, Phases 2 and 3. Phase Two sets a limit for corporations via a high tax on overtime profits (vs. hiring additional employees) with a complete exemption for reinvestment in OJT (on-the-job training) in overtime-targeted skills. Once that's percolating along nicely, Phase Three extends the overtime discipline to individuals and catches moonlighters by setting a high tax on overwork earnings (overwork defined as individual overline employment from all sources) again with a complete exemption for reinvesting that income in OT-targeted OJT.]
  A couple of years ago such talk would have been greeted with outrage by employees who were fighting tooth-and-nail to ensure the law was properly implemented by their employers. But workers now have their own doubts about the reform they once backed so vigorously.
  • Many have found they are being asked to do the same work they always did in fewer hours.
  • The law has also led to a cap on salaries to help companies counter the higher cost of implementing it.
  • A survey produced by pollsters Louis Harris in April showed that over 60 percent of French now believe the law had a negative impact on their take-home pay...
    [This is purely a short-term effect because once unemployment is mopped up, there are fewer people willing to do your job for less money.]
  • ...and on overall job creation.
    [Stupidity reigns. This would mean that there are so many clueless sabotaging managers that France might as well go straight back to its 12.6% unemployment rate of 1997 and ever higher taxes to support the ever bigger number of parasitic citizens. The French should make up their damn minds if they want to lead or lag in social progress.]
  • About half the population now say they would prefer to work more and earn more money.
    [That kind of approach has resulted in sweatshops throughout the Third World. Trying to work more hours for more money when you're competing with worksaving technology always means less money in the longer run - as humans flood the employment markets with their labor hours while automation cuts into those markets. And with the pace of change accelerating the "longer run" is getting here faster every day. With thinking like this, the French are going to go right back to being the first hit by recession instead of the last, and they're going to have deeper recessions than Germany, not shallower.]
  "When the 35-hour law was adopted two years ago, a majority of French viewed it favourably," said Francois Miquet-Marty, director of political studies at Louis Harris. "Now an even larger majority have a negative view. Opinions have shifted signficantly."
  [Dumb dumb dumb.]
  The right is expected to use this shift in sentiment to its advantage and push through policies that will leave small and medium-sized businesses - which employ well over a million French - free from many of the previous constraints of the 35 hours.
  MARKET-FRIENDLY ASPECTS
  Larger companies will remain subject to the main tenets of the law. But many of them, notably firms that are highly sensitive to cyclical swings, have already found ways to cope with the reform by using certain aspects to their advantage.
  When French carmaker Renault, for example, sealed a pact with unions in April 1999 to implement the 35-hour workweek, it also reached an agreement which gives it the leeway to adjust working hours in its factories more freely depending on swings in demand for its cars.
  [The workweek should fluctuate with demand anyway. That's why the Timesizing program, in Phase Four, adopts the fluctuating workweek concept of Walter Reuther and like him, fluctuates it against unemployment. Sometimes labor has the unrealistic idea that they can get fixed shorter hours at fixed higher pay regardless of sales of their product. This is not in the cards.]
  Deals like this, which were made possible thanks to a watering down of former Labour Minister Martine Aubry's original law to allow new methods of calculating working time have already had a major impact. In particular, a change allowing companies to annualise work time rather than calculate it on a weekly basis, has helped firms cope.
  [The only firms that should be annualizing are firms in seasonal industries like agriculture.]
  "It is a complex law which contains some positive aspects," said Stephane Deo, economist at UBS Warburg. "The right can focus on the market-friendly elements while softening those aspects which are seen as negative."

1. Victory at hand, French right pledges action, by John Chalmers, Reuters 06/10/02 15:33 ET via AOLNews.
   PARIS...- French President Jacques Chirac's conservatives pledged to deliver fast on key reform promises on Monday after trouncing the left and far right in the first round of a parliamentary election that pointed to a solid majority. Winning an estimated 44% in the first of the two voting rounds, the centre-right took a solid lead on Sunday over the Socialists and their Communist and ecologist Greens partners, who scored a total of 37% amid mass abstention....
   [The left are such a bunch of high-expectation, high-disappointment, impatient, instant-gratification babies, that if they don't get what they want even when they're protest-voting for splinter groups, they pout and stay home.]
   French shares ralled as markets welcomed the prospect of the right pushing "reforms" [our quotes - ed.] - including taxcuts, loosening labour law and revamping pension provision[s] - but the benchmark CAC-40 index had pared most of its gains by the close.
   Yet those who recalled the angry protests in 1995 when Chirac tried to introduce structural "reforms" advised caution - that unrest led to the left's 1997 legislative victory.
   The spectre of public sector strikes loomed on Monday, with the CGT trade union announcing that electricity workers may reduce production in a stoppage planned for June 13 to protest against the partial privatisation of gas and power utilities. Potentially the most explosive plan is to shake up France's overburdened state pension system to incorporate a greater private component with U.S.-style pension funds, something many French view with great suspicion.
   [And rightly so, considering the gutting of private pensions here from Enron to Polaroid, and the cynical misleading of investors by many financial firms starting with Merrill Lynch.]
   Chirac also promised to ease the strictures of the 35-hour work week laws of Socialist ex-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, a key leftist reform that has proved far more difficult to implement than was expected....

2. French government bonds in tug of war after poll, by Dhara Ranasinghe, Reuters 06/10/02 10:21 ET via AOLNews.
   LONDON...- French government bonds are in a tug of war as a boost from a possible landslide parliamentary election win for Pres. Jacques Chirac's conservatives is balanced by prospects of tax cuts and a rising budget deficit.... Chirac has promised to ease the strictures of the 35-hour week laws of Socialist ex-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and such plans are seen as more likely to go ahead given the chances of a comfortable majority in the national assembly.

3. French voters endorse PM's "government of action", by Joelle Diderich, Reuters 06/10/02 11:47 ET via AOLNews.
   PARIS...- France's caretaker PM Jean-Pierre Raffarin has seen his pledge to head a "government of action" pay off handsomely as voters gave a massive thumbs-up to ministers in his month-old, centre-right cabinet. Led by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, no fewer than seven interim ministers won seats in the National Assembly in the first round of parliamentary elections on Sunday without having to wait for the run-off vote on June 16. Another nine were poised for victory after trouncing the left and far right with promises to crack down on crime, cut taxes and ease a 35-hour limit on the working week.
   By contrast, no former Socialist cabinet ministers were re-elected outright on Sunday, although a few posted strong leads. Several prominent figures in former PM Lionel Jospin's "plural left" government face tough run-offs.
   Raffarin played down his triumph to show disaffected voters he has heard their protest against a Parisian elite, seen in a record low turnout....

4. Chirac's right aims to clinch the parliamentary majority, by Elaine Ganley, AP via Boston Globe, A19.
   PARIS - France's mainstream political right, fresh from a resounding win in the first round of parliamentary elections,
   [- this lead-in is just a trifle ingenuous, since the majority-but-splintered left was forced to vote for the moderate right against the immoderate right because their adolescent tantrum sank Jospin in the April election -]
   got to work yesterday trying to clinch an absolute majority in next week's runoff - and a massive power base for Pres. Jacques Chirac....
   But there is little chance that France will transform itself abruptly, even under a powerful right-led government. France [cherishes] its social safety net and is wary of unleashing free-market forces.
   [i.e., suicidally short-sighted forces.]
   Chirac has promised an across-the-board 5% tax cut and Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin's government is implementing its law-and-order campaign to combat rising crime.
   However, the president has said he would leave intact the shortened35-hour workweek - the leftist government's flagship legislation - while easing its burden on businesses....

5. French market cheers right's election lead, by Marie Maitre, Reuters 06/10/02 05:46 ET via AOLNews.
   PARIS...- French financial markets applauded on Monday what is shaping up as a possible landslide parliamentary win for Pres. Jacques Chirac's conservatives after Sunday's first round of parliamentary elections. By 0950 GMT, the benchmark CAC-40 index gained 0.96% at 4,059.01 points, outperforming its German and British peers.... Early [election] results gave Chirac's centre-right a strong lead over the left, amid record abstentions, while reducing the score of the far-right National Front, whose leader rattled markets by reaching the second round of presidential elections last month. ...The impact of the vote remained clouded by more global concerns about weak corporate profits and opaque accountancy practices....
   "I expect
   • insurers and banks to benefit from plans to reform pension funds,
   • retailers and caterers from hopes of a cut in value-added tax and
   • defence stocks from plans to boost military spending,"
   said CIC Securities strategist Francois-Xavier Chevalier. Some small and mid-caps could also benefit from hopes the government will ease [the] 35-hour working week law, he said.
   But some commentators said the prospect of a 5-year unchallenged mandate for the right could mean some crucial measures like tax cuts being postponed until the second half of the term in 2007, amid mounting concerns over France's capacity to stick to European pledges to cut public deficits....

• At issue, balancing demands of work, home - Family-friendly policies key to healthy labor force, by Rosaline Barnett & Caryl Rivers, Boston Globe, C5.
  ...In 2000, young men for the first time [since ??] said family is at least as important to them as work, according to a survey by the Radcliffe Public Policy Center. The majority of both men and women say they would be willing to trade pay raises for more family time.
  ...Among men with more egalitarian attitudes, fatherhood is associated with a decrease of nine hours per week at work, whereas among men with more traditional views, fatherhood is associated with an increase of almost 11 hours per week....
  [This sounds pretty extreme, and the big missing factoid here is, what level of workweek are we decreasing and increasing from? If it's the 40-hr workweek, where are they finding all these men averaging a 31-hr week? Perhaps the answers are in Barnett & Rivers' book, "He Works, She Works: How Two-income Families Are Happy, Healthy and Thriving" (Harvard). Sounds like they're advocating families with both parents working when they may mean to advocate simply shorter working hours. Please clarify the message, ladies. The buried-anger feminism is also confusing things (the confusing graphic of a happy-looking typical housewife&mother of the '50s is captioned "The clueless family guy who lets his wife do all the child care and all the worrying is fast becoming a thing of the past"). Another article this Sunday whose headline seems to be arguing vaguely against longer hours is, "Feeling empty after filling eight hours with busywork," by Jennifer Berkshire, BG, G17.   Relative to people working increased hours per week, we have "Early birds are found to get little notice," BG, G2, which says, "Management Recruiters International...recruitment and search firm says supervisors and managers are less likely to notice the efforts their workers put in before the start of the work day, possibly because they themselves do not start work early. 'Despite the fact that putting in the extra time, whether it be in the early hours of the morning or late at night, potentially leads to greater productivity, workplace early birds do not reap the same rewards, promotions or acknowledgements,' said Allen Salikof, president and CEO of MRI...." A later article on this topic is "Workers of the world, get up!" by Judith Dobrzynski, 6/23/2002 NYT, Week-in-Review 2.]

• [prime candidates for Timesizing -]
  ...Argentines scramble for jobs in crippled economy, by Gilbert Le Gras, Reuters 06/07/02 09:32 ET via AOLNews.
  [Timesizing's approach? Don't scramble for rigid 40-hour-block jobs - SHARE the entire diminishing lump of employment in the nation, no matter what level the workweek has to adjust down to in order to accomplish that.]
  ...Part of the problem is that the underground economy, the "unemployment shock absorber," as one expert described it, has virtually dried up along with the official economy. A six-month freeze on cash withdrawals, imposed in December to stop a run on banks that threatened to collapse the financial system, has made it difficult to pay cash wages.... Alternatives for the unemployed are few. Some apply for a government handout of 150 pesos ($41) a month..\.. "I'm not entitled to an unemployment subsidy and I don't know if my last employer will give me severance," said Luis Lamas, who worked off the books at a warehouse up to March and now gets by with help from his family. "I can't find work anywhere."...
  Argentines are applying for jobs they once disdained, including serving in a military discredited by human rights abuses in the 1976-1983 dictatorship. It now sounds attractive, offering room, board and health care, plus 350 pesos ($97) pay a month and professional training. Eight times as many people applied this year than last.... In a sign of the times...the official statistics agency now counts as partially employed the up to 5 million people bartering goods and services in an estimated 4,500 "trueque" or barter markets.... "The auto sector produces in one day what it sells in a month"..\..sociologist and poverty expert Artemio Lopez said..\..
  [The Ford-Reuther Paradox comes home to roost in Argentina now, after doing a decade-long number on Japan - Ford "Let's see you unionize [ie: give shorter hours and higher wages] to these robots" - Reuther "Let's see you sell them cars." We repeat, Argentina is a prime candidate for Timesizing = sharing the available work, centrifuging the national income and getting the maximum circulation and economic stimulation out of it. But as in the USA with the rise of part-time and "contingent" employment, worktime reduction is happening anyway - not in the best possible way where Timesizing centrifuges work, creates a labor shortage and market forces raise wages and spending and domestic demand - but in the worst possible way -]
  Experts reckon that 20% of Argentina's 14m-strong workforce is "underemployed." Another 24% are completely out of work.... Lopez said he expects...under-employment to reach 25%..\..by the end of this year \and\ Argentina's unemployment rate to rise to 30%.... An estimated 70% if Argentina's 36 million people do not have the disposable income to buy anything more than their basic essentials in an economy where domestic consumption until last year accounted for 80% of output, he said..\..
  

• Lacklustre French left limps into elections, by Rebecca Harrison, Reuters 06/06/02 09:48 ET via AOLNews.
  PARIS...- France's shattered and rudderless left is struggling to muster energy for campaigning just three days before parliament elections, with many gloomy supporters already resigned to five years in opposition.... Under Jospin, the Socialists pursued largely market-friendly reforms, cut taxes and privatised some state-owned giants.
  [Hey, there's nothing wrong with market-friendly reforms, but much of what the media says is market-friendly is market-hostile, like "go ahead and made layoffs easier," "go ahead and make mergers and consolidation easier." They may as well be saying, "go ahead and shrink your consumer base, your domestic demand and your markets." And there's nothing wrong with cutting taxes, especially if your cut in the workweek has resulted in market-creation of a lot of the jobs that government had been trying to create. The 35-hour workweek, preparations for it and the small-scale Robien Law before it reduced the 12.6% unemployment of 1997 to 8.7% in 2001, a one-percent drop in unemployment for every one-hour reduction in the workweek. That lets you dismantle some strained taxpayer job creation. "Privatizing some state-owned giants" made no difference to our long-term timesizing future, but it was a stupid thing to do if your constituent base is socialist. Why Jospin, Blair and Clinton - all nominally on the left - felt compelled to suck up to the right is beyond us. Oh yeah, we forgot - campaign contributions. Seems to be a little clash here between financing campaigns and winning them.]
  ..\..Sylvie Hierso, a long-time leftist voter [and] Parisian teacher, said many felt betrayed by what they see as a shift from traditional ideals. "I don't believe in Father Christmas but the left should give us something to dream about if they want to win back people like me," she said.
  [Speaking of "something to dream about," the left clammed up about the 35-hour workweek during the campaign, not to mention all the leisure and leisure-industry advantages thereof, not to mention more family time for more family values.... The stuff they could have done with this! - and they maybe did a lot more than we in the English-speaking world, with generally time-blind English-speaking media to contend with, ever heard about, but clearly it was not enough.]
  Responding to perceived disillusion among the grass roots after the presidential vote, the Socialists took a slight swerve to the left, pledging not to privatise public services and to focus on minimising social inequalities. The problem is that with Jospin gone, there is no obvious candidate to lead the crusade.... Martine Aubry is the likely choice on the left, but is unpopular with some for pioneering the 35-hour working week that has proved more controversial than expected.
  [If they had any brains, they'd get behind her and start talking up the 35-hour workweek to the many with whom it is popular, like families and the Church and the leisure industry - screw the free-lunchers with whom it is unpopular. They're the ones who think they can have markets without employment. How'd they like a return to the unenforced 39-hour week and a 12.6% unemployment rate - with attendant sundowning in and out of recession worse than Germany due to fragged consumer demand? They may have had a slight downturn the last few months due to 9/11, but not as bad as Germany's!]
  ..\..Pierre Serman, \an\ activist...at a Paris branch of the Socialist Party, the main party of the left...thinks the left can bounce back some time. "Believe me, there are highs and lows in politics. It doesn't end here."
  [Well here's hoping both the French left and right smarten up about the central strategic priority of sharing the vanishing work. Left and right is irrelevant to the changes that skyrocketing technological efficiencies are forcing upon us. We can respond either by downsizing or timesizing - or relapse back to our usual stupid reaction, war.]

1. French voters leaning to the right, by Pamela Sampson, AP 6/05/2002 12:53 EDT via AOLNews.
   PARIS - A month after France's Socialist prime minister bowed out of politics in humiliation, a similar inglorious end may be in store for the leftists that control the National Assembly. Opinion polls suggest mainstream conservatives will take over the lower house of parliament after voting Sunday and on June 16. If the polls hold, France would become the biggest prize yet among European countries where conservative parties made significant gains this year: Denmark, Italy, Portugal, and the Netherlands.... The left has fallen out of favor in France despite its support for liberal social benefits and the enactment of a key law that shortened the work week from 39 to 35 hours. The right has successfully tapped into a groundswell of discontent over burgeoning immigration and soaring crime....
   [The left was too fashionable and rich-guy-owned media-pleasing instead of constituent-pleasing. It unnecessarily alienated the right with inappropriate squishiness on immigration and crime, both genuine concerns which are closely linked in France and discussion of which the liberal media stifle with political correctness and name calling ("racist!", "anti-immigrant!") - while the demands of any futuristic and flexible work-sharing economy include much more modest and responsible immigration policies - see Phase 5 of the Timesizing program. Also the left unnecessarily alienated its own leftist base with inappropriate squishiness on current simple-minded corporate fashions, like "privatization will solve everything" and "free trade will solve everything." Bill Clinton did the same thing - became more rightist than the Republicans in some ways. Why on earth would a leftist vote Democrat in 2000? Why on earth would a French socialist vote for Jospin in 2002 when the SOB did more privatization than the right? Like Hoover on the right in the US in 1929-33, Jospin on the left in France in 1997-2002 made some important timesizing advances, but didn't really "get" the centrality and priority and exclusivity of the timesizing strategy in the sense of its all-sufficiency. Jospin did not talk about the 35-hour workweek during the campaign. This half-hearted approach did not work. Reminds us of a book title in the 1960s, "Quit pussyfooting through a revolution." Timesizing is the single all-sufficient control which obsoletes most others, because so much of what all contemporary governments do is direct and indirect job maintenance and creation, and when the private sector does that itself, the public sector doesn't have to. Each of the 5 phases of the Timesizing program ends with a period of dismantling no-longer-needed government regulations and bureaucracy.]

2. Markets bet on French election restoring stability, by Brian Love, Reuters 06/06/02 06:17 ET via AOLNews.
   [Now the "take" from the extremist income-concentrators -]
   PARIS...- For investors, the worst-case scenario in France's legislative elections is a strong score for the far right that could stop the clock on free-market economic reform at national and European levels....
   [Here's another mistake Jospin made. Soft on simplistic free-tradism and premature European Union homogenization. Why would a self-respecting French person vote for the dope that gave up so much of French flexibility in modulating their own economy as to sacrifice the franc, France's historic currency - at a time when the EU is diluted with weaker economies, including the largest, Germany, and a host of other languages that bar labor and skill mobility - meaning that all you get nobody going out and coming in are only the desperate and the severely unskilled - and most important, while you, la France, have/has advanced to a 35-hour workweek, nobody else in the entire EU has done so. They're still back in the woods, screwing around with long vacations. Here's another blast from the truly backward - the analysts, who seem to think that they can have high domestic demand without high levels of employment -]
   Most analysts believe that the Socialist-led coalition which ruled from 1997 until last month made inroads on certain reforms...
   [yeah, these history-ignorant morons think privatization is the panacea]
   but that it is time to loosen up labour protection rules rather than imposing a 35-hour week to make firms take on more staff.
   [There it is - "Duh, who needs employment?"]
   "What's needed in the labour market is more flexibility in hiring - lowering payroll levies [taxes] on employers and relaxing the constraints of the 35-hour week," said Laurence Chieze Devivier, an economist at the French insurance group Axa....
   [Everybody's looking for a free lunch. In this case, employers are looking for markets they don't have to contribute to or support with high employment. Sorry, boys. It don't work that way. You cut jobs, you cut your customers' customers, you cut your own customers. Wake up and note the linkages.]

3. [Here's more on their Quest for the Free Lunch dba getting high domestic demand out of a nation of consumers with little money -]
   French May PMI services up for sixth month in row, by Glaieul Mamaghani, Reuters 06/05/02 03:50 ET via AOLNews.
   PARIS - ...The CDAF/Reuters Purchasing Managers' Index [PMI], an overall gauge of the [service] sector's performance, recorded [on Wednesday] a slightly lower 54.9 in May compared to 55.5 in April, but was still above the 50 watershed level between expansion and contraction.... Input prices rose under pressure from strong underlying wage inflation caused by the 35-hour working week regulations.
   [Misnomer - this isn't negative "inflation" - it's positive wage increases that reflect the national-income-centrifuging function of workweek reduction, a centrifugation that is directly responsible for the still healthy PMI, since "the more centrifugation, the more circulation."]

4. [Compare the so-so performance of the services sector in the rest of the Euro zone where the obsolete 40-hour workweek is still propped up -]
   Reuters survey shows euro zone services stumbling, by Ruth Pitchford, Reuters 06/05/02 04:23 ET via AOLNews.
   LONDON...- The euro zone's recovery faltered in May as business in the dominant services sector contracted in Germany..."where the amount of incoming new business fell for the first time in three months," said NTC Research, which compiles the survey of 2,000 companies.... Job cuts in Germany also held back the euro zone employment index, which fell to 50.5 from 51.1..\.. Falling demand in the bloc's biggest economy, Germany, pushed the euro zone new business index down to 52.0 in May from 53.7 in April..\..
   Ireland and France reported the strongest growth..\..
   [And Ireland is the spoiled baby of Europe, having received zillions in subsidies. So what's the secret of France's success? Here it is, once again spun as a Bad Thing by the shallow media schooled by idiot savants in the English-speaking economics profession, who don't even know their own doctrine of the marginal efficiency of capital -]
   Price pressures have been particularly strong in France and NTC said firms had been raising their charges throughout the past three years, driven partly by rising wage bills from complying with government rules reducing the working week....
   [Surprising how common the belief think that markets arise by magic out of thin air, and not out of millions of employees with good wages and the time to shop and spend them.]

• Remarks by the pResident to the welfare to work graduates, PRNewswire 06/04/2002 16:35 EDT via AOLNews.
  WASHINGTON... The East Room, 2:53 PM EDT
  THE pRESIDENT:  Thank you all for coming. Welcome. Please be seated.... All of you here today who have gone from welfare to work really represent courage and strength....
  We want 70% of the people on welfare working by the next five years. That’s what we want. We don't want to reduce the number of people that should be working in America, because we understand how how important work is to the future of every citizen.
  [This from a man who knows nothing of work - whose father hadn’t even heard of a supermarket scanner. Talk about bogus populism!]
  We want to raise the standard and raise the bar. And that means 40-hour work weeks. That’s what work - that’s the definition of work. [sic]
  [This guy doesn't even know how to speak English yet he knows “40-hour work weeks...’s the definition of work,” never mind the 84-hour workweek all over the USA in the 1820s (and still in Big Steel in the 1920s), and certainly never mind the 30-hour workweek passed by the US Senate in 1933 or the 35-hour workweek in France today. This is the kind of thing we're up against. People think the 40-hour workweek came down from Mt.Sinai with Moses 3500 years ago. What came down from Sinai was the 72-hour workweek (the SIX day workweek in the 4th Commandment), and we were even too clueless to keep that from creeping back up!]
  Now, I recognize there are a lot of people that need help, and so within the 40-hour work weeks, there are credits for education and vocational training, to help people help themselves. A work requirement isn't punishment.
  [Then why do they sentence people to heavy labor and never to play, heavy or light?]
  A work requirement is part of liberation in our society.
  [Not when the march of technology has made sure that only half of these women can get jobs at all let alone jobs that enable them to be self-supporting - let alone support kids. Ever wonder if and when this guy is going to connect having kids with the ability to support them? As for work being "part of liberation," guess that's right in line with the old Prussian "Arbeit macht frei" (work makes free) sentiment that the idle rich love to preach to others.]
  But in order to make sure that people are able to work, we want to make sure there is ample training, and ample education to give people the chance they want. And that's what this bill, and that's what this vision for a better welfare reform bill talks about....
  [As if there aren't thousands of fresh young graduates having a hard time finding a job today. See "Students graduate to uncertainty - Firms trim campus recruiting following attacks, downturn," by Diane Lewis, 10/19/2001 Boston Globe, C1, which states, "Employers expect to hire 19.7% fewer new college graduates in 2001-02 than they hired in 2000-01."]

• (5/07) Airbus confident on 2003, may boost work hours, Reuters 05/06/02 13:44 ET via AOLNews.
  [Now that sounds bad, but only because they're doing something good: accordioning the workweek instead of the workforce -]
  BERLIN -...To avoid layoffs, Airbus employees are working fewer hours than normal this year. But [CEO Noel] Forgeard said the firm's management was thinking of reducing the amount of short-time work - that is, increasing the hours of labour that the company employs..\..
  Airbus SAS is increasingly optimistic about the strength of its 2003 aircraft deliveries and may increase work time at its plants, its chief executive said on Monday...at the Berlin air show. ...Forgeard said European countries would soon definitively launch a project led by European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. NV to jointly build an 18B euro ($16.5B) fleet of A400M military transport aircraft....
  [Well they may be going up in hours at the moment, but at least they're jerking around the workweek, not the workforce, ie: they're timesizing. Colleague Kate's last word - Quit the rhetoric and just be more and more generous with the working poor and less generous with welfare. All Bush seems to be able to do is be less generous with welfare. And of course, if our workweek was down around 20-25 hours a week where it should be for our level of technology, we wouldn't even have to drag government and taxpayers into the micromanagement of government generosity toward the working poor - the private sector would be taking care of it automatically because there's be nothing of the market-skewing labor surplus that has so spoiled our management profession today.]

• (6/03) Inmates job opportunities, revenues hit by economic slump, Kyodo News 06/02/02 23:07 EDT via AOLNews.
  TOKYO...- Prison inmates' employment opportunities have been severely hit by the prolonged economic slump in Japan, with sales and revenues of goods produced by them falling, according to a Justice Ministry report. The number of inmates engaged in such work grew to some 51,000 at the end of fiscal 2001, from 35,700 in fiscal 1992, including about 31,000 prisoners now involved in subcontracted work such as carpentry, dressmaking and metal processing, said the report by the ministry's Corrections Bureau....
  Prisoners who serve terms requiring labor must work 40 hours a week, making it impossible to promote work sharing, in which the same job is shared and working hours reduced, ministry officials said....
  [At least it's a live enough issue in the rest of the Japanese economy that they're beginning to regret the rigidity here.]

• Workday limits for pilots upheld - Industry loses suit against FAA, Jim Morris, Boston Globe, A3.
  WASHINGTON - In a victory for airline pilots, a federal court ruled yesterday that the Federal Aviation Administration has the right to enforce strict limits on the length of time flight crews are on duty.
  [Yet another affirmation of the constitutionality of worktime limits, a process that seems to be necessary again and again and again and....]
  Supporting the FAA's interpretation of a 1985 regulation, the US Court of Apeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 3-0 that a pilot may be on duty no more than 16 hours a day, even if a flight is unavoidably delayed.
  The airlines industry, through trade groups, had challenged this interpretation in a lawsuit.... The industry argued, in effect, that a pilot's duty day should end with the landing of his or her last flight regardless of when that occurs. ...Said Rich Rubin, [a captain with American Airlines and] chairman of the Flight Time/Duty Time Committee of the Allied Pilots Assoc., which represents about 10,000 American Airlines pilots, "It's going to close a loophole that's been open for 17 years. Previously, airlines were operating with the mistaken impression that pilots could remain on duty indefinitely."
  [Ah, employers do love that blank check on employees' lives, from the exempt-from-overtime-regulations salary to good ol' plantation slavery, championed by the "Democratic" Party for decades before the Civil War, and never mind employers' need for people with time to shop.]
  Although a 16-hour day is still too long, he said, "a fixed duty period is clearly much better."...