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Timesizing News, August 9-20, 2002
[Commentary] ©2002 Phil Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622, Porter Sq, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080

8/20/2002  primitive timesizing in the news, aka glimmers of strategic hope -

1. Union cries no fair in Qantas dispute, Australian Broadcasting 08/19/2002 15:43 AEST via AOLNews.
   The union at the centre of the Qantas dispute [Australian Services Union] says the airline has misrepresented it and is pre-occupied with the claim for a pay rise.... The union's Paul Rowe says while the Qantas staff are seeking a 5% wage increase, the major issue is job security.... Qantas management says it will announce a 3 to 4% bonus offer for staff on Wednesday..\.. "Qantas is obsessed about the wage rise - it's the only way they can get the public onside," Mr Rowe said. "We've always said from day one it's been about job security, job sharing, no contracting out and other issues and we've been pushing that since day one."...
   [Job sharing, being low-level one-on-one and based on the current workweek, whatever that may be, is not as flexible as work sharing. However, it may be work sharing that it actually intended by the term in this article.]

2. July's LEI down 0.4% on stock drop, shorter workweek, menu headline, AOLNews.
   [In a sensible world, this headline would be nonsense, because a shorter workweek would be a positive component of the Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) and not a reason they went down. Americans still don't understand technology. They introduce it constantly, use it to downsize their workforce and consumer base instead of just downsizing their workweek, and then they get alarmed when the workweek goes down anyway because some manufacturers got to the point where they figured they better stop downsizing their workforce or they wouldn't have any employees left. Here's the underlying article -]
   Economic report - July LEI falls 0.4% as expected - Data raise fresh questions about economy's recovery, by Rachel Koning, CBS.MarketWatch.com 10:57 AM ET Aug. 19, 2002 via AOLNews.
   WASHINGTON - The stock market's woes and a shorter factory workweek helped tug lower the monthly Leading Economic Indicators index for July. The index, which measures both leading and lagging economic growth as well as consumer confidence, money supply and stock values, posted a negative 0.4 percent reading last month, the New York-based Conference Board reported Monday.... Six of the 10 indicators tracked by the Conference Board weakened the July index. Four measures were positive..\.. The drop was the largest since 9/11 significantly weakened consumer confidence for that month. Moreover, July marked the third month in four that the index has declined.
   ...Offsetting the weakness from stocks and the workweek in July were higher new factory orders and increased money supply in the nation's banking system....
   [Viewing, as it does, the whole purpose of technology - to make life easier for everyone - as negative in the concrete terms of shorter hours with the same or higher pay because of technology's ability to provide the same or higher output, the United States will probably unfortunately not be the first economy to demonstrate the next generation of economic design and the accompanying human progress. "Cursed are they that call evil 'good' and good 'evil.'"]

1. 8/18  Some schools opt for 4-day week - Rural districts find they can save money, by Greg Toppo, AP via Arizona Republic, A2.
   ...Bucking a nationwide trend toward bulking up school calendars, dozens of rural school districts are actually paring back their workweeks, cramming morrre academics into four days.... Schools find that by knocking off Fridays or Mondays, they can save money on transportation, heating and substitute teachers. Advocates say 4-day weeks have other advantages. The leave teachers with fewer interruptions and fewer student absences. They also cut down on teacher absences and [thereby] allow schools to hire fewer substitutes. The 5th day is used for teacher training or to free up teachers for personal appointments.
   [And how about for marking papers and tests?!]
   ...Four-day weeks also improve student morale and behavior, said Clyde Briley, principal of Midland, 150 miles west of New Orleans. ...He said, "I felt that this was a good motivational thing - if you do good and work hard and do your best, you can have some extra time to do other things [good], what you like to do [great!], or to have a part-time job [ohoh]." Briley said grade-point averages rose "considerably" last year during the first Fridays-off calendar, with failing grades down 50%. "Kids have tried harder," he said.
   ..\..The trade-off: School days are an hour or more longer than in most schools.
   [An hour longer would be a 36-hour workweek, a marked improvement on the 40-hour workweek - if the schools are anywhere near that with their 5-day week. Our schools in Canada in the 50s went from 9 am to 4 pm with an hour off for lunch (11:45-12:45?) = a (7-1=) six-hour day = 30-hour workweek, with the perk of getting out a halfhour early (3:30) unless we were bad, "got a detention" and "had to stay in after school."]
   ...School districts in 7 states, including Arizona, are trying it this year. In June, the Kingman Unified School District approved a 4-day week for the 2002-03 year at Mt Tipton School in Dolan Springs. Also trying [it] out...are Louisiana, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and South Dakota.... Nationwide, about 100 school districts are set to follow 4-day schedules this fall, up slightly from last year. All are rural and most are small, each with fewer than 1,000 students....
   [Hey, maybe this will condition the kids to a more balanced life, and change the outdated workweek of adult life in the America of the future. But then, the long vacation of schoolkids hasn't helped so far.]
   ...Child-care worries often scuttle the 4-day [school] week, principals said, but in Hot Springs SD, parents can use a state grant that provides licensed care on Fridays.
   [Hey, maybe the 4-day schoolweek will be an immediate pressure for a cut in the 62-year-frozen American workweek because of childcare worries.]
   Critics point out that the 1990s actually brought a push to extend the school calendar past the traditional 180 days [see article below], to resemble those in Japan and Europe. "It's really unusual for people to turn the clock back, in a sense, and have fewer school days," said Ruy Teixera, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, which studies social, economic and political issues....
   [This guy evidently doesn't know much about the social, economic and political history of America. He's even less informed about the results of the four-day schoolweek in America so far -]
   "I haven't seen too many people say with a straight face that this produces superior academic performance, so I definitely don't expect this one to take off."
   [Keep talking, stupid - you'll guarantee that no one will ever credit the Century Foundation on anything. Note above, "Briley said grade-point averages rose "considerably" last year during the first Fridays-off calendar, with failing grades down 50%." Wakey wakey, "Century" Foundation. And here's another uninformed "expert" sounding off -]
   Independent education researcher Joy Dryfoos also doesn't expect the idea to take off. "I would think it would wreak havoc with any working parent's schedule," she said.
   Briley, who said parents "enjoy having their kids available on Friday," said his school will try the 4-day week again this fall.

2. [and lest we get too optimistic about the leadership chances of our more balanced rural cousins on this key-for-progress issue -]
   8/18  Edgy about exams, schools cut the summer short, by Jacques Steinberg, NYT, front page.
   More than a dozen school districts in Florida - and others in Texas, Maryland, Kentucky, Colorado, and California - have moved up the opening day of school this year, cutting short summer vacations and requiring students to report a week or more earlier than in recent years.... Schools in at least half the districts in Florida opened in the first 10 days of August..\.. The reason, in many instances, is to give students an earlier start on preparing for state standardized tests, which are usually given in late winter or early spring....
   [However, it may not be as bad as it looks at first glance -]
   Many of the students starting school early will be ending earlier next year as well, some as early as mid-May. For financial reasons, the districts have not added substantially to the standard school year, which is about 180 days....
   [which is still a good influence toward a shorter workyear and longer workplace vacations.]

3. [and here's a NYT solicitation on just that issue -]
   8/18  I could use a (longer) vacation, NYT, 3-10.
   Are Americans growing restless with short vacations? While most people rarely break away for more than two weeks at a time, a recent Gallup poll found that the majority saw nothing wrong with pResident Bush spending a month at his Texas ranch. Last year, [a majority] were critical.
   Are you taking longer vacations now? What has been the longest, and why? What provisions do you make at work before you leave? Send your stories to On the Job, Money & Business, The New York Times, 229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY, 10036-3959. E-mail: onthejob@nytimes.com. Include your name and telephone number. All submissions become the property of The Times and may be republished in any medium.

1. [here's another piece that aims to stem the flow of investment funds from USA to more balanced Europe - we haven't seen the like of this since the WSJ article on 8/8 -]
   Analysis - Atlantic growth gap still leaves euro zone lagging, by Alister Bull, Reuters 08/16/02 08:51 ET via AOLNews.
   [It all has to be done on the basis of meauring "productivity," which everyone admits is difficult to measure -]
   Recent revisions to US productivity have narrowed its lead over the euro zone but without major "reforms" [our quotes - ed.], the single-currency bloc will remain stuck in 2nd place.
   [And just what do US apologists like Alister Bull think need "reform"?]
   ...Differences in the hours worked [are] mainly due to the ageing population [of the euro zone] and the fact that the bloc enjoys longer holidays, a shorter working week, and earlier retirement - also the subject of reforms.
   [Pretty pathetic. At the dawn of the Third Millennium, surrounded by work-saving technology, English-speaking economists and analysts, led by Americans, still think ya gotta work harder, ie: longer, to get ahead, still link hard work with character, and still link overwork with importance, as in, "I'm very busy (so I'm very important!)." Never mind working smart, not hard - that's not the American way. If you're working hard, staying late, Americans just assume you're working smart, regardless of the well-documented higher error rate during overtime.   Here's the avowed purpose of this piece -]
   ..\..The advances made by US productivity since the mid-1990s - coupled with faster [low-wage - ed.] employment growth due to a lsighly younger population and higher immigration - will still protect [the US] position as the prime destination for investor funds....
   [Never mind Europeans lead more balanced lives with more family time for higher family values, never mind their concentration of spending power into an unspendable hoards isn't nearly as great, never mind their productivity has stronger per-capita and more sustainable domestic markets, and never mind that with all the downward revisions to hyped-up US data, the "growth gap" is well within margins of error. And strangely, in this article, though this aptly named reporter (Bull) gives the US data, he never provides the Euro data for comparison -]
   US productivity growth plunged in the second quarter to 1.1%...sharply down from the 6.6% of the previous three months. The numbers for 2000 were revised to 2.9 from 3.3% and for last year to 1.1 from 1.9%.
   [Basically the US is getting better "productivity" figures by downsizing its workforce and its consumer base and turning itself into a Third World nation with astronomically concentrated wealth, low participation in the workforce and the world's highest prison population. Homeless and beggars Americans carefully avoid counting. As we said when South Africa was screwing itself with apartheid, "Cry the beloved country." In terms of economic design, the world asks for bread, and the world-leader-by-default offers a stone.]
   ..\..A decade of higher growth has made Americans two-thirds richer than their European counterparts....
   [It doesn't matter how much money a country has, or what the average per capita wealth or income is, if the spending power is tightly concentrated in unspendable amounts in the top income brackets, that country is poor and struggling, as indeed millions of ignored Americans are. Simply put, no matter how much money a country has, if one person has all of it, that country is dirt poor. And this is a factor few American or English-speaking economists are willing to look at, regardless of the fact that it's a corollary of one of their own established doctrines, the marginal effeciency of capital - or concentrated wealth. "None are so blind as those who will not see."]

2. Subaru-Isuzu Automotive Inc., Republic news services via Arizona Republic, D2.
   ...plans to lay off 215 workers, or 4.8% of its workforce, due to slumping sales of Isuzu sport utility vehicles.
   [We're going to assume this is a temporary layoff in the sense of a furlough, because of the following sentence -]
   Company officials announced late Thursday that they would idle the truck assembly line at its Lafayette, Ind., plant for two months, curtailing production of 6,000 Rodeo, Rodeo Sport and Axiom SUVs.
   [So this amounts to cutting worktime while keeping workforce = timesizing, not downsizing.]

• Royal Caribbean, workers near settlement of overtime dispute, by Evan Perez, NYT, B4.
  ...More than 60 service workers - including cooks, food servers, stewards and busboys - sued..\..Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd...in US District Court in NYC in 1999, claiming the company didn't pay them overtime wages for work beyond their 70-hour workweek.
  [Let's see, that means the 40-hour workweek is now meaningless to US pilots, truckers, medical students, nurses, and now, cruise employees. Why don't we just go back to working people round the clock till they drop, and see how much consumer demand that leaves us with?]
  The company [is] the world's second-largest cruise operator behind Carnival Corp..\.. The plaintiffs requested class-action status covering up to 30,000 workers....
  The workers who sued...are generally expected to work 10 hours a day, 7 days a week [but] claim they often worked 14-16 hours a day and up to 118 hours a week....
  Under terms of the union agreement..\..between Royal Caribbean and the Norwegian Seamen's Union, which represents the workers [evidently not very effectively]...the workers were to be paid a premium ranging from less than $2 an hour to more than $4 an hour for overtime work..\.. As part of the proposed settlement, Royal Caribbean would agree to abide by its union agreement and pay overtime to all its employees....
  [Radical! So what's up with a 70-hour workweek here when the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 sets the standard at 40?]
  While wage cases in US courts against cargo-ship owners have been common for decades, cruise companies have largely escaped lawsuits because they can claim exemption from US laws under international maritime laws. The 4 largest cruise companies that attract millions of American travelers for luxury vacations are incorporated overseas - in Royal Caribbean's case, in Liberia.... In this case..\..Paul Hofmann [of] Capiello, Hofmann & Katz in NY who is representing the crew members...argued the company was bound by its union contract and by the federal Seaman's Wage Act, which allows ship workers to pursue wage claims in the US..\.. Mr. Hofmann said, "These are seafarers, by and large, from the 3rd-world, 2nd-world countries who have little of no opportunity to get their cases heard."...
  [So cruise passengers are not only liable to violence from the dirt-poor 3rd-world residents of the "other" side of the Caribbean islands they visit, but also to the dirt-poor 2nd & 3rd-world crewmembers on the cruise ships themselves. And since these ships and these companies are a law unto themselves, there's no telling how many incidents we haven't heard about. As colleague Kate says, "Everything about the cruise culture repels me."]

• [as the upper limit on worklife per person collapses, workweek capping&cutting becomes all the more urgent]
  Seeking part-time work: 60something former exec will file, answer phones, by Sue Shellenbarger, WSJ, D1.
  Much has been written and said lately about postponing retirement. As stock portfolios crater, many older workers are retooling their savings plans [and considering] what the Employee Benefit Research Institute calls "bridge jobs" - part-time, short-term or self-employed posts between career jobs and a final exit from the work force. As many as half of US workers will hold a bridge job before retiring [or dying? - ed.], the Washington DC- based Institute estimates, a number that may grow with the rising cost of retirement and the mounting instability of many career jobs.\..
  Nearly 70% of people over 45 plan to continue working after 65, says a new study of 2,500 people set for release next month by AARP [American Assoc. of Retired People], an advocacy group for the 50-and-over set. The pattern conjures up stereotypes of retirement wannabes grinding away at their old jobs until they drop.
  [And so does the steep comedown of the WSJ's headline on this article. But then they bend over backward to reverse this desperate impression -]
  But the reality of late-stage work is quite different..\.. Increasingly, managing your time well late in life also means finding rewarding work that allows you to integrate family and personal pursuits....
  ["Rewarding"??? Filing and answering phones? The WSJ is undermining their own happytalk.]
  Bridge jobs can be a marginal no-man's land or a rich post-career interlude, depending in large part on how well you plan and prepare....
  [As if there are tons of employers out there now just waiting to offer well-paying part-time jobs and hire older workers. This is more of the WSJ's line about, "There are plenty of jobs out there and if you can't find one, it's your own damn fault, you lazy deadbeat!" The article fizzles out in profiling four alleged types of bridge jobs. But this text frames a revealing blowout that further belies their cheerleading -]
  Lower expectations, source: Gallup Org.
  The stock market decline has dimmed people's hopes for retirement, according to a recent survey: Percentage of working adults who:
  • Expect to retire later due to stock market decline, 46%
  • Expect a less comfortable retirement due to market decline, 44%
  • Worry that they don't have enough money for retirement [ie: they don't have any stocks to speak of?? - ed.], 57%
  • Worry that they won't be able to collect Social Security when they retire [ie: they also don't have any stocks to speak of], 67%
  [Pretty bleak, but the alternative is simple and obvious and we did it from 1776 to 1940 = trim the workweek and share the vanishing work. After all, the whole point of technology is to make life easier for everyone by timesizing (cutting working hours), not to make life harder by downsizing and general insecurity. Only with a more comprehensive and easy-to-enforce safety net is the job mobility and job-market volatility of the technological age sustainable and such a safety net can only be provided by flexible adjustment of the workweek against un- and under-employment.]

• Former White House press spokesman makes fiction debut: Texan offers humorous look at the relationship between media and presidency, Entertainment Wire 08/13/2002 09:00 Eastern via AOLNews.
  Eakin Press of Austin, Texas, announces former White House deputy press secretary and special assistant [under Reagan] Peter Roussel's fiction debut with the publication of his novel "Ruffled Flourishes." The novel takes a satirical look at the relationship between the press and the presidency, as seen through the eyes of a fictional White House spokesman.... Roussel said, "Another theme explored here is that of the long working hours faced by most White House aides and the struggle to bring balance to their lives, especially when away from the job."...

1. Workplace: Who is really "exempt" from overtime?, by Sherwood Ross, Reuters 08/12/02 13:53 ET via AOLNews.
   [Ultimately the answer to that will be "no one," but in the shorter run, the answer will probably be "only direct family members in family businesses." And in the even shorter run, we have the relative chaos that Mr. Ross describes -]
   CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. - Some management or administrative employees are exempt from being paid overtime. But if your employer has classified you incorrectly, you may have a little extra cash coming your way. Last year, the Department of Labor said it investigated 31,772 cases of alleged employer violations of fair labor standards and ordered $134 million in back wages paid to 219,195 employees found to have been misclassified. That was a drop from the year 2000, when 37,432 investigations yielded a payout of $159 million to 256,117 employees.
   The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act states that employers are required to pay covered employees not less than one and one-half times their regular rates of pay for all hours worked in excess of 40 in a work week ... unless the employees are otherwise exempt [for example, by being designated as "administrative"]. The Act does not define "exempt" and "non-exempt," but the federal Dept. of Labor is required to explain...and it does. [It] includes a "salary and duties" test.
   • If you earn less than $250 per week, chances are your job will not be designated as "administrative" no matter what title your employer assigns to you. So you would cash in for any overtime hours.
   • If your salary is higher, other considerations apply. For example, are you entitled to a fixed, predetermined sum regardless of the quality or quantity of work performed? That description could fit into an "executive" [or "manager"] category, hence, no overtime pay. Some line employees might even be classified as administrat[ive]. "The (federal) regulation makes it difficult for an employer to evade the Act's minimum wage requirement by assigning the label of manager or assistant manager to workers who are more properly viewed as line employees," writes Robert Gregory, a Washington, D.C., attorney, in "Your Workplace Rights" (Amacom).
   But suppose your employer tries to exempt you from the law's coverage on grounds that you are a manager, though in reality, you are not. What then? According to Gregory, you are a manager if...
   1. Your primary duty consists of managing an enterprise, department, or division.
   2. You customarily direct the work of two or more employees.
   3. You regularly exercise discretionary powers and have the authority to order or influence the hiring and firing of employees.
   [Is there an "and" or an "or" between these criteria?]
   Doctors, lawyers, teachers, and other professionals usually are exempted from the Act on grounds that their work is largely intellectual, performed at their own discretion, and based on their own judgment.
   [This won't matter in the future. If they're using up the diminishing amount of compensated human employment, they can and must share. No more the obscenity of people doing research on worksaving technology "24/7."]
   But not always. Labor has ruled that rocket engineers earning $90,000 a year were hourlies because they had to consult manuals and did not have individual discretion in performing their duties. They qualified for overtime. "That's a stunning result when you have people with masters' and Ph.Ds' in engineering who are sophisticated professionals hired on an exempt basis," said Ed Potter, president of the non-profit Employment Policy Foundation, a Washington, D.C., research organization concerned with work issues. "The problem is we have very complicated, subjective rules employers have to apply to determine who is going to be exempt and who is going to be non-exempt," Potter said. "We've been advocating clearer, bright-line rules. We don't like all this grey." "The Depression-era workplace is no longer a reality," Potter said, when relatively few occupations could be called managerial or professional. "That has changed dramatically."
   [Hence, managers and professionals are no longer particularly "special" and so they now need to cut the pomposity and rejoin the human race.]
   In the 1940s, only one worker in 10 was exempt from FLSA regulations, Potter noted, and seven of 10 workers had no more than a high school degree.
   Congress enacted FLSA to reduce unemployment by requiring employers to pay extra for overtime hours worked. In theory, employers would avoid overtime by creating more jobs, Potter said.
   Today, 70 percent of the work force has a high school degree or better, and more than 30 percent of employees are managers and professionals, Potter said. Many workers who style themselves as executives but aren't so classified don't want an hourly wage. "People have told me, 'I'm not taking an hourly job,"' Potter said. "Kids go to college for professional accreditation, and if they're viewed as hourly they consider it almost a sign of disrespect."
   [So here's another source of the current common confusion of overwork with importance.]
   The Labor Department's phone line for people seeking information on exempt status or other wage-hour law questions is 1-866-4US-WAGE. For retrieving information electronically, visit the Labor Department's Web site at *http://www.DOL.gov.
   (Sherwood Ross is a free-lance writer who covers workplace issues for Reuters. Any opinions expressed in this column are solely those of Mr. Ross. E-mail him at sross@sherwoodross.com.)
   [Mr. Ross has contributed quite a few good articles on time-related workplace issues, and some time when we're not rushing to update we'll make a directory of his articles on our site.]

2. Neutral tax code would give families 9% more income, says Institute for Policy Innovation, US Newswire 08/12 -9:30 via AOLNews.
   DALLAS...- Government possesses the power to grant families a needed 9.4% income hike while reducing working hours. According to a newly released report by the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), the current...tax code must be replaced with a neutral tax system in order to undo the unfair tax treatment presently born by married couples. ...For example, the median married couple paid 7.3% more of its income to the federal government than the average taxpayer from 1965 to 1995. Also, the federal income tax on married families rose 79% from 1965 to 1981, and with payroll taxes added in, by 1995 the total tax burden grew to 20.46% of their compensation (compared to the 14% figured in 1965)....
   [This press release is weak in that the latest data it references seems to be no more recent than seven years ago and it never gets around to explaining how this is going to reduce families' working hours. Presumably the idea is that if families have more disposable income, parents won't have to work as many hours.]

• [At a different level of work sharing, a reshuffle that also cuts layoffs -]
  (6/18) U.S. shipbuilders swap billions in Navy work, Reuters 06/17/02 15:57 ET via AOLNews.
  WASHINGTON...- Northrup Grumman Corp. and General Dynamics Corp. [GD], the two biggest U.S. warship builders, have agreed to swap billions of dollars of shipbuilding work under a deal approved by the Navy, U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe and GD said on Monday.
  • Under the deal, GD's Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, would give up to Northrup scheduled work on options for four LPD-17 amphibious transports.... If completed, the deal could give Northrup production of all 12 ships in the LPD program, which otherwise was vulnerable to the Pentagon's budget ax under a law designed to curb runaway cost overruns..\..
  • In exchange, [Bath] would get options to build up to four Arleigh Burke-class DDG-51 destroyers that otherwise would have been built at Northrup's Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi.... Navy Secy. Gordon England telephoned Snowe personally to report the agreement, which will relieve "short-term" pressures on Bath Iron Works, she said in a news release..\..
  "This swap is a win-win-win for the Navy, the taxpayer and the two shipyards [including their employees]," said Kendall Pease, a spokesman for Falls Church VA-based GD.... Pease...praised Young [Navy acquisition chief John Young who brokered the negotiations] for "transforming" Navy business practices with an innovative approach to redistribution of workload....
  Gordon England told Congress last month the deal was important because it reduced risk [of cuts] in the LPD-17 program. Under the initial [non-swap] work-sharing plan, "the learning curve" [on the LPDs] would have to start a second time the Bath shipyard, he said..\..
  Snowe, a Maine Republican, said Bath Iron Works would benefit from the immediate construction of two DDG-51 destroyers [which, unlike LPDs, they presumably already know how to make], with options for two more in fiscal 2004 and 2005. Northrop's Litton Industries, on the other hand, will be able to consolidate construction of the San Antonio-class LPD ships between two of its yards, she said....
  [Sounds like a bad allocation of work at the gitgo, which has now been straightened out. So in the context of work sharing at the corporation level, we see two unusual aspects here -
  1. working hours per company per year are being increased
  2. workweeks per employee are being stabilized by extension across more months
  And all this is possible because neither of these two companies "wants it all" - they're willing to live and let live, and each get just part of the available work.]

1. (8/02) News from the United Steelworkers of America: Workers overwhelmingly authorize strike at J&L Specialty plants in Ohio and Penna [sic], Business Wire 08/01/2002 15:06 Eastern via AOLNews.
   PITTSBURGH...- Members of United Steelworkers of America (USWA) Locals 1046 and 1212, representing workers at J&L Specialty plants in Louisville, Ohio and Midland, Pa. respectively, announced [yester]day that they have voted to authorize a strike if a satisfactory agreement is not reached with the company.... A major issue is mandatory overtime. Union officials claim that be recalling all the laid-off workers, 18 in total, it will eliminate the need for the company to force overtime work on every shift....
   [This indicates the sloppiness of many American CEOs in making overtime a routine practice instead of an emergency policy.]
   Contact: USWA, Wayne Ranick, 412/562-2444....

2. (8/01) Graphic Packaging Corporation locks out 400 members of PACE International Union in Kalamazoo, Michigan, PRNewswire 07/31/2002 09:01 EDT via AOLNews.
   NASHVILLE, Tenn...- Graphic Packaging Corp. (GPC), controlled by the Coors family of Colorado, locked out about 400 of its employees at its paperboard mill and carbon plant in Kalamazoo, Mich., at 12:01 am on Sunday, July 28. The workers are members of local 6-1010 of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical & Energy Workers (PACE) International Union.... GPC's final offer included mandatory overtime, a requirement to work all holidays, a 2-tier pension system and major changes in the attendance policy. The company is demanding up to 20 hours a week of mandatory overtime, which could result in some GPC employees routinely working as much as 80 hours in a week..\..
   [So it's not just a problem for American nurses and medical students, and pilots and truckers.]
   The principal shareholders of GPC are various trusts held by members of the Coors family and heirs to the fortune made from the brewing company that still bears the family name. Coors Brewing became a principal target of the AFL-CIO in the 1980s during a nationwide boycott of Coors beer products over its labor policies....

1. [here's a rebuttal of the WSJ's main point about America's superior productivity (see yesterday, 8/8, below) from the European Central Bank -]
   US/euro zone productivity gap not so big - ECB, by Douwe Miedema, Reuters 08/08/02 10:15 ET via AOLNews.
   FRANKFURT... - The United States' lead over Europe in productivity growth has much to do with a sharper fall in the working week on the eastern side of the Atlantic, the European Central Bank [ECB] said on Thursday. It said in its monthly report that production per hour worked rose 1.7% per year between 1996 and 2001 in the euro zone and 2.0% in the United States.
   However, output per person employed showed a much steeper difference, growing 1.1% annually in the euro zone versus 1.7% in the United States in the same period.
   "It appears that the much-debated difference in productivity growth in the second half of the 1990s was less pronounced than is generally assumed," the bank said in its monthly report.
   This period saw working hours cut drastically in France, the euro zone's second largest economy, where the government introduced a maximum 35 hour working week as part of a drive to cut unemployment.
   Some economists have repeatedly said the U.S. does not have such a commanding lead, saying euro zone growth is better than the numbers suggest after years of being overshadowed by the miracle of the U.S. "new economy".
   [Would that be the "new economy" where investors supposedly did not need a return on their investments? - the "new economy" that equated to the dot-com bubble that then disastrously burst? That whole chunk of "history" needs to be completely revised.]
   "There have been many claims about how poor the European performance has been and there undoubtedly is a difference, but it just has not been anywhere near as large as people been claiming," said Kelly Tonkin at Lehman Brothers.
   There were already signs of a shrinking productivity differential between the United States and the euro zone last week, as U.S. growth figures were revised down. Productivity falls automatically when GDP comes down and the number of workers stays the same.
   Last week's figures revealed much lower growth over the 1999-2001 period and challenged the U.S. assumption of higher productivity growth, underpinning higher trend potential output growth than in the euro zone.
   Comparing productivity between countries on the basis of number of employees only works on the assumption that the number of hours worked do not change, the ECB said. But in Europe, the average annual hours worked had come down, a trend which was not matched by the United States.
   The large and very efficient U.S. information and technology sector was one reason for the still higher U.S. productivity growth rate, the bank said....
   [But then, how "efficient" is it when people are so insecure, no one wants to be the first to leave the office in the evening? How "efficient" is it when kids working on supposedly work-saving technology are sleeping under their desks and not getting home at all?]

2. [and here's an item on WSJ-unacknowledged distress in the "superior" U.S. economy -]
   Work and Money Problems Are One Big Headache, Survey Says, PRNewswire 08/08/2002 05:08 EDT via AOLNews.
   FT. WASHINGTON, Pa... -- Rollercoaster financial markets, the high cost of living, and not having enough money in the bank. Nowadays, managing your money has never been so stressful. In fact, personal finances are one of the top tension triggers in the United States, according to Tension Tracker 2002, a landmark survey sponsored by the makers of Tylenol....
   As Americans stress [out] over their piggy banks, they're also worried about bringing home the bacon. Three in five employed Americans named work as a great source of stress in their lives: specifically, too much work, too many hours at the office, and too little pay. And employees are feeling the squeeze: 54 percent work through lunch on a weekly basis, and more than three in ten Americans say that fear of losing their job causes stress.
   Indeed, money and work issues contribute to an environment in which Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to cope. Forty-four percent said their level of stress has increased over the past year. Living with high levels of stress on a regular basis can be dangerous to your health, warns stress expert, Dr. Pamela Peeke. "Living with chronic stress is becoming the norm for a huge number of Americans, and that is exactly when it becomes a health hazard," she explains. "There are direct physical consequences, such as increased muscle tension, fatigue, irregular heartbeat, and tension headaches."
   For many Americans, all things considered, money and work problems are just one big headache -- literally. A majority of Americans suffer from headaches at least once a month, the survey found, and headaches have caused 25 percent of American workers to call in sick and 30 percent to leave their jobs early or arrive late -- leaving co-workers to pick up the slack.
   To learn more about coping with stress and treating headache pain, visit *http://www.beheadstrong.com or call 1-877-TYLENOL.
   SOURCE McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals, ...Pennsylvania ....

3. [and similar unacknowledged "externalized" costs are found in the major European economy that, like the U.S., thinks it's smart to work hard, not smart -]
   Hard-slog Britain suffers from "overemployment", Reuters 08/08/02 06:38 ET via AOLNews.
   LONDON...- Britain, where work hours are among the longest in Europe, is suffering from "overemployment," with many of its most highly skilled workers wishing they could work fewer hours at lower pay, a government report shows. The report published on Thursday by the Office for National Statistics said that more than one British worker in 10 wished they could shorten the number of hours they worked in return for a pay cut.
   It described the phenomenon as "overemployment," the opposite of underemployment, a statistic which has long been measured alongside unemployment to account for workers who have jobs but would be willing and able to work longer hours.
   Just two years ago, Britain's overemployment and underemployment figures were about the same. But since then, overemployment has galloped ahead. On average, workers that saw themselves as overemployed worked 46.1 hours a week, 2.4 hours longer than the rest. Managers were nearly twice as likely as lower level workers to consider themselves overworked, with 16 percent wishing they could cut their hours. By contrast, the underemployed tended to be lower-skilled workers seeking more work and pay.
   British labour unions have argued that the country's longer work week fuels burnout and makes employees less productive then in continental Europe.

4. [and then there's the other big English-speaking economy "down under" -]
   Decline in job numbers clouds future of Aust [sic] economy, Australian Broadcasting 08/8/2002 16:59 AEST via AOLNews.
   An unexpected decline in job numbers has raised new questions over the future health of the Australian economy.
   The latest monthly check-up on the Australian labour force reveals there were 28,000 fewer jobs in July. A further 34,500 people gave up the search for work. [So] the jobless rate has dropped slightly to...a seasonally-adjusted 6.2%..\.. but it has been accompanied by the loss of 18,000 full-time jobs and another 10,000 other positions. Because of the sharp drop in the participation rate, the official jobless rate has "improved" [our quotes - ed.] to its lowest level since October 2000....
   But St George Bank chief economist Steve Ryan says total employment is the key issue. "I think the important thing is the big drop in full-time employment," he said. "It's not a good result."...
   The Federal Opposition's employment spokeswoman, Jenny Macklin, says the figures show just how hard it is to find a decent full-time job.... Ms Macklin says the biggest worry in the figures show that a significant number of people are giving up the search for work. "What we know is that lots of people who are working part time and casual want to be able to work more hours so for those people seeing so many full-time jobs just disappear just makes their lives that much tougher," she said. "To see so many jobs disappear, so many full-time jobs disappear in two months, just shows how hard it is to find a decent full-time job in Australia at the moment."
   [Looks like Aussie and all the other "we're so smart for working hard" English-speaking economies (plus satellite Japan) would do well to do in an efficient way the same kind of worktime-trimming, work-sharing approach that the European economies are already pursuing in a haphazard, inefficient way. A more efficient approach would -
   • focus on the workweek, not the workyear (longer vacations, more disruptive to employers and after which, who wants to go back to work?!)
   • stay adjustable, not freeze at just another arbitrary level such as France's 35-hour workweek
   • adjust automatically against comprehensive unemployment (official unemployment plus welfare, disability, homelessness, prison, forced retirement, forced dependency, dependency on resentful sponsors...), not just sit there at the same rigid level to become a problem again in a few years' time
   • follow a redesign of overtime (per job) and overwork (cumulative overtime per person from all sources) that automatically pulls more training and hiring into the skills that are under pressure
   The Timesizing program has all of these features in its three middle phases, plus a leak-plugging phase fore and aft to make sure progress is not undermined by central bank fiddling or population factors.]