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Timesizing News, September 1-10, 2002
[Commentary] ©2002 Phil Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622, Porter Sq, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080

9/10/2002  primitive timesizing in the news, aka glimmers of strategic hope - nothing current in AOLNews today so we reach into the barrel of late arrivals for a real good one for today -

• (5/19)   Potential model for Japan - Work sharing solves Netherlands' economic woes, by Asako Murakami, Japan Times 5/18/2002 via Anders Hayden via SWT e-list.
  THE HAGUE - As Japan remains mired in an economic slump, the idea of work sharing is increasingly attracting the attention of the government, labor unions and business organizations as a way to handle the record level of more than 5% unemployment.... The Netherlands, which introduced work sharing in the early 1980s, is often seen as a model of success. The nation has managed to drastically cut its jobless rate and its massive fiscal deficit while achieving steady growth. In the process, the Netherlands has achieved both a healthy economy and a healthy lifestyle.
  
  • Marion Kappeyne van de Coppello, an official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, wanted to have a rewarding life both at home and work - fulfilling the duties of a managerial position as well as spending sufficient time with her three children. By sharing the directorship of the Human Rights, Good Governance & Peacebuilding Dept, with colleague Susan Blankhart, her wish was fulfilled. \She\ works at the desk she shares along with her job.... "The same title, same responsibility, sharing the directorship," said Kappeyne van de Coppello...at her office in the Ministry.
    This shared position, which lasted for 10 years until March, when Blankhart was appointed ambassador to Sri Lanka, enabled both women to have two mornings and two afternoons off and to work 30 to 35 hours a week instead of the 60 to 70 required full time.
    
  • J. W. Voute-Zevenbergen...a lawyer at Rotterdam-based law firm Loyens & Loeff, puts in 20% less time than a full-time staff member, leaving the office at 4:30 p.m. on weekdays to pick up her children at kindergarten. "I am still available five days a week, although not late in the evening," said the mother of three. "I like it this way because I feel I have a full career in the office and I also have time with my family."...
  Working shorter hours to spend more time with family or on personal pursuits is common in the Netherlands. About 34% of employed Dutch people work part time, the highest rate of any industrialized country. In the Netherlands, part-time workers are defined as those who put in 35 hours a week or less. The main reason for the large part-time workforce are laws that guarantee equal treatment - in terms of hourly wages and conditions such as promotion - for both full- and part-time workers. Since July 2000, employees have also been able to decide their working hours.
  In Japan, part-time employees are in a much weaker position than regular full-time workers. Their average hourly pay is less, they are not entitled to benefits such as health insurance and housing, and they can easily be dismissed.
  In the Netherlands, encouraging part-time work through rights-protection legislation and individualization of the pension and tax systems helped create jobs, especially in the service sector. The nation enjoyed an average of 3% annual economic growth between 1991 and 2001, with the jobless rate in 2001 standing at just 2.7%.
  Such figures look like a miracle [in comparison to] the situation in the early 1980s, when the country suffered an unemployment rate of up to 12% and massive fiscal deficits that rose to 6.6% of GDP. [Netherlands'] success in overcoming the "Dutch disease" has been attributed to wage moderation, liberalization of the labor market and cutting back on government expenditures, according to J. W. Oosterwijk, secretary general of the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
  Creating new jobs boosted the government's tax revenues. And as the new work-sharing system enabled many housewives to work part time, the reduced wages for individual employees did not affect consumer spending because each family's overall income remained much the same.
  Many experts agree that the consensus among the government, employers' associations and labor unions is what made it possible to draw up and implement such drastic measures.
  [Compare the consensus now in Japan between the government, Nikkeiren and Rengo.]
  Under the milestone Wassenaar Agreement, struck in 1982,
  • the employers' associations [cf. Nikkeiren] agreed to protect employees by introducing shorter working hours;
  • the labor unions [cf. Rengo] agreed to the moderation of wage increases;
  • and the government agreed to cut the fiscal deficit by reducing civil servants' salaries, cutting spending on social security benefits, and easing the tax burden on companies and individuals.
  "The important thing is that we all stuck to the agreement," said Sip Nieuwsma, senior adviser for social affairs of the Confederation of Netherlands Industry and Employers (VNO-NCW), the nation's largest employers' organization [cf. Japanese Nikkeiren]. Experts believe [sticking to] the agreement was possible because a consultation process between employers and employees at different levels has been in place in the Netherlands for more than 50 years.
  Having a mixture of full- and part-time workers is beneficial to a company as it can arrange its workforce in accordance with changing workload volumes.
  • "Having people full time doesn't match the work we have," said Martien Heeremans, manager of human resources development at Nissan Europe. "So we deliberately looked for part-time labor (to help at the warehouse). It gives us an opportunity to employ people in a flexible way." He also noted that providing better working conditions helps the company recruit competitive workers. More people, he said, are choosing a company based on its quality, rather than financial benefits.
    
  • Frank van Dijk of the human resources department at ING, a major financial organization based in Amsterdam, said he finds part-time workers are more efficient, as they "are keen to finish work (during their work hours)."
  The spread of a more flexible approach to work has also influenced the way an average Dutch couple lives. Traditionally, it was taken for granted that Dutch wives and mothers would do household chores and take care of the children, but this too is changing.
  • [Martien] Heeremans at Nissan Europe took 14 months paternal leave after his son was born in October 1999. Nissan Europe allows new parents to work half their normal working hours for up to six months. Heeremans spread the shorter hours to 14 months, combining full- and half-time days. "I was torn (between work and family)," he said, recalling his feelings when he decided to take the leave. He also thought that taking the leave would affect his future career. But it turned out all right. "The company respected my decision," he said.
  One major challenge now facing the Netherlands, observers say, is how to expand the concept of work sharing to cover the elderly and disabled. The government is presently working to reduce the number of people who live on disability benefits - currently about 1 million - by encouraging them to return to the labor force. The Social and Economic Council, an advisory body to the government, compiled recommendations in March to revise the system by imposing stricter conditions for receiving benefits. The government has also drafted a proposal to be submitted to parliament. "We need financial incentives to help the unemployed (disabled and elderly people) back into the labor market," said J. H .J. Junggeburt, a professor at Amsterdam University, who specializes in labor market strategy.
  [Compare the spreading disability disaster in the USA - 9/01-02/2002  #2.]

9/9/2002  timesizing consciousness in the news, aka glimmers of strategic hope -

• NSW Govt denies crisis in teacher numbers, Australian Broadcasting 09/8/2002 17:43 AEST via AOLNews.
  The New South Wales [NSW] Government has denied a new teacher recruitment drive has been motivated by a crisis in teacher numbers around the state.... Angelo Gavrielatos from the NSW Teachers Federation welcomes the [drive], but says more needs to be done to stop teachers leaving the profession. "The Government must confront, must take head on, the issues that contribute to the high attrition rates in our system, and they are low pay, overwork, and unrealistic expectations placed on our teachers," he said. "It's very important for the future of the profession, that we not only attract, but also retain teachers in our system."
  [Sounds nurses (8/03/2002 #2 etc.) throughout America.]

• Unions contend France to kill 35-hour work week, by Tom Heneghan, Reuters 09/06/02 09:40 ET via AOLNews.
  PARIS - France's center-right [Chirac-led] government presented labor law reform plans Friday that trade unions said would kill the 35-hour work week they won under the previous [center-left] Socialist-led administration. Social Affairs Minister Francois Fillon unveiled a plan that would keep the official work week at 35 hours but raise the ceiling on permissible overtime from 130 to 180 hours a year, a step effectively bringing back the old 39-hour work week. The plan sought a balance between employers and trade unions as the government, under pressure to tighten its 2003 budget, tries to avoid a repeat of the crippling 1995 strikes that broke the back of the last conservative government.
  [They're "seeking a balance" and "trying to avoid a repeat of the crippling 1995 strikes by caving in to some short-sighted employers who think their domestic markets arise by magic and not by fuller employment? Bizarre.]
  The employers' association Medef hailed the change as a first step in easing what it called the shackles of the shorter work week, but protested that accompanying measures to increase the minimum wage would burden companies at a time of weak growth.
  [Some short-sighted employers squealed just as loudly when the suggestion first arose to shorten the workweek below seven 12-hour days. If the French would lower the workweek far enough that they didn't need minimum wage laws to draw the unsustainable working poor up into sustainability, then companies would also recover from their time of weak growth via maximized domestic demand.]
  "The government is giving Medef the weapon that will let it kill the 35 hours," said the...CGT union, warning that unions could take to the streets to try to block the plan. The reform, which the government will impose by degree for 18 months while employers and unions negotiate longer-term solutions on a sector by sector basis, will be debated in the National Assembly next month.
  The previous left-wing government made the 35-hour work week its flagship policy in the fight against unemployment, but economists say the economic upturn in recent years contributed more to job creation in France than the controversial law.
  [So go back to a 50-hour workweek and see what kind of an "upturn" you get.]
  The cap on overtime was meant to force employers to hire more workers rather than pay high premiums or give extra time off if an employee worked more than 130 hours overtime in a year. Many refused, frustrating lower-paid workers who wanted to work more.
  "This is not about taking a step backwards, but moving ahead pragmatically in the face of the dogmatism of an excessively rigid law," Fillon said of the work week reform plans.
  [What's "pragmatic" about re-concentrating market-demanded human employment onto fewer people in a technological age, and restoring weak domestic demand and very high unemployment and parasitism in your society - instead of simply sharing the vanishing the work. The "excessive rigidity" of this law lies, not in the strict enforcement of the upper limit but in making the enforcement absolute instead of via a high tax on overtime designed to definitively discincentivate the practice as a substitute for training and hiring, The high overtime tax is accompanied by an exemption for setting up training and hiring in overtime-targeted skills. This kind of ongoing, market-determined reinvestment in human capital will be everywhere in 100 years, but it's going to be quite a trick getting it through the heads of some people among today's employers, politicians and media.]
  "The legal work week of 35 hours is maintained, but it will be organized in a way that allows management and unions to adapt it," he said.
  [If there is no severe penalty for overtime, and no incentive to make it self-resolving by triggering the spread of the bottlenecked skills, the legal workweek of 35 hours is not being maintained.]
  As part of the "reform" [our quotes - ed.], Fillon also proposed to raise the minimum wage by 11.4% in real terms between July 2003 and July 2005 in order to return to a single benchmark figure. [The wrong fork we took in 1933 involved going for minimum wages and a profusion, still inadquate until the War, of government makework. By rolling back the workweek, France is merely plunging itself back into pressure for makework, the peacetime "solution" that the New Deal proved doesn't work between 1933 and 1941 and that Japan has proved futile since 1990 when they abandoned lifetime employment and embraced downsizing.]
  The left wing's 35-hour reforms split the minimum wage into several levels, resulting in six separate categories this year.
  [Hooboy. The French left did not even realize the stand-alone power and centrality of worksharing.]
  Fillon said the harmonization was needed to restore the benchmark function of the minimum wage, but the CGT said the method he chose would freeze wages for workers at the highest current level while the lower ranks caught up.
  [The French left needs to drop the grocery list approach to progress and get some focus - on the key issue for all - sharing the vanishing work and reframing the job market - instead of trying to fight market forces by forcing up wages for the most common, least trained employees in their economy.]
  Medef was also dissatisfied with how Fillon tackled this issue, saying: "The measures to get out of this multi-level minimum wage will work against job creation in the uncertain economic situation we have now."
  [All measures along the lines of minimum wages work against job creation. They simply create a big gap in the ladder on which people are trying to climb into the job market.]
  The employers' association was also unimpressed by Fillon's plan to reduce their costs by having the state pay about five billion euros of the social security contributions they would have to fork out for the lowest-paid workers until 2006. "It's largely an illusory measure," a spokesman said.
  [So if you can't please Medef no matter what you do, why even start trying?!]

1. Cutbacks at the library, letter to editor by Pres. Diantha Schull of Libraries for the Future, NYT, A24.
   Cutbacks in public library financing in New York ("Told to trim costs, New York libraries reduce their hours," news article, Aug. 31 [this was not in our mountain edition]) reflect a national trend of shortening hours, reducing book and software purchases, and cutting staff and programs.
   [Hey, at least they're reducing staff cuts with hours cuts - replacing some downsizing with timesizing.]
   From York, Me., where reduced hours and staff prevent full use of a new $1m building, to Seattle, where the library system is being shut for two weeks, citizens are unable to reap the benefits of our extraordinary network of libraries.
   [Meanwhile -]
   The New York Public Library, for example, reports a double-digit increase in patron visits and circulation of library materials this year.
   We shortchange our libraries at our peril. As John Adams wrote, "Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people."

2. [and here's another French company that doesn't realize how vital worksharing via shorter workweeks is to their future markets - and their future, period -]
   PPR profits fall as counts cost of luxuries, by Caroline Brothers, Reuters 09/05/02 08:28 ET via AOLNews.
   PARIS...- Europe's biggest retailer, Pinault Printemps Redoute [PPR], reported a 5.4% drop in first-half earnings on Thursday as cost-cutting measures failed to fully offset a decline in sales. ...PPR's empire stretches from luxury house Gucci to electrical equipment supplier Rexel....
   Schoder Salomon Smith Barney analysts said they were surprised by a weaker performance in PPR's core retail division, which pushed down operating profit. Analyst Robert Miller at Deutsche Kleinwort Wasserstein attributed that largely...to CD-and-book retailee Fnac, and the Conforama furniture chain. "People misunderstood the operational gearing of Conforama, and the cost of the 35-hour week also weighed significantly," he said....
   [Looking at PPR's own press release, we find more direct evidence of cluelessness -]
   Pinault-Printemps-Redoute: Interim results satisfactory despite economic slowdown, Business Wire 09/04/2002 01:02 Eastern via AOLNews.
   ...The improvement in gross margin, which stood at EUR 5.2 billion (up by 0.1% in real terms, compared with a 1.5% drop in sales) reflects the Group's increasing efficiency in terms of direct purchases. The cost of goods sold fell by 2.4% in the first half of the year. Gross margin rose 0.6 points to 39.1%. In addition, cuts in the workforce (3,100 employees), particularly in North America, stabilised the average number of employees, despite the impact of changes in Group structure, store openings and the impact of the 35-hour workweek in France....
   [Thus they "stabilised" their headcount by doing exactly the opposite to what the shorter workweek was intended for - saving jobs (and consumers), not cutting them. One wonders what degree of economic dislocation and suffering will be required for some CEOs to "get it."]

• Here's to working less, and living more, letters to the editor, NYT, A22.
  [Two women's letters published, no men's.]
  1. By Linda Kupfer of Rockville MD.
     In "Why Americans should rest" [see below, 9/01-02/2002 #3], Juliet Schor describes the phenomenon of the overworked American and how the combination of 9/11, the economy and corporate scandals may make this a perfect time to re-evaluate our workaholic work ethic. ...What it will require is a paradigm shift. Employees need to demand more time away from work as a priority factor to staying with an employer.
     [That presupposes employees have a lot of choice of employers, true today only for nurses.]
     Employers need to buy into the concept that more [free] time is a prerequisite to a productive workforce.
     [But just look at the frontpage article in the Wall St Journal on Au.g 8 - most American and British employers still equate more hours with more productivity, regardless of the benefits of creative distance. They snub "work smart, not hard" in favor of "work hard and smart" or even just "work hard." They don't feel important or powerful unless there's an element of sadism in it for them and masochism in it for employees.]
     There is already a framework for this type of change. A decade ago, employees demanded childcare at work as a prerequisite to working after having children. Employers realized that the only way to keep trained, productive emloyees was to offer childcare. Everyone benefited and they will again. [Actually, there's a more direct precedent. Ron Healey sells his 30/40 Plan to employers in Indiana - 30 hours' work for 40 hours' pay - on the hook that they can thereby mine a whole new vein of quality employees - parents who can afford 30 hours a week but can't handle 40.]

  2. By Prof. Ann Shapiro of English & Women's Studies at Farmingdale State University.
     Bravo to Juliet Schor for suggesting reduced schedules as an alternative to the 55- to 80-hour workweek, which not only puts undue burdens on adults but also disadvantages America's children. If the Bush administration is serious about family values, then there should be government incentives for companies to encourage shorter working hours...so that parents can spend more time with their children.
     [Phil Hyde's platform when running as a progressive Republican in '96 and '98: More family time for family values. Haven't heard much out of the Republicans about family values lately. Too busy "desperately seeking World War III"?]
     As Sylvia Ann Hewlett wrote recently, "Competent, well-developed children become productive workers who boost the G[D]P and pay their taxes."
     [In short, quality adults come from quality children and you need quality parenting to get quality children.]
     Not only that, but we might end the brain drain that occurs when well-educated young women are still forced to choose between promising careers and children.

1. [2 articles on France's 35-hour workweek, showing how clueless the French are about the true "French exception," the one area where they significantly lead the world -]
   French govt to liberalise 35-hr work week by decree, by Paul Carrel, Reuters 09/03/02 07:29 ET via AOLNews.
   PARIS, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Hacking away at the previous government's trademark labour reform, France's centre-right government said on Tuesday it would decree a liberalisation of the controversial 35-hour work week. But eager to avoid sparking trade union protests, the government will put a one-year time limit on the decree allowing more overtime, after which it plans to pass the problem to trade unions and employers to sort out themselves.
   The previous Socialist-led government slashed the work week from 39 to 35 hours in 1998 and restricted overtime to only 130 hours a year to force companies to hire more labour. Few did, leaving many French with more holiday but also more work to do.
   [Actually, most of the implementation was in 2000 for large companies and 2002 for small companies and government.]
   Applauded by business, the conservatives elected in June vowed to roll back some of the law's structures, even if they could not repeal the law itself because the idea of a shorter work week has become too popular in France.
   [That's the FIRST time we've heard this simple statement in the English-language media.]
   "Concerning overtime, there will be a decree," Social Affairs Minister Francois Fillon told the daily Le Parisien after a week of consultations with unions and the Medef employers association on the planned reform.
   Although the decision helped ease the 35-hour law, Medef head Ernest-Antoine Seilliere complained loudly because it came in a package that included a plan to raise the minimum wage. "These plans...don't benefit growth and don't benefit unemployment," he said after meeting Fillon on Monday before the details were released. The higher minimum wage would wipe out many low-paid jobs, he argued. Medef wants the overtime ceiling to be raised to 200 hours a year, which would effective bring the work week back to 39 hours, but Le Parisien said the decree due later this month might increase it only to 180 hours.
   "From the publication of this decree, which will settle the issue for a period of 12 to 18 months, it will be up to the social partners (unions and employers) to open negotiations by sector to adjust the measure," Fillon said. This would allow unions and employers to reach agreements on a sector-by-sector basis, according to the demand for overtime in each area.
   UNION THREAT
   Though the government is eager to loosen up the labour market, it is also keen to avoid a showdown with the unions that broke the back of France's last conservative government with massive strikes in 1995. One of France's biggest unions has threatened street protests if the government goes ahead with its labour "reforms." The head of France's third biggest union, Force Ouvriere, said on Tuesday negotiations on overtime should be carried out immediately, not in a year's time when when the extended working hours are already in operation.
   [Good point.]
   "A decree was needed which encouraged us to negotiate and we would have defined the (overtime) perimeters ourselves," Force Ouvriere Secretary General Marc Blondel said on Europe 1 radio.
   Since trou[n]cing the left-leaning administration in June elections, the government has aroused union concerns [over] a number of "reform" plans including proposals to privatise state companies, reform the pensions system, and streamline France's large public sector by shedding posts. Medef [had] wanted [government to make] the decree on longer working hours...definitive, so employers would not have to go through the time-consuming process of hammering out overtime agreeme[n]ts with unions in a year's time.
   [French employers continue clueless about the market bonanza and taxcuts they got from the 4% work-sharing of the 35-hour week law, and if any other groups are smart enough to present the data, it ain't getting through on the English-language media.]
   [Here's the AP version of the same story -]
   France to ease 35-hour workweek, by John Leicester, AP 09/03/02 13:20 EDT via AOLNews.
   PARIS - The government said Tuesday it wants to let the French work longer hours, and not everyone is happy. At issue is the 35-hour work week. Under the latest plan, workers would be able to put in more overtime hours than they're currently allowed. Just how much more wasn't spelled out, but critics immediately rushed to the verbal barricades.
   The proposal, announced by Social Affairs Minister Francois Fillon in an interview with the daily Le Parisien, would relax the limit of 130 hours of overtime a year that current rules allow for every employee. "This decree should give an immediate flexibility'' to the 35-hour system and spur negotiations toward reforming it, Le Parisien quoted Fillon as saying. He said the changes would remain in place for 12 to 18 months, according to the newspaper. [huh?]
   The shortened week was a flagship reform of the left-leaning government defeated in elections this spring. It argued that restricting working hours would force employers to hire more staff to compensate. But Fillon said unemployment has risen over the past 10 months despite the 35-hour rules. "That is proof of their ineffectiveness in terms of employment,'' Le Parisien quoted him as saying.
   [That's B.S.   In response to the plans for the 35-hr week and it's implementation, French unemployment fell 4% from 12.6% in 1997 to 8.7% in the spring of 2001 - one-percent drop in unemployment for every one-hour reduction in the workweek. It took a global recession to drive it back up, and it's only driven it back up 0.4% to 9%. France succumbed to the recession more slowly than any other euro-zone economy except the erstwhile subsidized Ireland.]
   The Socialist Party accused Fillon of forcing "reform" [our quotes - ed.] on the system.
   [If the Socialists themselves used the word "reform" here, they are also clueless.]
   With increased overtime, employees will "work more without necessarily earning more,'' party secretary Francois Hollande said on LCI television.
   [Still focusing on weak whining from a weak position instead of presenting the strong data about the shorter workweek's dynamizing effect on domestic demand. Socialists are pathetic.]
   "It's a mistake,'' added the general secretary of the Workers' Force union, Marc Blondel. He called for negotiations on the issue.
   [WHY is it "a mistake," Marc??? Give us the data!]
   Maryse Dumas, a leader of the Communist-aligned CGT union, said on France Info radio that the government's plan was "an extra power being given to employers to force employees to work longer.''
   [So what? How does that hurt employers, that's what we need to know. And hurt them it does!]
   This week and last, Fillon held talks with union leaders and employers on "reforming" the working week and France's complicated minimum wage system. Employers have long complained that forcing companies to adopt the 35-hour week is costly and damages their competitiveness.
   [How competitive were they when they were sacrificing 12.6% of their domestic markets to unemployment?]
   The proposal is to be presented to the Cabinet next week.
   The president of the Movement of French Enterprises, France's main employers' federation, expressed its frustration with the plan, saying it should be permanent - not just a temporary measure. Ernest-Antoine Seilliere, in a statement Monday after meeting with Fillon, said employers ``do not understand'' why the government simply didn't decree an increase in overtime hours, rather than just proposing one.
   [Maybe the government is less cocksure about this than they appear, and rightly so.]

2. [French companies are still complaining about the 35-hour workweek and ignoring the additional home markets it's given them. Here's one now -]
   The Devoteam Group first half of 2002: 24% turnover growth, PRNewswire 09/03/2002 13:32 EDT via AOLNews.
   PARIS...- The Devoteam Group achieved a turnover of 65.5m euros fo rthe 1st half of 2002, up 24% from that of 2001.... Q2 business came out to 36.5m euros vs. 37.2m for Q1 on a like-for-like basis (4 billable days less). Organic growth remains positive, despite the sluggish market, the effect of the statutory holidays of May 2002 combined with the full impact of the 35-hour week, and the integration of recently acquired companies....

3. Business watercooler stories, by Matt Moore, AP 09/03/02 14:17 EDT via AOLNews.
   Working demands: Employees in the post[??]-recession workplace are working longer and harder and rarely have a break from the daily routine, according to an online survey by CareerBuilder.com [see our coverage on 8/29/2002 #2. After months of layoffs, hiring freezes and job cutbacks, more companies are having to do the same amount of work (if not more) with less staff.
   In its survey of 1,400 workers, more than a third reported increases in their personal workloads in the past 6 months. And despite the innovations of flextime and 4-day workweeks, the majority spent more than 40 hours working during the week.   39% of those who arrived at work early stayed late, while 30% of those who arrived right on time said they stay late....
   As for lunch? The time spent eating is on the decline, the survey found. Half of the workers said they spent 45 minutes or less for lunch, while 35% took just 30 minutes....

• S. Korea carmakers to focus on exports (Wraps sales figures, adds analyst comments), by Song Jung-a, Reuters 09/02/02 04:07 ET via AOLNews.
  SEOUL...- South Korea's automakers, after posting sharp sales increases in August, are expected to concentrate on exports for the remainder of the year now that a domestic tax break has lapsed, analysts said. Seoul's decision to let a tax cut for automobile purchases expire fuelled August demand and the implementation of a shorter workweek for South Koreans had created more demand for sport utility vehicles, or SUVs, analysts said....
  Five day workweek
  Financial industry workers in South Korea won a five-day workweek in May. Various government ministries are also experimenting with the shortened week....
  [We believe they're talking about five 8-hour days, for a 40-hour total workweek, but the original article (5/24/2002 #1) does not specify.]

1. 9.1.02 - The way we live now - Into their labor - Americans' newfound romance with blue-collar workers smacks of guilt but also of real longing, by George Packer, NY Times Magazine, 23.
   [A very bittersweet Labor Day contribution. Here's a clip from the photo caption -]
   There's work to be done [But not enough of it to keep everyone spinning their wheels the same arbitary number of hours forever, regardless of waves of efficient technology.]
   "In spite of oppressors, in spite of false leaders, in spite of labor's own lack of understanding of its needs [that's a big one!], the cause of the worker continues onward. Slowly his hours are shortened, giving him leisure to read and to think...."
   [Not any more, and that was the root lever that kept his cause "continuing onward," which it is no longer doing. The quote is from "The Autobiography of Mother Jones," 1925. About that "guilt" and "real longing" -]
   ...The problem with this "new spirit" is that it is based in large part on a sham. The gratitude and guilt and longing are real, but...the typical face of postindustrial working-class life is not a [NYC] firefighter's or a [trapped Pennsy.] coalminer's - it is that of the exhausted Wal-Mart "associate" who has just punched out but is ordered to round up shopping carts in the parking lot [see 6/25/2002 #1]. She can't clock her overtime hours because the branch manager needs to show high profits. Solidarity has been preached to her in the form of Wal-Mart family values, but it goes only one way.
   Even the lionized firefighters have been reduced to the grubby embarrassment of contract disputes. "I'm tired of politicians coming to our funerals and telling the widows how sorry they are," Stephen Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Assoc. said at a rally two weeks ago. "Pay us a living wage."
   Meanwhile, the Bush administration continues to pursue its relentlessly anti-labor policies. America wants workers to do everything except ask for a raise in return.
   [Once American labor failed to get the 30-hour workweek bill of 1933 passed in anything like its original form (it finally came out as a 44,42,40-hour workweek in 1938) and let itself be pacified with a hodgepodge of not-quite-the-same substitutes (Soc Sec, min wage, workmen's comp, unemployment insurance, plus makework after makework), it was toast. World War II came along just in time to make it look like the substitutes had worked, but as the grim glow of the War faded, it became clear that the substitutes hadn't worked, weren't working and never would work, and labor gradually shrank from nearly 40% of the American workforce to less than 14%. A surplus commodity has no high price (or wage in this case) and no power.]
   ...The degeneration of Labor Day has continued fairly steadily over more than a century of barbecues [no, it's just degenerated over the last 62 years of frozen 40-hour workweek - they didn't even have what we know as "barbecues" 100 years ago], and by now it's probably our least sincere holiday. In the year of working class heroes \such as\ the dust-covered firefighters, cops and emergency workers, and then the welders and excavators grimly digging all winter, the mail sorters risking their lives, the underpaid soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and, finally, a month ago, the nine grimy coal miners trapped deep underground in Pennsy..., we should do something real for labor, or else we should spare everyone tomorrow's cliches and rededicate the first Monday in September to a cause that stirs genuine passion. Happy Investor's Day.
   [Better get started with the renaming. So great is America's fear of shorter hours, that 35-hour France comes in for slams in the strangest places, like across the page, for example -]
   Retiring, not shy - Questions for Dick Armey, by Jake Tapper, NY Times Magazine, 25.
   Q:...What if Iraq made a move against Israel? A: An attack on Israel is an attack on America, in my estimation....
   [Now that Israel is a land of perpetual war, do we now have to turn America into a land of perpetual war to improve the equation?]
   Q: I'm told you're not as fond of all of our allies - the French, for instance.
   [Strange that the Saudis didn't come up at all. Shorter hours must be more dangerous than terrorism.]
   A: Well, I've never been good at foreign policy. It's never been an area of particular strength. But I learned real early on that if you're having a discussion about foreign policy, just say something disparaging about the French, and everybody will think you know what you're talking about....

2. [Speaking of the French, the media were always trying to tab their 35-hour workweek as "socialist" or "leftwing" just because the French Socialists picked it up after the rightwing UDF's voluntary version, the Robien Law of '96-97, proved too slow-acting. Well, here's an indication of how much of a leftwing issue workweek reduction is not -]
   French Socialists fail to map way out of wilderness, by Claude Canellas, Reuters 09/01/02 11:09 ET via AOLNews.
   France's Socialists, leaderless since overwhelming election defeats this year...
   [a few percentage points is hardly "overwhelming"]
   ...ended a key party meeting on Sunday in which they failed to agree on a clear route out of the political wilderness....
   Out of touch
   As the battle for control of the left begins, its dilemma was highlighted by a poll at the weekend which showed [that] barely 10% of leftwing sympathisers questioned by the Louis Harris Institute said Jospin's flagship 35-hour working week reform had been important....
   [Again, this highlites the fact that the shorter-hours movement needs new "bottles" for its new "wine. It cannot simply co-opt an existing category, such as leftwing or labor, because these traditional movements just don't "get it" and evoke unnecessary resistance from other parts of the outdated but still-dragging-on&on political spectrum.]

3. 9/02   Why Americans should rest - We deserve more time away from our labors, op ed by Juliet Schor, NYT, A17.
   [A very weak title for a lot of powerful and critical information. The word "should" is an immediate appeal from weakness to morality, also weak. An appeal for "rest" is particularly pathetic. What we "deserve" or don't deserve is more whining. We need a strong economist of Juliet Schor's training and stature to quit apologizing and outline the cause and effect between an overlong workweek in the context of inrushing worksaving technology. We need her or someone like her to take the gloves off and lay it on the line for CEOs - to speak truth to power and quit pleading. They have no patience for weaklings and whiners, even though many of them are whiners themselves, especially nowadays.]
   • ...The U.S. surpasses workaholic Japan in average [annual working] hours.
   • Dot-commers [work] 24/7.
   • The family dinner has disappeared.
   • The working poor are holding 3-4 jobs just to make ends meet.
   Neither the renewed commitment to family and community after 9/11 nor the presence of a committed leisure enthusiast in the White House seems to have had an impact.... Working hours have risen for 3 decades. According to estimates from the Economic Policy Institute, between 1973 and 1998 average annual hours increased from 1,720 to 1,898.
   Recognition of the problem became widespread, as
   • armies of "work-family consultants" counseled corporations on how to achieve "balance."
   • Most large companies put flexible work options on the books.
     [though mere flexibility misses the critical need for an upper limit.]
   • The academic literature mushroomed.
   But these changes hardly made a dent.
   [They're scarcely worthy of being called "changes." They're not even window dressing. They're entirely superficial.]
   Why has overwork been so persistent?
   [She misses its association with character-building and self-importance and this whole section contains hard-nosed arguments for what she disagrees with. Hard-nosed arguments for shorter hours are lacking.]
   
   • One reason is that it is generally more profitable for firms to employ a small workforce for long hours. The benefit costs are lower,
   • employers can be more selective about whom they hire,
   • and hours are a simple (if inaccurate) proxy for commitment.
   Employees who dislike the long hours have typically had to change jobs, or even occupations, to gain free time.
   During the 1990s, robust consumer demand intensified these incentives....
   [She fails to mention the feet of clay here - record consumer debt.]
   While workers made significant gains in
   • employment
     [What does that mean? If it means more jobs and implies sufficient jobs, how come disability and homelessness and incarceration rose so quickly through the 90s? She gives in too easily to the party-line economists' externatlization of anything that disturbs the illusion of the American utopia.]
   • and income
     [This gives away too much - pay gains in the 1990s barely kept up with inflation and the figures are probably skewed upward by averaging with astronomical executive pay - she has failed to sort out the two-tiered pay system for us - and as for the failure of pay to keep pace with the multiples of productivity due to office automation in the 90s so that employees could consume their own output, Schor has completely missed this aspect.
   • they paid with their time.
     [To which mainstream economists and analysts will reply simply, "So what?!" She has not made the case for technology's categorical imperative of more, financially secure free time. In fact, she leaves untouched the arguments that free time is frivolous and trivial rather than important, like overwork, and that free time undermines character rather than builds it, like hard (long) work.]
   Indeed, by the end of the decade, it had begun to feel like the Industrial Revolution redux, with a massive outpouring of work effort.
   [If this is supposed to embarrass CEOs by their regressiveness, its artistic flourish ("redux") undermines that effect completely and almost makes the whole sentence sound like something she admires.]
   Overtime hours, already at record highs, rose further.
   [Devil's advocate says, "So?"]
   By the end of the decade, married couples with children logged an additional 151 hours of work annually.
   ["Why should the workplace be built around children? There are too many of them anyway. We have a job to do. If you want children, go work for somebody else, somebody less serious."]
   And despite their strengthening labor-market position, employees failed to gain legal rights to vacation time - in sharp contrast to Europeans.
   [What was so much strengthened then in their labor-market position? Or were they too clueless and disorganized even to try?]
   While my book [The Overworked American, 1991] caused a controversy over whether working hours had in fact increased, by the mid-1990s even the time-diary data wielded by my critics had begun to register increases in work time. The first Industrial Revolution paradox - labor-saving technologies resulting in more, rather than less, work - was repeating itself.
   [To leave this here is unforgiveable. She's simply reinforcing the fallacy that efficient "technology creates more jobs than it destroys" instead of exploring the vital role played by employer reaction to it (layoffs) and employee reaction to employer reaction (job insecurity and desperate attempts to make oneself indispensable by showy and not necessarily paid overtime).]
   These developments created a blowback effect.
   [Whatever that means.]
   Rising hours led to rising incomes, which in turn raised the consumer norms that households adhere to.
   [She is so intent on trotting out her anti-consumption bias that she again gives away far too much. Our shorter-hours argument must link rising hours with falling incomes, as in sweatshops, 3rd World, and "The working poor are holding 3-4 jobs just to make ends meet" with which she began and which she now contradicts. With spokespersons like Schor, we are in deep trouble. Better we make the case that the Gospel of Consumption was just a short-term come-on that rapidly aged into a low-paid ratrace indistinguishable from a low-paying 3rd-world sweatshop.]
   Prosperity turned more luxuries into necessities and raised aspirations: for consumer electronics, larger homes, travel, larger vehicles.
   [Aspirations that even during the unsustainable prosperity aka bubble could not be achieved except by record consumer debt. She finally mentions the critical-because-unsustainable debt aspect, and the critical 2-tiered income caveat -]
   But because the gains in income and wealth went disproportionately to upper-income households, most families could only realize higher spending norms by putting in additional hours and taking on debt.
   [That should be "still more hours," with a pointer to an unsustainable acceleration to 24/7 burnout. Then a weak sentence that we would omit except it calls to mind an unused stronger version reporting that 2/3 of employees in one survey would GIVE UP PAY for shorter hours.]
   By 1997, the Survey of the Changing Workforce found that nearly 2/3 of employees were on the job more than they wanted to be.
   [In this form, the sentence can be dismissed with a bored, "Big deal."]
   Much of this has changed during the last year. Many firms are facing
   • stagnant or declining demand
     [and she has still not made the connection between this and long hours!],
   • lower earnings
     [she makes no connection between this and the smaller markets due to fewer customers due to fewer employees due to longer hours per employee]
   • and pressure to cut back on labor.
     [she does not articulate the alternative, cutting back on worktime, or expose this response, labor cuts, for the suicidal downturn-accelerating excuse for a strategy that they are]
     
   [Then she brings up three good heavy hitters, but not without first diffusing energy again on her anti-consumption hobbyhorse -]
   On the household side, there is a new rationale for restraint in consumption. Personal bankruptcies are soaring again, trillions of dollars in wealth have vanished in a falling market and economic opportunity is harder to find.
   [Then she pops the central sentence of the whole piece -]
   These developments make it an ideal moment to reduce hours broadly rather than eliminate jobs.
   [The implication is that this would be done legislatively, possibly federally, and she fuzzily leads toward articulating these implications, without too many hints about the implementational how's of the project, except -]
   
   • ,,,Employees on reduced schedules could be authorized to collect partial unemployment insurance;
     [which harks back to Fred Best's 1988 book, "Reducing the Workweek to Avoid Layoffs - The economic and social impacts of unemployment-insurance supported work sharing."]
   • Congress could give tax breaks to firms that enact work redistribution.
     [This is the Timesizing method, and also the method of the Robien Law in France in 1996-97.]
   ...For the last half century, America's tendency has been to consume more, rather than work less.
   [This is not a Kenynesian "propensity." This is a natural result of America's abusive and luddite, self-destructive and unsustainable downsizing response to waves of work-saving mechanization and automation, a response that has, for 62 years now, blocked the most fundamental purpose of technology - to make life easier for everyone by "timesizing" alias trimming hours for everyone. If you're blocking the century-and-a-half decline of the workweek, you must find busywork for people to spin their wheels at for 40 hours a week, regardless of market demand, and so you must get involved with straining to stimulate that demand, via advertising and promotions - you must construct a 'Gospel of Consumption.' This propensity to work is central to why the United States is among the world's wealthiest nations...
   [Which side is Schor on? For a self-proclaimed shorter-hours advocate to be attributing America's wealth to long hours in an age of spiralling technological efficiency is confusing at best, perverse at worst. With friends like this, the shorter hours movement doesn't need enemies. Shorter hours advocates need to be pointing out
   • that most of America's current "wealth" is meaningless because it's in the hands of such a tiny percentage of the population (many of the 3rd-world nations are extremely "wealthy" but when two people own it all, the nations are still dirt poor)
   • that this astronomical income concentration is happening because the luddite downsizing response to technology has made labor hours a huge cheap surplus commodity that commands no particular wage price in the job market.
   • and further that America's wealth would be measurably greater by a vast amount if the spending power were not all funnelling to those who already have far far more than they can spend
   [The truth is, that members of the frugality (or anti-consumption) movement, as Juliet Schor has become, do not make good frontline soldiers for the shorter-hours movement in its early stages, because, as Lao Tzu puts it, "what you would tear down, you must first build up." One of the shorter-hours movement's biggest initial drawing cards is the activation of vast amounts of spending power currently de-activated at the top by concentration almost beyond imagination, and the activation at the bottom of vast numbers of consumers currently de-activated by self-cheapening, hugely surplus manhours in the job market and consequently frozen in poverty, disability, homelessness and incarceration. We need to make the case that until we start timesizing instead of downsizing, we are a house divided, battling against our own economic growth, sacrificing our true potential for the sake of our silly pecking order (so-called "positional goods"). The kind of anti-consumption that we must restrict ourselves to is not the general lifestyle anti-consumption of the frugality movement but the specific efficiency anti-consumption that opposes Buckminster Fuller's dictum, "doing more with less." The focus of this "doing more with less," of course, is our central "doing more products and services with less worktime," and indeed, without continuing progress on this central goal, with wind up inexorably doing more with more and even doing less with more, a stage that America is now well into, with its huge military- and prison-industrial complex, homelessness, disability, welfare, unemployment, prolonged-education and forced-retirement problems. The irony, of course, is that by freeing ourselves of the rigid and cruel taskmaster of a 62-year-old workweek, forcing us to strain for enough busywork and makework and facetime to fill 40 hours a week in competition with actual 24/7 robotization, we no longer have to do the advertising and promotion, the junkmail and spam of the evermore desperate Gospel of Consumption. We can embrace frugality without economic collapse. But only after we have the new safety net, a responsive work-sharing system in terms of automatic adjustment of the workweek against comprehensive un- and under-employment (including welfare, disability, homelessness, incarceration and forced retirement and benefit-less "part" time) can this happen, because only that safety net for the havenots will also provide a safety net against economic collapse. Let's pick up Schor's strand at the self-clobbering beginning of the current sentence -]
   This propensity to work is central to why the United States is among the world's wealthiest nations [not] as well as the unrivalled leader in resource depletion, carbon dioxide emissions, and environmental impact.
   [We'd go along with the second half of this sentence.]
   By next Labor Day, perhaps, the message will be that we're slowing down, sharing the work and consuming a little less.
   [The only element of value in her last sentence is "sharing the work." The lifestyle choice of slowing down or downshifting is irrelevant to the critical rebalancing and restoration that fluctuating adjustment of the workweek is urgently needed for, and the less consumption will utterly block it in the initial stages because it will simply perpetuate the current sundowning with recession and depression, currently most currently seen in the last 12 years in Japan. Juliet, you cannot serve two masters. You must make up your mind which is more important to you, shorter hours or frugality. Because trying to promote frugality while advocating shorter worktime is leading you into contradictions and to fragging your own shorter-hours arguments.]