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Timesizing News, September 11-20, 2002
[Commentary] ©2002 Phil Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622, Porter Sq, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080

9/20/2002  primitive timesizing in news, aka glimmers of strategic hope - no current items found so we dig into the barrel of past items; in this case, long past items -

• [The most encouraging thing we can think of to put in today is the original news item that gave us the clue for timesizing -]
  Plant manager surprised at American Optical, 1975 (exact citation mislaid).
  ST. LOUIS, Mo. - The American Optical branch plant here was experiencing slower demand and the plant manager decided he would have to cut 10% of his employees (four of his total workforce of 40 people). When they heard about this, the rest of the employees got together, went to the manager and said, "Don't lay anyone off. We'll take a paycut."
  The manager was amazed at this display of unity and concern. He kept everyone on and matched the 10% pay cut with a 10% hours cut, because, as he said, the extra productivity just wasn't needed for the time being. All the employees still had their jobs and the plant had additional needed adaptibility. It also retained its competitiveness for the recovery because it retained its skill set. It also retained its morale....

1. [here we see the tragic unraveling of "the French Exception" - world leadership in the shortest nationwide workweek -]
   France Adopts Plan To Ease Workweek, AP 09/18/02 15:11 EDT via AOLNews.
   [To "ease" their 35-hour workweek back up to longer hours, that is.]
   PARIS - France's government on Wednesday proposed easing the rules governing France's 35-hour workweek to allow employees to work more overtime. The plan...was immediately denounced as "social regression" by trade unions and opposition politicians.
   The 35-hour workweek was the centerpiece of the previous Socialist-led government and revolutionized the work schedule by giving people more time off. But it has proved a nightmare for many employers.
   [Just as the 40-hour workweek was at first. Or for that matter, the 44-hour workweek at first, or the 48-hour workweek, or the 54, or the 60, or the 66, or the 72-hour workweek (the six-day week) enjoined in that piece of "socialist," possibly Communist legislation, the Fourth Commandment of Moses (Exodus 20 in the Holy Bible).]
   Social affairs Minister Francois Fillon told reporters after the Cabinet meeting that the changes will help spur economic growth...
   [Ha! You can't get growth without markets, and if you're reconverting some of your financially secure consumers into anxious, low-spending unemployed, you ain't gonna have as robust markets.]
   ... and "correct some of the biggest errors committed by the previous government."
   [This guy doesn't have the common sense of a Grand Canyon mule. Let's call him "Mr. Deathwish."]
   The proposal must be adopted by lawmakers, with debate starting in early October. With conservatives and centrists dominating the parliament, approval is expected.
   The plan does not put into question the shorter, 35-hour workweek, but it would extend the limit of 130 hours of overtime a year that current rules allow for every employee to 180 hours.
   [This would effectively restore the previous 39-hour workweek.]
   The increase, however, failed to satisfy France's main employers' federation, the MEDEF, which had pushed for a limit of 200 hours.
   [Terminally short-sighted. Tragedy of the commons. "Who cares about domestic markets in the longer term?! There's no proven connection with shorter hours anyway!" Just like the cigarette companies - "There's no proven connection between smoking and cancer anyway!"]
   The changes are to be reviewed after 18 months.
   Socialist parliamentary leader Jean-Marc Ayrault described the proposal as "a real social regression" and warned that employees will not have a choice if asked to work extra hours. ``The French people will quickly realize that the government will backpedal," he told France-2 television.
   The previous leftist government enacted the law shortening the workweek from 39 to 35 hours to help lower unemployment by spreading out jobs among more people.
   [And it worked. The French cut their workweek 4 hours from 39 to 35, and cut their unemployment rate one percent for each hour they cut the workweek, from 12.6% in 1997 to 8.7% in the spring of 2001. Now they're going to roll that back up beyond the 9% it's risen to because of the overtime&unemployment-caused global recession.]

2. France sees off bumper breaks with 35-hour reform, by Paul Carrel, Reuters 09/18/02 07:49 ET via AOLNews.
   [These are two bits of British slang that we would never use together in America. To "see someone off" is to take them to the train or plane for a trip. A "bumper" crop is a big one. Hence this translates as "France initiates large changes from the 35-hour workweek reform." Hey, at least none-too-progressive Carrel, or his editors, are calling the shorter workweek a reform here, instead of calling its relengthening a reform. But maybe they'll revert in the middle of the article.]
   PARIS - Just back from summer holidays lasting a month or more, French workers know they may never again enjoy so much vacation time as the government slashes the controversial 35-hour week. France's centre-right government is moving swiftly to hack away at the landmark reform of the previous, Socialist-led administration which introduced the measure to force companies to hire more workers.
   Social Affairs Minister Francois Fillon presented plans to the cabinet on Wednesday to allow workers to clock up more overtime - effectively bringing the working week back to the 39 hours seen before the previous administration's reform.
   [However -]
   For many French workers, the "reform" plans [here's the first confusing reversion - our quotes - ed.] represent a welcome chance for a break from the rigid 35-hour rules, which left them with more holiday but also more work to do as few companies hired new staff to share out the work load.
   [Here we try to spin the step backward as favored by much of labor itself, but look who their example is -]
   "I'm in favour of this. I'm a manager, so as things stand I work more hours for the same amount of money as before (the 35-hour week) to cover for those people who get compensation days," said Pierre Maillard who works in a bank.
   [Oh, so he's a "worker" because he "works" in a bank, even though he's management?]
   Noel Marteau...a waiter in Paris, also wanted to see the government's "reform" introduced. "I just want to work more so I can earn more," he said.
   [Here's a real non-management employee, but clueless, associating hard work with more money even though he has to overlook sweatshops and automats.]
   Fillon's proposals are aimed at "loosening up" [our quotes - ed.] the labour market to help attract business to France and make French companies more nimble. The plan will be presented to parliament, where the government enjoys a massive majority, on October 2.
   [Ah the French. The poor stupid French. Les pauvres betes. Long-hours companies "nimble"? We'll see about that.]
   "What we are trying to do is introduce a little pragmatism and flexibility into the system," Fillon said in an interview with TF1 television on Tuesday.
   [Hey, if longer hours are "pragmatic," why not take it right back to 40? why not 80? Hell, why not work all 168 hours in the week if you want this kind of "pragmatism"?]
   BUMPER HOLIDAYS
   Since the last government introduced the 35-hour week in 1998 [error: it started only in 2000], few workers have stuck to the limit, meaning they have accrued compensation time to take bumper summer holidays or enjoy long weekends.
   [Fine. Comp time takes the average back to the 35-hr limit.]
   Many French people have begun to enjoy taking more time off work - an opportunity which has allowed them to spend more time with family and cultivate pastimes. "I prefer to have more holiday than earn the extra money. When I work I get taxed. When I have time off I can do what I like," said delivery driver Stephane Lebarnchu.
   [At last an intelligent interviewee.]
   He had just returned from a month-long summer holiday and was already thinking about his next break. "I'd like to take some time off to do some winter sports," he said.
   Still, the government has popular support for its "reform" plan, a poll showed on Tuesday. The survey by the CSA opinion polling institute showed 51 percent of those surveyed were in favour of a "reform" along the lines planned by the government.
   [And what does CSA stand for - a short-sighted rigid-thinking management group? Let's see how they phrased the questions.]
   Forty three percent were against any change.
   Though the government is eager to loosen up the labour market, it is also keen to avoid a showdown with the trade unions that broke the back of France's last conservative government with massive strikes in 1995.
   [Them trade unions better get rollin'!]
   To soothe union concerns, the government plans to put an 18-month time limit on a measure allowing more overtime, after which it will pass the problem to unions and employers to sort out themselves.
   [Any slime they can inject...]
   As part of the labour market reform package, the government also plans to reduce charges on companies and raise the hourly minimum wage.
   [If they had the workweek as short as it should be, they wouldn't "have to" control wages - market forces would flexibly raise wages without government interference. But hours are different. Hours per person frame the free market in hours and wages per job, and level the field over which market forces play in their variation of wages. The per-person vs. per-job distinction is an important one in economics that present-day economists seldom make, but future economists will find to be fundamental. (Another example of a fundamental distinction that current economists miss is inflationary (quantitative monetary) vs. deflationary (qualitative inherent) incentives.)]

• France to ease restrictions on layoffs - minister, Reuters 09/17/02 17:07 ET via AOLNews. PARIS...- The French government plans to suspend restrictions on company layoffs introduced by the last government and instead foster new training measures to help keep people in work, the Social Affairs Minister said on Tuesday. The layoff restrictions introduced by the previous, Socialist-led, government actually firms to go into receivership rather than adapt, Social Affairs Minister Francois Fillon said in an interview on TF1 television. "The real guarantee for employees isn't a law that prohibits layoffs - we'll never prevent companies adapting to difficult economic conditions - it's the possibility to find another job, thus to learn new technical skills or a new trade," he said.
  [One problem here is this man's assumption that companies only lay people off as an adaptation to difficult economic conditions. We have seen many cases where companies in record profit lay people off and thereby CREATE difficult economic conditions by diminishing their own and others' consumer base. Another "bug" in this guy's approach is his assumption that it's the government's problem (and therefore the taxpayer's) to pick up and train the private sector's human discards, and not the private sector's OWN problem. The Timesizing program makes sure the private sector either trains or hires or gets the overtime advantage taxed out of them any time they resort to overtime. In other words, Timesizing links training to the top, to excess, to overtime, instead of to the bottom/lack of work/undertime, as this new "conservative" minister's approach does. You cannot fix a problem at the top by fiddling around at the bottom. FDR tried it throughout the Great Depression and he never fixed anything with his feel-good New Deal socialism - he only got unemployment down from 25 to 14% = not even half. It took the War, by doing in the worst possible way what Timesizing does in the best possible way (= removing surplus manhours from the civilian job market), to get unemployment all the way down below 1%, boost wages, centrifuge&activate spending power and clinch a genuine economic recovery.]
  The government would ask parliament in a few weeks time to suspend the layoff restrictions, said Fillon, who is due on Wednesday to present to the government cabinet plans to "reform" France's 35-hour working week legislation. [our quotes - ed.]
  France's centre-right administration, elected in June, enjoys a massive majority in parliament.
  [Thus French voters screwed themselves royally and will now resume the high unemployment (12.6%) and poor economic performance they experienced during the center-right's previous playtime prior to 1997.]
  Fillon said he would ask trade unions and companies to come up with training plans to help workers acquire new skills.
  [Oh, they'll jump at that unincentivated request, won't they!]

1. Fewer hours at work can be better hours, by Paulette Thomas, WSJ, B7.
   The problem: Burnout.
   After 25 years, Sandra Hunter had plateaued. She owned a Pittsburgh security firm, Ace Lock Inc.,... She had once been energized by the new technologies, the complex jobs.... But after a couple of decades of rising daily at 5 am to work 60-70 hours a week, she had lost the spark. ...The firm grew to 14 employees. She was profitable, but she scarcely looked up from her labors.... She says, "After a while, you reach burnout stage." And a couple of years ago, two deaths in the family sobered her. She developed back problems. "I was frustrated with it all," she recalls.
   The solution:
   A fellow entrepreneur suggested she take part in PowerLink, a Pittsburgh nonprofit group that gathers together local executive volunteers to coach women-owned businesses. ...When she told them she went through 200 candidates to fill a job, they surprised her by saying that was a smart use of her time. The more confident she was in employees, the better she became at delegating, They also told her: Get a life.
   Now...she's re-energized at work by leaving it behind. She works about half the hours, swims every morning, and spends the early evening with a group that walks their dogs through a local park. She has strengthened her connection to hejr church.
   By working less, she has found, she accompliishes more. When her project manager came to her with a messy problem at 3:30 pm on a recent Friday, she was already clearing her desk. "I'll put that on the front burner Monday," she promised him. But, detached and relaxed for the weekend, a solution occurred to her before she left at 4 pm.
   This year's revenue reached a new high, coinciding, she notes, with a record low number of hours at the office....
   [That's the good news - an article praising shorter hours in the Wall Street Journal, especially after their shorter-hours Europe-bashing article on 8/8.]

2. [Now the bad news - a European country going in the opposite direction -]
   Portugal mulls changing holidays, AP 09/16/02 11:32 EDT via AOLNews.
   LISBON...- The government is in talks with the Roman Catholic Church on changing the dates of religious holidays as part of a crackdown on the cherished Portuguese custom of occasional four-day weekends, officials said Monday. The "conservative" [our quotes - ed.] government wants to end the tradition of so-called "bridges" whereby workers also take off a Friday or Monday whenever a public holiday falls on a Thursday or Tuesday.
   [Real conservatives don't want to end traditions - they want to conserve them.]
   Having several four-day weekends a year dents national output.
   [BFD]
   The government says Portuguese productivity stands at 60% of the EU average.
   [Welcome to the rat race.]
   Portugal has 12 public holidays per year, as well as local 'fiestas' when towns and cities close down to celebrate their patron saints.
   The Labor Ministry, which plans to introduce changes to the Labor Law, including more flexible working hours, said it wants to shift almost all public holidays to Fridays or Mondays. It wants the church's consent to ensure four religious holidays - including Corpus Christi and All Saints' Day - fall on those days, though senior church leaders have already spoken out against the changes.
   [Note the outdated equation of more hours with more output, never mind "Work smart, not hard." Note also the Puritanism of these radicals, misnamed "conservatives," despite their supposed Roman Catholicism - definition of a Puritan: "a person who has the nagging suspicion that somebody, somewhere, is having a good time." Companies and groups of people, political parties for instance, often have an emotional stance and you don't fit in if you have a different emotionality. Some companies are led by people who are constantly anxious and hurried. It doesn't matter how productive a relaxed person under them is, they don't believe it unless that person becomes anxious and miserable like themselves. There is little research on this area, but much is needed.]
   "It would mean rubbing out society's symbols in the name of economics," Lisbon Patriarch Jose Policarpo said.
   [No, in the name of stupid economics.]
   Trade unions, too, have indicated they will resist the alterations in upcoming labor negotiations with the government.
   [Here's a country that has a life, and it's cretinous current leaders want them to lose it. What shall it profit a nation, if it shall gain 200% of the EU average productivity - and lose its own soul?]

• Hyundai Motor expects 9.3 pct rise in 2003 sales, Reuters 09/15/02 21:48 ET via AOLNews.
  SEOUL -...South Korea's largest automaker..\..expects sales in 2003 to rise to 27 trillion won ($22.66B) from an estimated 24.7T won this year....
  Shorter work week
  Hyundai has posted robust increases in net profit and sales since late last year, aided by a government cut in luxury taxes aimed at boosting consumption. But the tax cut expired last month, while the won has strengthened about 9% against the dollar since mid-April, posing a risk to Hyundai's export price competitiveness.
  Hyundai could also see margins squeezed if South Korea implements a five-day work week now being studied which would eliminate Saturday half-days....
  [Here's a slightly earlier story with a variation-on-the-theme of this factoid -]
  S. Korea Hyundai Mtr sees '03 sales up 9.3% - paper, Reuters 09/15/02 19:33 ET via AOLNews.
  ...Hyundai plans to lower purchasing costs and other expenses next year to deal with a strong won and a shorter work week, the Korea Economic Daily said, citing Hyundai's 2003 business plan....
  • A strong won makes South Korean exports more expensive.
  • South Korea is studying a five-day work week which would eliminate Saturday half-days..\..
  The automaker plans to raise prices of autos sold in South Korea by 5-7%, while cutting back on incentives offered overseas, the newspaper said....
  [A strong won makes their exports more expensive and yet they're cutting their overseas incentives???]

• Organogenesis temporarily halts shipments of Apligraf and furloughs employees; Discussions with Novartis are continuing, Business Wire 09/13/2002 12:35 Eastern via AOLNews.
  CANTON, Mass...- Organogenesis Inc. said [yester]day that it has temporarily halted sales of its mainstay product, Apligraf®, to Novartis Pharma AG until it reaches an equitable resolution with the Swiss pharmaceutical corporation over the product's future.... Because of its current lack of cash flow as well as any agreement, the company has placed 110 employees on furlough for up to two weeks as it continues to work on protecting the health of Organogenesis and maximizing the company's opportunities for success....
  [Crudely estimating that a fairly conventional company projecting over a half-year furlough (26 wks) shifts to layoffs, 110 on furlough for 2 weeks is equivalent to 110x(2/26)= 8 layoffs, and therefore 8 jobs saved. At any rate, this is a primitive form of timesizing, not downsizing = trimming hours, not jobs, to cushion, not create, recession. An advanced form would be modulating the corporate workweek on at least a monthly basis according to revenues - and using the incidence of overtime to trigger cross-training and when necessary, hiring.]

• Thumbnail sketches of Sweden's political parties, Reuters 09/12/02 11:31 ET via AOLNews.
  STOCKHOLM...- Brief descriptions of the political parties running for Sweden's 349-seat single chamber parliament in a Sept. 15 general election:
  (1998 election result, % of votes/seats, in brackets)
  
  • Social Democrats (36.4/131)....
  • Left Party (12.0/43)....
  • Green Party (4.5/16)
    Champions of sustainable development, want environmental angles to be considered in all policy areas.... They want a shorter work-week and say everyone should be able to take a year off..\.. The Greens have cooperated with the Social Democrats and the Left Party in parliament but say they will not do so again unless admitted into government.... Opposed to EU-, EMU- and NATO-membership.
  • Moderates (22.9/82)
    Leading right-wing party....
  • Christian Democrats (11.8/42)....
  • Centre Party (5.1/18)....
  • Liberal Party (4.7/17)....

1. South Korea ponders a five-day workweek - Some ask what to do with time off - A worker worries that more free time means more time to spend money, by Don Kirk, NYT, W1.
   [Answering the 2nd header first, "That's why God created leisure industries!" As to spending money, that's one of the advantages of less work = more spending to avoid recession. As to the first question, what's held them back so long? Answer at *.]
   SEOUL -...Society here [is] slowly adjust[ing] to a luxury viewed almost as a right in other industrial countries: a 5-day workweek.... Although some companies, under union pressure or simply in deference to changing times, have already adopted the 5-day week, ...many...workers still toil until lunchtime on Saturdays.
   Beginning next year, however,...several million...Koreans will have to work only 40 hours a week, spread over five days, rather than the present 44 hours, including Saturday mornings, if the National Assembly passes legislation drafted by the labor ministry.
   [This is where the USA was in 1938 = 64 years ago. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 established the nationwide standard workweek at the 44-hour level in 1938, the 42-hour level in 1939 and the 40-hour level in 1940, yielding the famed 40-40-40 Plan with 40 hrs/wk maximum workweek, 40 cents/hr minimum wage, in nineteen-40. It was too little too late to have any effect on the Depression, of course. For that, the US House would have had to pass the original form of the FLSA, the 30-hour workweek bill that passed the US Senate five years earlier.]
   To soften the blow to owners and managers, the change would be phased in.
   • The bill stipulates that the 5-day week will go into effect next July at public corporations, workplaces with at least 1,000 workers and all banks and insurance companies.
   • Then by July 2004, the bill will apply to companies with at least 300 workers;
   • by July 2005, to those with 50 or more workers;
   • and by July 2006, to those with at least 30 workers.
   [They're being considerably more gradual than the French with their only 2-stage process -
   1. 'large' companies with more than 20 employees in 2000 and
   2. small companies and government in 2001.
   Gradualism with big systems is good.]
   According to the Labor Ministry, a presidential decree will say if and when companies with fewer than than 30 workers get a 5-day week. That qualification, the Ministry said, will allow the government "to flexibly respond, given the conditions of small and medium-sized firms," the ones most fearful of such a change.
   Lee Dae Jung, a manager in the Labor Ministry's International Cooperation Division, says such fears reflect minority views. "Everyone, both workers and employers, agree it is time to introduce the 5-day workweek," he said. "Polls show 60-80% of the people support reducing working hours. This is the trend."
   Still, objection to the terms of the government proposal by both management and labor groups, and the usual political jockeying, could kill the current plan. While South Korea as a nation and Koreans individually have proudlyl focused for 2 generationss on catching up with the major industrial powers, notably Japan, the former colonial ruler, they have generally accepted without question the need to work longer hours than people elsewhere.
   [*Pre-technology views die hard. Such as, "Work hard to get ahead."]
   Last year, the average South Korean worked 2,477 hours, according to a survey released in July by the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development [OECD]. Though comparisons are difficult - the OECD warns that what is tallied can vary greatly from country to country - the South Korea number is higher than that of the other countries reporting, including
   • the United States (1,821 hours),
   • France (1,532) and
   • the Netherlands (1,346).
   What spurred on the movement to reduce hours here is the realization that people in the countries that do the most business with Korea, namely the U.S., Japan and China, all put in fewer hours.
   • A 40-hour workweek has long been the norm in the U.S.
     [though in practice this is now lengthening due to job insecurity (no one wants to be first to leave the office at night) due to labor surplus due to downsizing]
   • Japan phased in a 40-hour week over 11 years beginning in 1988,
     [and from this factoid, we learn from experience that taking that long to implement a workweek reduction that still leaves the workweek far too long for any appreciable work&spendingpower sharing makes no perceptible contribution to economic recovery, because these were the years when Japan fatefully dropped the lifetime employment tradition that had maintained its domestic consumer base for so long and started mimicing America's destructive downsizing.]
   • and China adopted it 10 years ago.
   Most other countries have also adopted the 40-hour, five-day workweek, with some requiring less. Four years ago, for instance, France cut the number of hours a week before overtime to 35 from 39.
   [The official start of that cut was actually delayed two years to 2000.]
   The pressure for more leisure time has mounted among Koreans just about every time some government official or research institute makes yet another prediction of economic growth this year of at least 6%.
   But both management and labor organizations are so displeased with the compromises proposed by the government that officials fear that the National Assembly [based on French model?], dominated by the opposition Grand National Party and eager to embarrass the government in the runn-up to a presidential election in December, may vote it down. "All sides object to the law," said Hyun Jung Taik, senior economic adviser to Pres. Kim Dae Jung. "By showing strong objections, they try to get more. Previously, the attitude of the Assembly toward this very contentious issue was to let it pass away."
   Representatives of big business denounce the bill in unequivocal terms.
   [Same as some of them always do, even if we're talking about going from 84 to 77 hours a week, even if we were talking about going from all 168 hrs/wk to 164.]
   "We think the 5-day workweek is premature for the Korean economy," said Choi Song Suu, a research analyst for the Federation of Korean Industries, which is made up of the chairmen and presidents of the country's largest chaebol, or conglomerates. "We are still not rich. We should work more."
   [This moron obviously has a very limited concept of "rich."]
   Mr. Choi was scathing in his criticism of the work habits of white-collar workers. "White-collar productivity is far too low," he said. "It's true we work longer hours than in any other country, but our labor intensity is not good enough to introduce a 5-day workweek."
   [Did he ever consider that there may be an inverse relation there?]
   "A lot of workers are spending their time on private affairs, going to the clinic, talking to friends at home, e-mail messages."
   [Shocking! Doing something besides giving him more unspendable spending power by churning out more products for which there are inadequate domestic markets!]
   That kind of talk infuriates representatives of Korea's two major labor organizations, who say the proposed legislation is weighted toward business. "The average person here puts in 600-700 more hours a year than do people in the U.S. or Japan," said Yoon Young Mo, the international secretary of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, a umbrella organization that says it has 600,000 members. "I don't know how the[ir] econom[ies] ha[ve] survived if all workers don't work too hard."
   But to Mr. Yoon, the phased introduction of the 5-day week, and the failure to guarantee it for companies with fewer than 30 workers "is not a compromise." Companies with fewer than 30 workers hire 58.6% of the workforce, he said, and are typically regarded as "places where exploitation is the most severe."
   [Labor has to realize that changing the biggies first will change the culture and increasingly embarrass smaller and smaller employers until they exploit only their own families (who presumably are compensated by being "in the will").}
   The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions has promised an unremitting campaign for a stronger bill. "We are using our muscle for a campaign for a bill that will not negatively affect workers for small companies," Mr. Yoon said.
   [All-too-typical labor near-sightedness and lack of strategic commonsense, equal and opposite to that of some employers.]
   The issue is by no means simple.
   [Only if the near-sighted prevent it from being so.]
   "The manufacturers are not totally unreasonable," said Jang Ha Sung, a finance professor at Korea University and the country's leading shareholder rights activist. "For the large organizations, the five-day week is not a problem, but it may be a problem for small factories." Mr. Jang cited several issues that are not resolved, including disagreement over the number of holidays and adjustments in salaries as a result of reduced hours. Nonetheless, he said, the five-day week is inevitable. Most banks, in response to union pressures, adopted the five-day week in May, and other companies have followed.
   What about the complaint that many office workers are not working very hard? Mr. Jang predicted that most of them "will change their work habits when they see they have a shorter week to do their jobs."
   [That would be in line with Juliet Schor's data in "The Overworked American" about the paradoxical productivity bump that comes from decrements in working hours.]

2. [meanwhile, back in big family-values talking, family-neglect walking America -]
   When homework takes over the house, pointer blowout (to D1), WSJ, front page.
   The rise in the amount of work kids bring home from school drives some parents wild but may be about to change. Sue Shellenbarger advises on when it's time to intervene.
   [The headline on the actual article misleadingly spins parents as bad -]
   'The dog ate her paper': How parents help get their kids out of homework, by Sue Shellenbarger, WSJ, D1.
   All work, no play [chart]
   Below are the number of hours per week spent in different activities for children ages 9-12.
   • school, +29% (1981, 26hrs 15min; 1997, 33h50m)
   • studying, +28% ('81, 2h49m; '97, 3h37m)
   • outdoors, -60% ('81 1h58; '97 0h47)
   • hobbies, -43% ('81 0:16; '97 0:09)
   ...If your child's homework load is off the charts, this may be the year to step in. Harris Cooper, a professor at the University of Missouri, Columbia, who studies homework, believes that a long trend upward in the amount of homework assigned to US students is ready to reverse. "In the past year or so, there has been growing concern" about homework loads, Dr. Cooper says. Based on homework's history of 30-year cycles dating back to the 1800s, "it may very well be that the length of homework assignments is topping out"..\..
   • Many nights during the school year, Deborah Brown races home from a demanding job to face another kind of overload: her kids' homework. As a 6th-grader, her son wrestled with up six hours of homework a night, says Ms. Brown, a partner at a New York strategic-communications firm. Though she and her husband provided encouragement, he was exhausted and was neglecting his passion, basketball.
     [Gotta condition the little slackers to the Great American Sweatshop that the parents are digging themselves into!]
     Around 10 pm one night, she cracked. "You have to get up at 6:30, I have to get up at 5:30. I can't do this any more," she told her son. She gave him the answers to the remaining problems. But she didn't feel good about it. Looking back, she wishes she'd intervened with teachers to ease her son's workload....
     [And what about her own, which is setting the mold?]
     Ms. Brown plans to intervene this year if homework loads grow too heavy. "We're teaching the wrong values, in the sense that we're stressing quantity of work instead of quality, she says.
     [= BGO (blinding glimpse of the obvious)]
     "As adults we seem to work all the time these days. We shouldn't make our kids work all the time"..\..
     [Why not, if you diss yourself enough to treat yourself that way? Why keep all the masochism for yourself?]
   • One Boxford, Mass., father watched his teenage daughter struggle with multiple assignments until after 9:30 pm, but hesitated to call her teachers. "You never know whether you're coming across as wimpy, or whether a seemingly understanding teacher will, perhaps even subconsciously, grade your child lower even though they've 'agreed' to give her a break," he says. Fearing she would burn out, [he] finally did intervene. One teacher agreed to extend deadlines after [he] and several other parents called; [his] daughter suffered no consequences....
   [Note also -]
   Workakidaholics, letter to editor by Mark Porter of Oregon WI, WSJ, A15.
   In regard to Nancy Ann Jeffrey's Sept. 6 Weekend Journal story "The organization kid" {"Now some teens are being taught to run their lives like CEOs... how parents and schools are pushing for more efficient kids"): The parents of these kids are delusional and are further eroding what little childhood these kids probably had. Perhaps once the children reach middle age and realize what futile, miserable, driven lives they've led, they can then appropriately manage their parents' time in the nursing home....
   [Or as Big J said, "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"]

• (5/19)   Potential model for Japan [II] - Equal status of part-time, full-time staff seen as key, by Asako Murakami, Japan Times 5/18/2002 via Anders Hayden via SWT e-list.
  Japan is looking to the Netherlands, which has successfully implemented a number of work sharing programs, for ways to deal with its record levels of unemployment.
  [Wonder if the Dutch, not the Deutschers, is really where the Japanese Labor Minister went on his January visit to study worksharing systems?]
  Toshihisa Nagasaka, author of "Dutch Model" and a professor of international development at Takushoku University in Tokyo, said the Netherlands' equal treatment of part- and full-time workers is one of the key elements behind its success in reducing unemployment. "That measure has led to the spread of work sharing in the Netherlands," said Nagasaka, who served as the head of JETRO's Amsterdam office between 1993 and 1997. "It has also freed people from pressures to work full time, enabling them to gain initiatives to choose their desired lifestyle. In other words, it has created a society that makes it easier for people to materialize their wishes in life."
  Emiko Takenaka, a professor emeritus at Osaka City University, said that to promote equal treatment it is necessary to change family-centered social security and wage systems to better suit individuals.
  [Hey, the Japanese are really "getting" it. Work sharing and shorter hours are indeed part of a major societal seachange from a basis on reproductive pairs to productive singles, from procreative couples to creative individuals.]
  Takenaka, who also serves as executive director of the Osaka Gender Equality Foundation, said minimum wage levels need to be raised to enable people to live without having to depend on a spouse.
  [Alas, they still don't "get" the need to handle low-end wages entirely via the scarcity-engineering of manhours, i.e., by cutting the workweek, to avoid creating a rigid gap in the wage continuum for people trying to climb in or back in to the job market.]
  Individuals should also be given more financial support in the areas of child-rearing and education, she added.
  [Again, this kind of sharp-shooting (special support for childcare, for housing, for food, etc.) is unnecessary when labor is "wartime" scarce (without war but with shorter hours) to drive wages high enough. As for "education," you don't need education's implicit makework and lower limit on worklife when you have on-the-job training integrated right into your private-sector overtime design.]
  "Japanese businesses have a wage system that includes various benefits that should basically be covered by the government's social security programs, such as family allowances," she said, pointing out that such a wage system increases companies' costs and can deter them from hiring extra staff.
  [We agree in the area of health insurance, but family allowances amount to subsidies on population growth at a time of overpopulation. That's the whole reason for the shift from couples to singles as the basic social unit. If government grants allowances for anything in the future, it will necessarily be for contraception, not conception. In the Timesizing program, the population variables (imports, immigrants, births) are handled in Phase 5.]
  "People may ask how to come up with the financial resources needed to provide such extended social security, but giving part-time workers the same treatment as their full-time colleagues would solve the problem," she said, "since part-time workers (given the same working conditions) would pay taxes just like full-time workers."
  [When you get your workweek down to where it should be to make employees (to employers) a rare and valued resource again, as during wartime, instead of a disposable surplus commodity, you don't need extended social security.]
  To deal with the unemployment situation in Japan, representatives of the government, employers and labor unions agreed in March on basic work sharing principles to protect employment and create new jobs. In a bid to protect jobs, the government has also decided to subsidize companies that introduce work sharing programs. The agreement, reached between Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Chikara Sakaguchi, Kiyoshi Sasamori, president of the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo), and Hiroshi Okuda, chairman of the Japan Federation of Employers' Associations (Nikkeiren), points out that work sharing conducted under more flexible employment conditions would lead to a better balance between work, family and leisure.
  It remains unclear, however, just how they will promote such flexible employment models, according to Takenaka. "What's happening in the workplace now is that management is trying to cut personnel costs by replacing the full-time workforce with part-time workers who are employed under terrible conditions," Takenaka said. "The three parties need to present a vision of what kind of society we seek."
  Nagasaka believes work sharing should not merely be limited to solving the current unemployment problem. Rather, it should be used to change the entire employment system in a way that is aligned with the direction in which society is headed.
  [Amen to that.]
  "The way Dutch people live - balancing work and their private lives - can be a model for future industrialized societies, which will see aging populations," Nagasaka said. "In a graying society, we should have a system that makes it easier for various people, including the elderly and the disabled, to enter the labor market."
  [And the best system for that is a system that does not keep shying away from upper limits as the Dutch "part-time-up" approach has done, but that makes the upper limit (the top of the workweek) self-adjust according to the need (the length of the workweek varies inversely and automatically with the comprehensive unemployment rate - as long as unemployment is too high or rising, the workweek gradually shrinks to "squeeze out" the still-surviving but vanishing, market-demanded, human employment onto everyone who needs to be self-supporting, rather than taxpayer-supported). By shying away from an upper limit, the Dutch still do not solve the Chesterton pan-utopian flaw, and it will return to haunt them. You can't solve a problem at the top by fiddling at the bottom. That was FDR's mistake. He rejected a single cap in the center on the top of the workweek (the 30-hour bill) and had to run around the bottom and the sides trying ineffectually to make up for it with hundreds of not-quite-substitutes.]