Timesizing® Associates - Homepage

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

10/10/2002  timesizing consciousness in the news, aka glimmers of strategic hope - there's a lot of actual timesizing going on - trimming hours, not jobs - but it's unreported -

• Electronic engineering salaries in mainland China up by 16% according to annual EE Times-Asia salary survey, PRNewswire-FirstCall 10/09/2002 03:00 EDT via AOLNews.
  HONG KONG...- Global Sources Ltd. [yester]day released results of its Electronic Engineering Times-Asia (EE Times-Asia) 2002 Annual Salary and Opinion Survey, [which] compares and contrasts salary ranges within engineering communities in more than 10 Asian countries and regions, including mainland China, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and India....
  In general, engineers in the Asia-Pacific worked longer hours for their salaries in 2002.
  • Engineers in South Korea continue to work the longest, at an average of 56 hours per week compared with 55 hours in 2001.
  • Coming in at a close second are engineers in Taiwan, whose average working week increased by one hour to 52 hours.
  • Engineers in mainland China saw their average working week lengthen by four hours to 49 hours in 2002....
    
  [If they keep working longer hours on worksaving technology, their concentration of work and buildup of unemployed engineers will guarantee that their pay reverses direction and starts shrinking.]
  The average respondent [has] around seven years of experience. Over 50% hold at least a bachelor's degree in electronic or electrical engineering.   57% work principally in a design-related job, while another 20% are in engineering management. A complete analysis of the survey results is now available in the Oct 1-15 issue of EE Times-Asia and online at *eetasia.com.

10/09/2002  timesizing consciousness in the news, aka glimmers of strategic hope - no current stories so we delve into the barrel of late arrivals (there's a lot of actual timesizing going on - trimming hours, not jobs - but it's unreported) -

• (9/30)   It's about time workers take back some time, by Ann Perry, Sept 29 2002, San Diego Union-Tribune via signonSanDiego.com via Todd F. via John de Graaf via SWT email list.
  In 1970, a group of activists launched Earth Day, which galvanized the environmental movement and led to sweeping governmental reforms. Today another group is planning in the same way to raise the general consciousness about the threat to another American resource – time.
  Take Back Your Time Day is scheduled for Oct. 24, 2003, nine weeks before the end of the year, symbolizing the 350 more hours annually that Americans work on average than Europeans do. Participants will be encouraged to just say no to the overwork, overscheduling and overstress that threaten to overwhelm.
  "This is not about being anti-work," says John de Graaf, an event organizer and Seattle public television producer. "This is about finding balance." Of all the industrialized nations, says de Graaf, only South Korea has workers who put in more time at work than we do. The typical American gets 13 days of vacation, while 26% get none at all. "We're the only industrialized country in the world with no minimum guaranteed vacation of a least four weeks," says de Graaf. "We're No. 1 in overwork."
  Of course, the titans of U.S. industry will point to Europe and say the lifestyle is bad for the economy. To which de Graaf responds, "What is an economy for?" While all our long hours at the office are good for the gross domestic product, they're wreaking havoc with our lives, he says, from our health to family relations. Just consider the following:
  • Time pressure is one of the main reasons that Americans get too little sleep, too little exercise and eat far too many high-calorie processed fast foods. A slower pace could lead to better health and lower health-care costs, among the fastest-rising expenses for most American families.
  • Building strong families and relationships takes time, notes de Graaf. Children's lives can be as frenetic as their parents'. Americans often have to plan months in advance to arrange a social engagement with friends.
  • Time urgency can lead to safety issues. In an extreme form, urgency can be translated into "free-floating hostility" that erupts into road rage. On the other end of the spectrum, exhaustion from lack of sleep leads to thousands of traffic accidents each year.
  • Belonging to a community takes time, whether getting to know the neighbors or volunteering in a local project. More time also allows for political participation and even voting. It's no accident, says de Graaf, that Europeans tend to vote in far higher percentages than do Americans, who often cite lack of time as their reason for failing to make it to the voting booth.
  We all tell ourselves that we're working so hard to make more money. But is more money really the answer to balancing our personal finances? "People should think what it costs them to lead this frantic overworked lifestyle," de Graaf says. As an example, he describes -
  • the harried worker who throws a package of pre-scrambled eggs in the microwave rather than take a few minutes to cook a far less expensive breakfast.
    
  • People think of big box stores like Wal-Mart or Target as places to save money on items, he notes. But while consumers might go in to purchase one item on sale, "They buy more on impulse than they save."
  • Hurried and stressed consumers are a merchant's dream. They not only buy on impulse, but also for convenience, because of guilt and out of desperation – and all at prices higher than they would have paid under more leisurely circumstances.
  • They also play right into the hands of credit-card issuers and banks, which are quick to issue credit – and even quicker to levy late fees and higher interest rates that go on costing more month after month.
  • And as for the big-ticket personal finance items, it's no wonder that Americans spend more time planning their one-week vacations than their 20-year retirements. They need the first so desperately, and don't have time to marshal the resources for the second.
  So how can the American work/lifestyle be changed? Is this just a pipe dream?
  De Graaf, of course, makes it sound not so impossible. He says many personnel directors at large companies would actually like to see employees ease off on their hours. In lean times, some employers are already trying out the idea of giving vacation weeks to everyone without pay rather than lay off some.
  [I.e, timesizing, not downsizing.]
  Still others are experimenting with the idea of trading off shorter work hours for greater job security, rather than the current system of extremes whereby companies engage high numbers of employees during good times, then lay off workers and make those remaining carry high amounts of overtime. "Unemployment and overwork are two sides of the same coin," says de Graaf.
  He predicts there will be a huge interest in Time Day. "We right now have 70 colleges and universities lined up to do teach-ins."
  Expect to hear and see more. (Proposed bumper stickers include -
  • "Time Is A Family Value,"
  • "There's No Present Like The Time" and
  • "Medieval Peasants Worked Less Than You Do.")
  To be put on the mailing list, send an e-mail message to John de Graaf at jdegraaf@kcts.org
  ...Ann Perry can be reached at moneyperry@aol.com.

10/08/2002  primitive timesizing in the news, aka glimmers of strategic hope -

• World watch -...Asia/Pacific -...Briefly -...South Korea's Hyundai Motor, by David Oyama, WSJ, A20.
  ...said that its plants will be idle evenings, most weekends and on holidays starting next year after it agreed to a labor-union demand that work hours be cut to counteract worker fatigue.
  [Not to mention cutting workhours to create more jobs and job security.]
  The plants will go back to 8 hours of production a day, a spokesman said.
  [Not to mention the 40-hour workweek is going to be the law of the land in South Korea starting in 2003. And on the other side of the Pacific, another auto union is groping for job security -]
  DaimlerChrysler AG, WSJ, B10.
  The Canadian Auto Workers union...is seeking to preserve the jobs associated with a DaimlerChrysler plant in Windsor, Ontario, where the company's large-van production is slated to end next year....
  [One word - timesizing.]

• [the problem in a nutshell -]
  (8/24)  Feature - Israeli tech slump cuts jobs, ends perks, by Albert Robinson, Reuters 08/23/02 01:01 ET via AOLNews.
  TEL AVIV...- For Ronen, fired 3 months ago by an Israeli high-tech firm, the days of free lunches, weekly massages, company-paid weekends abroad and numerous other benefits are a distant memory.
  [Companies will do anything but what they need to do to maintain their own consumer base = trim hours and spread the vanishing work. Even the companies doing the most to make work vanish, high-tech companies, just don't get it.]
  Working once again [at an] about 15% lower \salary\ after a 2-month jobhunt [and] having applied for 45 positions..\..Ronen, like some of the thousands of bleary-eyed, but high-paid workers fired this year as the global high-tech slump has "forced" [our quotes - ed.] Israeli companiesto downsize drastically, has found work conditions have changed dramatically.
  [The only thing that has "forced" them into this suicidal strategy is their inability to think more than 2 moves ahead in chess and their lack of imagination.]
  "Salaries are down and there definitely aren't any more free lunches, weekly massages or weekends in (the Red Sea resort city of) Eilat and abroad," said Ronen, not his real name, a software engineer working in Tel Aviv. "One day I came into the office and the manager called me in and said I was out and asked if I could leave the premises within half an hour. He didn't say he didn't trust me (not to sabotage the computers or network) but that was the implication. This was a company I worked at for 2 years, frequently working 18-hours a day or more."
  [18x5 (assuming it's only 5 days) is a 90-hour workweek. So, even in Israel, among that all-in-the-family established-state-religion state. How different from the early days of kibbutzes and cooperation!]
  ...[A time] when high tech picks up...could be a long way off since Israel's high-tech sector has been hammered in the wake of a global technology slump. Barely 2 years ago, when technology was the main driver of Israel's economy, the country was considered by many as the 2nd-best tech centre behind Silicon Valley. The boom in the 1990s enticed engineers and others from the U.S., Europe, India and former Soviet Union states to move to Israel since jobs were plentiful, with high salaries and fantastic perks - that despite work hours being long and hard. "I used to be proud of being part of Israeli high-tech, now I realise I was naive," said Ronen. "It's just a job and you don't have any value beyond what you are hired to do."
  Tech jobs slashed
  Ronen is one of the lucky ones, finding a new job relatively quickly, but the technology slump has helped to send [Israeli] unemployment soaring well above 10%.
  [And with their laager mentality ("circle the wagons!"), they'd be a prime location for Timesizing.]
  ...Maya, not her real name, was wone of those who received a redundancy letter [ie: pink slip] this month [found] "the redundancy pay...good, but the uncertainty of not knowing who would leave and who would stay was terrible.... The (jobs) situation is bad, even if you are well qualified and have lots of experience. I'm [young] and I don't think I'll have too much trouble, but many of the older people are desperate."
  ["Desperate" older people in the Promised Land among the Chosen People?! Boy, do they need a design for sharing the vanishing work a la Timesizing.]
  While many of the established and publicly traded companies on Nasdaq may be able to weather the storm since they are flush with cash, start-ups dependent on private money [such as] InfinBand semiconductor start-up Mellanox, which...has just axed 67 jobs from its staff of 214 while cutting salaries for remaining employees..\..are suffering heavily - either closing or chopping staff and wages.... The Israel Venture Capital (IVC) research centre estimates 200 start-ups have folded this year due to the high-tech slump with as many as 6,000 workers fired [out of] 100,000 workers...employed by technology firms....
  Worsening recession
  With Israel's economy dependent on the high-tech sector, the slump has pushed Israel's economy into recession....
  [According to received "wisdom," isn't high tech supposed to be the recession-proof industry? Isn't technology supposed to "create more jobs than it destroys"? Clearly these ideas are false.]
  Unemployment [in Israel] was 10.5% in May, the last month for which data is available...in a country of 6.4m people.
  [And American analysts want to criticize France for 9% unemployment??? Israel is America's pet, so let high and mighty American analysts cast first the beam out of their pet's eye before they try to pull the mote out of their rival's eye. And they can't get unemployment figures in a small country out without a 3-month lag! What's up with that?]
  ...Seen heading to an all-time high of 11.5% next year, [that kind of unemployment] would translate into 300,000 jobless....
  [So if 300,000 is 11.5%, then the total Israeli workforce is 2.6m people or 40.5% of the total population.]
  Having contracted by 0.6% last year, the economy is forecast to drop...this year with scant growth seen in 2003 as Israel struggles with an almost 2-year Palestinian uprising that has pushed up defence costs.
  [Maybe they should "not do unto others as they would not be done to" and "let my people go" - quit squatting on the Left Bank and "let justice run down like waters." Or, if tired of their own religion, try practising some Gandhi-ism. Why do the impoverished and dispossessed have to do the right thing first before Israel will do it?]
  Indeed, government figures released this month show the [Israeli] economy fell an annualised 2.0% in the 2nd quarter from the prior quarter.
  [How much did the Palestinian economy fall in that period? Do they still have an economy?]
  In the first half of 2002, [Israel's] GDP fell 2.9% from the same period of 2001. Tourism, construction and high-tech exports have been battered and foreign investors deterred by the security uncertainty.
  According to Ronen, the difficulty of finding work, the tension caused by the threat of daily Palestinian attacks and a tax burden of up to 60% could force many people to leave Israel and seek work elsewhere.
  [Whoa, a 60% tax bracket? Funny, we never hear "conservative" American analysts mention that. And this is the country we give 3½ BILLION dollars to every year in "foreign aid" - our biggest single-country foreign-aid outlay?!? Since Israel is a religious state, you could probably make a case that this foreign-aid allocation is an unconstitutional unseparation of religion and politics, effectively an established religion all American taxpayers are forced to contribute to regardless of what religion they are.]
  "Life is hard and jobs are difficult to find. Taxes are high and it's difficult to make ends meet even on a so-called good salary," Ronen said. "I know people who want to work abroad. And the way they feel now, they don't ever want to come back."
  [The day of the religious state is over. And unfortunately, the day of well-designed work-sharing systems such as Timesizing has not yet come. So we're stuck in this ridiculous situation in the middle, when we're surrounded by miraculous worksaving technology but we're stupidly making jobs difficult to find and making life hard. And we're criticizing Europe for making life easier (see 8/8/2002), even though not even they yet have well-designed work-sharing systems.]
  [Additional followup factoid -]
  Public workers strike in Israel, AP 10/13/02 17:16 EDT via AOLNews.
  ...Sunday is the first day of the work week in Israel.

1. French September services PMI grows at slower speed, by Glaieul Mamaghani, Reuters 10/04/02 03:51 ET via AOLNews.
   PARIS...- France's service sector, accounting for the lion's share of the euro zone's second biggest economy, grew for the eighth month running in September, but more slowly as demand weakened, a CDAF/Reuters survey showed on Friday.
   At 53.5, the catch-all Business Activity Index in the survey still posted gains above the no-change level of 50.0, but the expansion was the slowest seen since January. The survey showed the services sector's performance suffered from the uncertain economic climate and falling demand.
   [Here we see an article trying desperately to paint the chief reason for France's recession-resistance, its nationwide worksharing via a shorter workweek reduced only to 35 hours, as a Bad Thing.]
   These findings match data released on Tuesday showing that September consumer morale fell to its lowest level in six months, while recent figures indicated unemployment was flat at 9.0% in August.
   [In a commonsense future economy of say, 200 years from now, an automated workweek length, designed to gradually shrink as long as unemployment was too high or rising, would now be shrinking from 35 to 30 hours a week at the rate of half an hour every six months or even every quarter, thus spreading the vanishing human employment and further centrifuging the income dba spending power of the nation out to the people who actually spend it.]
   In September, new business showed its weakest pace of growth in 11 months at 52.9, down from 54.8 in August.
   "Panel members generally attributed the easing in the pace of demand expansion to uncertainty among customers over the current strength of domestic and global markets," said NTC Research, which compiles the survey.
   As a result of weaker demand, outstanding business contracted to 49.5.
   Also, for the first time in eight months, employment fell and posted losses at 49.0. The survey reported that 13.9% of companies chose to reduce staff in response to rising input costs and restructuring programmes.
   Indeed, input prices inflated to 58.4 in September against 57.5 in the previous month.
   "Firms across all of the broad sectors covered by the survey referred to the continuing effects of the 35-hour week scheme as being the major contributing factor to input price inflation during the month," NTC Research said.
   [And yet it is the big wage component of input price "inflation" that centrifuge the income of the nation and get the spending power away from the people who have more than they can spend to the people who actually spend it, thereby providing the consumer base/effective demand/the markets that better support the production facilities in which the wealthy are invested and on which they depend for their investment stability, rather than consolidating spending power so tightly that they actually suction the spending power away from their own investments.]
   In more competitive markets, companies found it hard to pass on these increasing costs to prices charged and the index expanded at its slowest rate since June 1999 at 51.0.
   Although business expectation recorded its lowest level of expansion this year at 68.4, fuelled by fears over low economic activity and international security, companies remained optimistic about future activity.
   The survey reported that "45% of panel members anticipated that their workloads would increase over the next twelve months."
   [Compare the upbeat article on France below on 10/01, and the downbeat article on the U.S. this Monday -]
   A little off the bottom line - As hard times persist, customers spend less at the hair salon, by Daisy Hernandez, 10/07/2002 NYT, A20.

2. [pre-timesizing -]
   6 firms, janitors reach interim pact - Contractors break ranks, by Kimberly Blanton, Boston Globe, front page.
   Breaking ranks with other cleaning contractors, Atlanta-based One Source reached an interim agreement yesterday with janitors that reduces the number of hours unionized janitors must work to qualify for health insurance.
   [This development brings in timesizing from the bottom, similar to the Netherlands, by making part-time as good as "full" time (40 hrs/wk) in terms of benefits.]
   Local 254 of the Service Employees International Union [SEIU], which represents about 10,700 janitors in the Boston area, announced [it] with 6 cleaning companies, including One Source, which employ about 2,000 janitors.... Effective January 2005, janitors will be eligible for health benefits after working 27.5 hours per week, according to the agreement. Currently, they must work 29 hours for the benefits, and a small minority of janitors currently do. In the interim, the companies will establish a system for promoting janitors and moving them to buildings with more than 400,000 sq.ft., where they would be given the 27.5 hours necessary to qualify for the benefits. Employees are also are eligible for 3 sick days.
   The interim agreement does not address pay issues, which the 6 companies and the union will negotiate separately, a union spokesman said. ...The union said if the contract's terms were extended to all cleaning companies, an additional 1,500 janitors would be eligible for health insurance....

1. [gov't subsidized work sharing a slow go -]
   Only 2 firms receive gov't work-sharing subsidies, Kyodo News 10/03/02 00:34 EDT via AOLNews.
   TOKYO...- Only two companies have been approved to receive government subsidies for introducing work-sharing systems after the subsidies were introduced in June because employers remain slow to apply, public labor officials said Thursday. The work-sharing system allows workers to share jobs. Employees work shorter hours at less pay, but this allows firms to hire jobless workers.
   [And when the labor market starts tightening up, the pay starts rising, despite the shorter hours, just as it did 1840-1940 when hours cut in half (80 to 40/wk) and pay multiplied.]
   The two firms, both small manufacturers, are located in Fukushima and Kyoto prefectures. Their names and other details have been withheld to allow them to smoothly introduce the work-sharing system.
   Analysts blame the severe economic situation for the lack of applications. ''The situation is so severe that it allows few employers to think of introducing the system,'' said one analyst who follows the issue.
   [That's too bad, considering that the only thing making it better is...introducing the system, and activating the spending power of the nation by harnessing market forces to centrifuge it.]
   In order to introduce the work-sharing system, employers need to obtain an agreement from their labor unions, which also slows down the application process, he pointed out. An official at the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry also said many employers are not aware of the subsidies.
   The government plans to provide the subsidies to about 3,000 companies over the next three years. But the plan may not be implemented as smoothly as expected due to the slow pace of applications.
   Due to the prolonged economic slump and increased unemployment, the government agreed with labor and employer representatives in March to set the subsidies. It began accepting applications from employers in June. The number of total applications submitted so far is not immediately known.
   Companies can receive subsidies when they hire workers aged between 45 and 59 (who lost their jobs for reasons such as company restructuring) through public job-placement offices, within six months from the approval. Employers who plan to introduce the system must apply with a concrete plan to their local labor bureau.
   Once approved, they will receive a one-time subsidy payment of 300,000 to 1 million yen, depending on their size [that's roughly $3000-10,000]. Additional subsidies of 150,000 yen to 300,000 yen per person [$1500-3000] will be given when the number of hired jobless workers increases.
   [Are those also one-time? Ifso, no wonder nobody's applying. It's not worth the short-term paperwork let alone the long-term dérangement. We still think they should bring it in by putting a little tax on overtime and exempting training and hiring, and then gradually raising the tax. That's basically Timesizing/Phase 2.]

2. ["unfettered capitalism" is a 48-hour workweek -]
   N.Korean zone chief bumps into limits of authority, by John Ruwitch, Reuters 10/03/02 08:23 ET via AOLNews.
   SHENYANG, China...- China-based Yang Bin may be the new governor of Communist North Korea's fledgling capitalist zone, but already there appear to be clear limits to his authority - on both sides of the border. After promising at first unfettered access, and then temporary visas to visit Pyongyang's showcase-to-be Sinuiju enclave, Yang's bid to promote the new zone to the international community ran into another hitch on Thursday.
   North Korea, Yang said, was taking longer with the visas than expected, and it could be several weeks before foreign reporters were allowed into the new special administrative region just across from the Chinese border city of Dandong. And his efforts to host the reporters at his corporate base in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang ran into trouble as well - provincial police declared his news conference "illegal reporting" and ordered all journalists to leave the area....
   Unfettered capitalism?
   The blueprints for Sinuiju call for unfettered capitalism, but analysts and diplomats have questioned how Pyongyang and Yang will be able to build a more attractive investment zone than those across the border in China, let alone Hong Hong.
   Yang unveiled the zone's Basic Law on Thursday, which details the wide ranging autonomy it will have from Pyongyang and sets guidelines for economic activity there. The document Yang showed reporters promised that North Korea's cabinet and other government bodies would stay hands off for 50 years and provides details of the economic standards in the zone, like its 48-hour work week and 16-year-old working age.
   The Chinese-born Dutch businessman...a tulip tycoon..\..was appointed chief executive of the Sinuiju administrative region by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in late September.... The zone is eventually to be split from the rest of the isolated Communist country by a wall, and will have its own government and laws that will be modelled, Yang says, on the best of European, American and Asian systems.
   Yang said it could take one to two months for a temporary quarantine on Sinuiju to be put in place and up to two years for a permanent one to be established. Up to 500,000 residents now in the city would have to be moved, and a new community would be built, he said.

1. [almost primitive-timesizing -]
   Northwest Airlines plans to cut about 1,600 flight attendants, AP via NYT, C6.
   ...because of the continuing slump in the industry since 9/11. The carrier, based in Eagan, Minn., asked its flight attendants to take voluntary leaves to reduce their numbers to match its forecast level of flying for this year and next. If enough flight attendants do not take voluntary leaves to reduce the payroll by 1,600 positions, there will be more layoffs.... Flight attendants who take temporary leaves of 1-12 months retain their seniority and recall rights and travel benefits, but not company-sponsored healthcare.
   [We'll take the 12-month figure as the definite latest rehiring date; however, it needs continuous health insurance and no threat of layoffs. Northwest could get rid of the threat if it put this program on a weekly basis for the whole company instead of this monthly basis for just 1600 employees. Then they could just adjust the company's workweek monthly or even weekly and implement overtime-targeted cross-training and continue indefinitely as the most flexible and competitive airline comparable to Nucor in steel or Lincoln Electric in welding equipment.]

1. Best Software launches new 'For Life' branding campaign - Awareness initiative highlights customer benefits of market-leading solutions from a single, trusted vendor, PRNewswire 10/01/2002 08:04 EDT via AOLNews.
   BOSTON - ..."Small and mid-sized business owners are increasingly busy balancing the demands of their business with those of their personal life"..\..according to Executive VP and Chief Marketing Officer Nina Smith....   "Our new...For Life campaign..\..invites readers to weigh the importance of certain business situations - like the demands of merging multiple databases - against the desire for a 40-hour workweek and other 'real-life [out]side of work' situations."...
   [Hey at least they're talking about limiting the work-spread of small businesses to 40 hours a week.]

2. [here's a development that might make it easier for timesizing -]
   Group health insurance offered to freelancers - A new focus on overlooked workers - Free-agent workers now make up almost a third of the work force nationally, by Stephanie Strom, NYT, A28.
   Sara Horowitz's nonprofit insurance organization, Working Today, provides health insurance for part-time, contract and temporary workers in New York. [photo caption]
   [Not exactly the most well[-omened name for a business serving free-lancers.]
   Working Today provides portable, affordable health insurance for freelance workers in New York.
   [It's the portability and the non-dependence on "full time" in terms of the 62-year-old 40-hour workweek that facilitates, e.g., trimming the workweek 10% for everyone instead of trimming 10% of the workforce. This would answer some of Juliet Schor's caveats about benefits in The Overworked American, p.145.]
   The concept would seem to be an easy sell, given the swelling ranks of part-time, contract and temporary workers across the country. But the organization...struggled since its inception to find financing to stay afloat long enough to stand on its own two feet....
   Then, the September 11 Fund, the 2nd-largest pool of philanthropic money raised to help victims of the disaster (after the Red Cross) faced a vexing problem that only Working Today could solve: how to provide a year's worth of health insurance to 15,000 people who are linked only by the effects of the attack. Suddenly, Working Today looks poised to be a model for delivering health insurance and other benefits in a new way, one better suited to today's mobile, more fluid workforce, which is exactly what Ms. Horowitz, winner of a MacArthur "genius" award in 1999, had hoped when she cooked it up....
   [She got a MacArthur award and was still struggling???]

3. [You know something has fundamentally shifted when people are withholding work in order to get more work, and it's happening more and more often. Here's a current example -]
   Massachusetts: Janitors strike, by Katherine Zezima, NYT, A22.
   Thousands of janitors picketed outside area office buildings on the first full day of a strike for higher wages, full-time work and health benefits.
   [Little do they know that the only sustainable solution to their grievances is to redefine "full time" on an automatically, flexibly adjusting basis a la timesizing.]
   Talks between the union, Local 254 of the Service Employees International Union, and a cleaning contractor broke down after only two hours. The union, which represents more than 10,000 janitors, is demanding that many of the workers' part-time shifts be converted to full-time jobs with health insurance.
   [How a propos of our preceding article! But this is the reverse of timesizing = sharing the vanishing work. This is consolidating the vanishing work, and that of course entails downsizing -]
   A spokesman for the Maintenance Contractors of New England said that the switch to full-time work would mean that thousands of janitors would lose their jobs as the work was consolidated.
   [And that, of course, would mean thousands of desperate janitor wannabe's willing to do your janitorial job for less, thereby driving down your bargaining power and wages and benefits, including health insurance, even more. And indeed, according to a more recent article, this is already happening even without this near-sighted union winning its demand and thereby shooting itself in the foot -]
   Replacement janitors faced with hard choices - 'They have their rights, and we have our necessities' - Mario Melendez, replacement worker, by Abel & Bombardieri, 10/04/2002 Boston Globe, A1.
   ...Their desperation, they say, has driven them to...prepare to do something they don't want to do, but feel compelled to: cross a picket line with scores of others and betray thousands of their fellow Central American immigrants, on strike since early this week.... Melendez [is] trying to support his wife and 2 children back in El Salvador. "I don't have money to eat," said [Maria] Lopez...who sees the strike by Boston-area janitors as an opportunity. "If I unite with them, are they going to give me money? Are they going to feed me? This is our stomachs demanding our help!"
   The dire need for [rigid 40-hour workweek full-time] jobs among the area's growing number of impoverished residents, many of them Latino immigrants who see $10 an hour as a good wage, has made it easier for contractors such as Unicco Service Co. to fulfill threats to replace striking janitors....
   [The solution is so obvious - share the vanishing work among all jobseekers, and "incidentally," enforce our immigration laws so we have some control over the framework of this shift. Look at what our lame immigration situation has resulted in so far -]
   ..\..Cousins Maria Lopez and Mario Melendez don't speak a word of English, although they have lived in East Boston for two years....
   [Unskilled is one thing, but not speaking a word of the language of the nation you're moving to is a lot more serious. And they've already been here two years?! And why are we admitting people who don't speak a word of our language in the first place? Do we need immigrants that badly? If so, why aren't we taking care to teach them English when they get here? Why aren't we guiding them to the thousands of well-paying jobs for unskilled people that we need them so badly for? The lack of answers for these questions demonstrate that, in yet another area, we are shoving ourselves down into the Third World as fast as we can. How should immigration policy be decided? It is clearly so hot a potato that it can only be decided in one way - public referendum.]

• [another of the rare stories we get in the workoholic English-language media on the boost for French business thanks to their shorter workweek, not to mention the enhancement of their quality (and style) of living -]
  French Spending More Time at Table, by Joseph Coleman, AP 09/30/02 19:36 EDT via AOLNews.
  [Another of this type of story appeared on 4/29/2001 = French buying more books, CDs, due to 35-hour week, paper says.]
  PARIS - Start off with a salad or soup, move onto the main course, then finish off with some cheese, a dessert and coffee. Have a hard time fitting that into a half-hour lunch break?
  Then do like the French and take a little more time.
  A new study on how France spends its time says the French are stretching out those pleasurable minutes at the table.
  The study, which includes a 21-page section on eating habits from 1986-1998, said the French have increased the total time spent eating each day by 13 minutes, to an average of two hours 13 minutes.
  The study was published last week by the government statistics agency INSEE.
  Time spent socializing in restaurants or with guests at home increased from an average of 31 minutes to 36 minutes per day. The report did not have statistics from more recent years.
  But a look around downtown Paris at lunchtime seems to confirm the study's findings: The French love to take their time eating.
  Small restaurants and cafes bulge with diners chatting over full plates and glasses of wine, often with cigarettes in hand. Sidewalk tables do a bustling business well into autumn, advertising two- or three-course meals on hanging chalkboards.
  "It's very important to take time for lunch in Paris,'' said Elyett Bitton, finishing her coffee at Le Roosevelt cafe on Monday.
  Bitton practices what she preaches. She started lunch at a park-side restaurant at around 12:30 p.m. on a gorgeous late September day, and was finally winding down at Le Roosevelt at around 2:15 p.m.
  "I didn't have any work today - but that's not normal,'' said Bitton, who runs an office furniture store.
  The INSEE study also found the traditional family dinner at home was still a mainstay in France, despite pressures of work and school that encourage family members in other countries like the United States to eat separately.
  "The schedule and place of dinners have changed little,'' the food section of the study reads. The study noted that the French spent 76.7% of their eating time in 1998 at home, a drop of only 1.1% from the previous study in 1986.
  One factor that encouraged more socializing over meals was the increasingly active retiree population, according to the study. And young people have more pocket money to spend at cafes in part because they are living with their parents longer, it found.
  The French are getting more time to linger over their espressos with the introduction of the 35-hour workweek, which has been phased in since 2000. The workweek was previously 39 hours.
  It's not clear, however, what effect that will have on eating habits. The INSEE study found that workers on average spent 16 minutes less on the job in 1998 than they did in 1986, but it was not a major factor in the change in eating time.