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Timesizing News, October 21-31, 2002
[Commentary] ©2002 Phil Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622, Porter Sq, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080

10/31/2002  basic timesizing in the news, aka glimmers of strategic hope - nothing compelling today so we dip into the barrel of late arrivals -

• (10/23)   Morris urges unions to back school reforms, Reuters 10/22/02 via AOLNews.
  LONDON...- British Education Secretary Estelle Morris warned teaching unions on Tuesday to back government plans to reform classroom practices or risk losing millions of pounds in extra funding. After a year of negotiations with unions, Morris unveiled plans to allow classroom assistants to take over some lessons with the introduction of a new professional grade of teaching assistant. The scheme is unpopular with Britain's biggest teaching union, the National Union of Teachers, which fears the sidelining of qualified teachers could lead to a dilution of standards....
  Morris defended her school plans, saying they were the only way forward if teachers' workloads were to be reduced.... Teaching unions have pressed for shorter hours, highlighting the link between teacher shortages and heavy workload.
  [Note the ambivalence of unions to logical next steps in trying to grant their demand for shorter hours in the absence of systemic work sharing.]
  Long hours of marking, preparation and covering for absent colleagues caused stress and led to many teachers leaving the profession, they claimed.
  As well as hiring an extra 50,000 classroom assistants, the reform package will include a limit on time spent covering for sick colleagues and guaranteed lesson preparation time.

1. [some good news in the midst of bad news -]
   Exfo to offer employees alternatives to job cuts, Reuters 10/29/02 15:11 ET via AOLNews.
   [Any relation to Expo, as in "Expo 67"?  Naa, that was in Montreal.]
   QUEBEC CITY... - Exfo Electro-Optical Engineering Inc. <EXF.TO> <EXFO.O> told Reuters on Tuesday it will meet production employees on Wednesday to offer them the stark choice of reduced working hours or more job cuts.
   [Hey, what's so "stark" about keeping your job during a recession - and getting more free time?! This is the way of the future, timesizing, not downsizing. By preventing growth in the numbers of desperate jobseekers willing to do your job for less, it prevents market forces from jamming down your pay. And if it's applied more broadly in terms of a citywide or regional workweek reduction, the perceived labor shortage engages market forces in raising pay so you wind up with, e.g., 30 hrs work for 40 hrs pay or better, the kind of thing that happened from 1840 to 1940 as working hours were cut in half (from 80-84 hrs/wk to 40) and pay was multiplied many times.]
   The Quebec City maker of fiber-optic testing equipment, suffering from the downturn in the telecoms industry, said it would offer production workers two options to avoid layoffs: a four-day work week for about 26 weeks, or a four-week layoff over Christmas.
   [Hey, maybe Quebec will seize the world shorter-hours lead from la patrie, France.]
   "The months of December and January are usually more quiet, so we want to minimize the impact," Exfo spokesman Vance Oliver said.
   The firm has been forced to slash hundreds of jobs over the past two years and it was dropped from the key Toronto Stock Exchange S&P/TSX composite index <.GSPTSE> last month. Exfo now has 850 employees.
   [Guess they've slashed "down to the bone" and now they have to find an intelligent response to falling demand for a change - one that doesn't help it to fall so efficiently.]
   Oliver said the company hopes to find common ground with its employees on Wednesday. "We are trying to get a solution that would satisfy all parties involved," he said.
   The meeting is set for late Tuesday afternoon in Quebec City.
   Exfo lost about $309 million in fiscal 2002, its worst year since it was launched in 1985. The firm has said it expects a pro forma loss ranging between 3 cents and 5 cents a share for the first quarter of fiscal 2003, with sales between $16 million and $18.5 million.
   The company's shares were up 1 Canadian cent at C$3.40 on Tuesday afternoon on the Toronto Stock Exchange after being down as much as 13 Canadian cents in the morning. The stock has traded between C$24.76 and C$2.01 over the past 52 weeks. ($1=$1.56 Canadian)

2. [and some bad news amid good news -]
   Members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) shout anti-goverment slogans, by Kim Kyung-Hoon, Reuters photo caption 10/29/2002 via AOLNews.
   ...during a rally near the National Assembly hall in Seoul, October 29, 2002. More than 300 members of KCTU [Korean Confederation of Trade Unions?] staged a rally on Tuesday [10/29] to block the parliament's passage of laws on a five-day workweek and demanded improved working conditions.
   [At any one time, it seems that only 50% of labor are smart enough to realize that workweek reduction is the KEY "improved working condition" because the perceived shortage of labor it generates harnesses powerful market forces in raising labor's bargaining power.]

1. [the good news]
   Seattle man wants a day off for all, by Niki Hing, Scripps Howard News via Seattle Post-Intelligencer Oct 28 2002 via *seattlepi.nwsource.com.
   [Compare (9/30) story that we excerpted on 10/09/2002.]
   John de Graaf is on a mission: He's working hard to get Americans to work less. And if he gets his way, the entire country will have Oct. 24 off next year. De Graaf, an independent television producer for KCTS/9 in Seattle, has long been concerned that most Americans are overworked and suffer from lack of leisure time. His solution is to lead a national effort to establish *"Take Back Your Time Day" for Oct. 24.
   He hopes the day will give Americans some much needed rest and respite. He also hopes the day will spark a new conscientiousness about how too much work deteriorates quality of life. "We need a national conversation about our values," de Graaf said. "When we don't have enough time, it affects everything in our lives, from family and health to the environment."
   According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Americans work an average 237.5 days a year. That's more than any other developed nation, including Japan. It's also 20 more days each year than 25 years ago.
   According to the results of a survey released by the Families and Work Institute in 2001, people are feeling the crunch of those extra hours on the job. Nearly one-third of U.S. workers reported feeling overworked or overwhelmed. "This is about finding balance," de Graaf said. "The U.S. is No. 1 in productivity, but we're not No. 1 in other important things like health or happiness."
   De Graaf chose Oct. 24 to commemorate the nine weeks before the end of the year, which symbolizes the average 350 more hours Americans work than Europeans. Europeans receive an average six weeks of paid vacation - Americans average two weeks. Moreover, 26 percent of Americans got no vacation time at all last year.
   De Graaf came up with the idea for "Take Back Your Time Day" in conjunction with the Simplicity Forum earlier this year. He already has some support. More than 500 people across 30 states signed up for his mailing list and some 70 colleges and universities have requested information on how they can celebrate or hold teach-ins. Like-minded academics are lending a hand as well. Many are contributing to the official "Take Back Your Time" handbook de Graaf is editing.
   On the Net: To learn more, go to *www.timeday.org

2. [the bad news]
   Miyakejima disaster relief worker's death stemmed from overwork, Kyodo News 10/28/02 05:34 EDT via AOLNews.
   TOKYO...- A labor standards supervision office in Tokyo said Monday it has acknowledged that the death of a 53-year-old man who took part in a disaster relief project on the volcanic island of Miyakejima was caused by overwork.
   The Chuo Labor Standards Inspection Office decided to grant the family of the man survivors' annuity compensation and funeral assistance, which was requested by his widow in September last year, in effect admitting that it was a case of ''karoshi.''
   The labor ministry said it is probably the first case for the labor standards inspection office to admit death related to overwork for a worker participating in disaster relief for volcanic eruption.
   According to the labor office, the man, a native of the evacuated island south of Tokyo, had participated in the project, which included road paving work, on the island since April last year.
   After suddenly falling ill on June 19 last year he was taken to a Tokyo hospital by helicopter but died of acute heart attack the same day.
   The labor office decided that the man was under excessive psychological strain as workers there were required to wear gas masks and gas detectors because of continued volcanic gas emissions there. The disaster relief project started in October 2000.
   Volcanic activity on Miyakejima, in the Izu island chain some 200 kilometers south of the capital, began at the end of June 2000. All 3,800 residents were evacuated in September that year as large-scale eruptions and pyroclastic flows continued.
   

• Overtime burden rises for Japanese men, Reuters 10/27/02 03:50 ET via AOLNews.
  TOKYO...- Japanese men may be literally working themselves to death. More than 21.4 percent of Japanese men work more than 80 hours of overtime a month as of July this year, the highest level in a decade, the Health and Labour Ministry said in a survey..conducted in July each year,.\..released on Sunday and quoted by Kyodo news agency.
  [Hoo-ieee, that's 80x12= over 960 hrs/yr or 960/52= 18.46 hrs/wk.]
  The ministry has previously linked overtime of more than 80 hours per month for an extended period to karoshi or death from overwork.
  More downsizing due to tough economic conditions was said to be responsible for the increase, a rise of 0.2 percentage point from last year.... The situation was worst for men in their late 20s to early 30s, some 27% of whom work more than 80 hours of overtime a month, followed by 25.7% of those in their late 30s.
  The toll this takes on the nation's health is significant. The number of deaths from overwork - known as karoshi - leapt 68% to a record 143 in the fiscal year ended in March, although the Health Ministry said at least part of that was due to a change in standards last December by which labour inspectors study the link between overwork and death. The new standards stress that there is a strong link between karoshi and overtime of more than 100 hours in the final month, and with overtime of more than 80 hours per month for two to six months before death.
  Karoshi become a buzzword in the 1980s when the Japanese worker secured a reputation for spending countless hours at work and putting work before hobbies, social commitments and even family.
  [Here are excerpts from the longer Kyodo version direct -]
  21% of men work over 80 hours overtime per month, Kyodo News 10/27/02 03:10 EDT via AOLNews.
  TOKYO...- More than one-fifth of male Japanese employees, or 21.4%, work more than 80 hours of overtime per month, the highest in a decade, according to a labor force survey released Sunday by the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications.
  [Hmm, who did the survey, the Ministry of Public Mgmt or the Ministry of Health?]
  In particular, about one in four male workers in their late 20s to early 30s, or 27.1%, work more than 80 hours of overtime per month, which is the amount of time the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare determines as having a strong causal relationship with deaths from overwork, according to the survey conducted in July.
  Amid the ongoing record-high unemployment situation, male employees in their 30s are experiencing increased work burdens as more middle-aged men lose their jobs due to downsizing, the survey said.
  [Overwork next to unemployment?
  Japan needs more energetic worksharing and Timesizing! See story on Sanyo's worksharing, 8/22/2002 #2.]
  The survey found that among the 31.19 million full-time male company employees in July, 6.66 million, or 21.4%, work more than 60 hours per week, which is equivalent to more than 80 hours of overtime per month.
  For those working more than 60 hours per week ranked by different age brackets, those in their late 20s to early 30s recorded the highest percentage, followed by 25.7% of those in their late 30s and 24.9% of those in their early 40s.
  More than one-fifth of all age groups from the late 20s to late 40s also worked more than 80 hours of overtime in the month, the survey said.
  When comparing the overtime conditions in July, the proportion of male workers with more than 80 hours of overtime per month hovered around 18% from 1993 to 1999, but has continued to rise for three consecutive years since it exceeded 20% in 2000.
  [And U.S. employees still average longer worktime than Japanese on an annualized basis???]

• Show traces home improvement history, by Carl Hartman, AP 10/25/02 19:14 EDT via AOLNews.
  WASHINGTON - ...A new show at the National Building Museum, "Do It Yourself Home Improvement in 20th Century America," says that the home improvement movement has through the years [broadened its masculine base, increasingly included women, and] strengthened family ties. It finds that the "can-do" attitude of returning GI's and their baby-boom offspring spurred the $45B-a-year home improvement [industry] now so much a part of Americans' leisure activities.
  The show's organizers trace the roots of the do-it-yourself movement to the first leisure power tool, a foot-operated jigsaw used to make the fancy decorative scrollwork known as gingerbread, which launched a woodworking fad in the 1870s and 1880s.... Rising prosperity and increased leisure time with the spread of the five-day work week gave working and middle-class Americans the time and money to improve their homes....
  [Do-it-yourself and home improvement weren't mentioned in the catalog of French industries that benefited from France's reduction to the 35-hour-workweek (see 4/29/2001) but they may well have been.]
  The museum show remains open through Aug.10, 2003.
  On the net:
  National Building Museum: *www.nbm.org

• Feature - Soccer - Financial woes threaten more English clubs, by Philippa Moreton, Reuters 10/23/02 21:02 ET via AOLNews.
  LONDON, Oct. 24 - As former England captain Gary Lineker's consortium bids to take over Leicester City, the future of many other English soccer clubs remains in doubt with the likelihood of more calls to the administrators. Leicester's Midlands neighbours Derby County and Coventry City could be next in line as the financial pressures of relegation from the lucrative premier league adn the collapse of pay-TV firm ITV Digital take their toll....
  Derby...announced this week the start of a "financial reconstruction."... "To help cashflow against a background of a near £20m debt, the first stage of reconstruction is to ask senior staff to defer a percentage of their salaries until August next year," Derby said in a statement on the club's website. The club is also offering voluntary redundancies [ie: jobcuts] and job sharing but warned that reduced working hours and formal redundancies could follow..\..
  [Better specific job sharing and general work sharing (ie: hours reductions) than jobcuts or even paycuts without hourscuts, as at Coventry -]
  Coventry, who went down the previous season, have asked players to accept a wage cut until the club's position improves....

1. [primitive timesizing -]
   Today in history - Oct. 24, AP 10/23/02 20:00 EDT via AOLNews.
   Today is Thursday, Oct. 24, the 297th day of 2002. There are 68 days left in the year....
   On this date:...
   In 1940, the 40-hour work week went into effect under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
   [They probably couldn't get it started any earlier because they only passed the Act's 44-hour workweek for 1938 far into that year and they had to leave a full year between going down to 42 hours a week in 1939 and going down to 40 hours in 1940. And they couldn't put off the whole system till the following year or they'd miss the ability to call it the "40-40-40 Plan" - 40 hours maximum workweek, 40 cents minimum wage, in 1940. The whole association with minimum wage was unfortunate. If they had implemented the maximum workweek anywhere near the level that would have had a Depression-solving effect (such as the 30-hour level contemplated by the Black Bill of 1933), they could (and should) have left wages completely up to market forces so as not to create an artificial gap at the bottom of the wage ladder for people trying to climb into the job market. The shorter workweek would have created a greater perceived shortage of labor in general and manhours in particular, and the free market would have taken care of raising wages same as it had so often before in history, for example, during World War I in the early 20th century and during the Great Plague in the 14th century.]

2. [pseudo-timesizing -]
   NEC introduces flexible work system for 7,000 staff, Kyodo News 10/23/02 02:50 EDT via AOLNews.
   [Flexibility is nice, but it's not the kind of adjustibility required for economic recovery and used in the automatic "adjustment of the workweek against comprehensive unemployment" that is one of the twin cores of Timesizing (the other twin is automatic overtime-to-training&hiring conversion).]
   TOKYO...- NEC Corp. has adopted a flexible work system under which 7,000 future managers, or 30% of the total workforce, can decide their hours and job priorities on their own starting this month, company officials said Wednesday. The new system is designed to encourage achievers, they said.
   It is the largest discretionary working-hour system in Japan in terms of worker numbers, according to Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry officials.
   Major Japanese electronics makers have been changing their work systems to improve employee efficiency amid fierce international competition.
   [For example, genuine recovery-building work sharing at Sanyo Electric - see story on 8/22/2002 #2.]
   Contrary to the NEC move, Fujitsu Ltd. and Sharp Corp. have returned to a set working system from a flextime program.
   But NEC officials said the company pays workers based on their performance. The flexible work system is being introduced to make the work style match the policy, they said. NEC first introduced a flexible work system in 1993 for about 300 staff in the research and development division. It has expanded the system to about 30% of its total workforce of 24,000 following the labor ministry's move in February to widen the types of jobs for which the flexible working system can be introduced, the NEC officials said.
   Under the system, NEC pays salaries for regular work hours plus one hour of overtime [OT]. No additional payments are set basically, even if employees work longer under the system, they said.
   [No cap, not even one with required overtime earnings reinvestment (in OT-targeted training and hiring) as in Timesizing - so no real contribution to work-sharing, income-centrifugation and ... economic recovery.]
   Employees can, however, apply for temporary exclusion from the system in case their workload increases sharply.
   [Oh thanks a million, NEC.]

1. [the good news]
   Nurse-patient ratio linked to death rate, AP via NYT, A19.
   [Be patient. The good news is at the end. Meanwhile, the Boston Globe has this story on the front page -]
   Study links workloads of nurses to patient risk, by Anne Barnard, BG, front page.
   [Back to the NYT -]
   ...In the study, reported in Wednesday's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Assoc., researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that each additional patient in a nurse's workload ["additional" to what number?] meant an increase of about 7% in the likelihood that the patient would die within 30 days of admission.
   [OK, the Times' version is lame. Let's switch to the Globe -]
   The more surgical patients assigned to a hospital nurse, the greater those patients' chances of dying.... UPenn researcher Linda Aiken and her colleagues found that every time an extra surgical patient is added to a nurse's workload, the patients' chances of dying within 30 days rose by 7%. Their odds of suffering inrreversible complication also increased, the study found.
   Increase a nurse's workload from four to six patients - six is common at many hospitals - and the patients have a 14% greater chance of dying.... Several recent studies have found that adding nurses reduces patient complications, but Aiken's, which looked at more than 230,000 patients, found the clearest link yet to mortality rates. It also is the first to link increased workloads to nurses' dissatisfaction and "burnout." ...Said Aiken, a registered nurse, "...Hospitals have too few nurses."...
   10-20% of nursing jobs are unfilled across the country, increasing nurses' clout to improve working conditions.
   • Yesterday, 10,000 Kaiser Permanente nurses in California won new pension plans and a ban on mandatory overtime;
   • in Massachusetts, Cape Cod Hospital nurses won pay raises last week of up to 34% over 2½ years.
   • And 2 weeks ago, Calif. officials unveiled proposed regulations that would force hospitals to maintain specific nurse-patient ratios: 1 to 6 for surgical patients; 1 to 1 for intensive care....

2. [the bad news]
   The France Growth Fund Inc. internalizes management, Business Wire 10/22/2002 09:02 Eastern via AOLNews.
   ...Its board of directors named Pierre Daviron, a director of the Fund since its inception, as Pres. and Chief Investment Officer [CIO] of the Fund.... Mr. Daviron, who was the initial Chairman of the Fund and served as Pres. and CIO of Oppenheimer Capital International from 1993 to 1998, said, "Six months ago, I would have been more reluctant to propose managing this fund, because valuations were stretched, the Government was bankrupt of ideas,
   [a shorter workweek, more consumer markets and better work-life balance are "bankrupt of ideas"???]
   and market expectations were unrealistic. The situation, I believe, has changed: a new political team is bringing fresh ideas to France,
   [cutting taxes and longer hours are "fresh" ideas???]
   and good companies' [stocks] can now be bought at reasonable prices.
   [Yeah, depressed prices, and going lower!]
   Without fanfare, the adverse effect of the 35 hour work week has been mitigated.
   ["Adverse" only in the imagination of some of the wealthy. This is the problem with plutocracy. They are sooo insulated and isolated, short-sighted and near-sighted. They never realize that they consolidate so much spending power they strangle the markets away from their own investment vessels.]
   France is changing direction,
   [Yeah, backwards.]
   and this is a moment of opportunity for investors and, if it should continue, for the Fund."...
   [Re-raise the French workweek and unemployment rate and there's no way it shall continue.]

• [another great op ed from Sean Gonsalves]
  Time-sizing better than downsizing, po ed by Sean Gonsalves, Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
  [Also appeared today as "Riding on a Runaway Train," Cape Cod Times, A13.]
  [Also appeared yesterday as "Trim the Workweek, Not the Workforce [and the Consumer Markets]," on *AlterNet.org.]
  A case for a shorter workweek was made many moons ago, long before a Republican-controlled Congress fought economic depression in the United States by cutting the federal government workweek to 48 hours in 1868. It was the prophet Moses delivering God's commandments, not some socialist, who first argued for trimming the workweek instead of the work force.
  "Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God" (Exodus 20:10). Of course, Moses wasn't talking economic policy. He was declaring the sacred aspect of leisure time, implicitly refuting the profane notion that economic activity is the point of our individual and social existence.
  More recently, Philip Hyde, who ran as an independent Republican against Joe Kennedy in 1996 and 1998 and then against Ted Kennedy in 2000, injected into the body politic the idea of "time-sizing" - reducing the official full-time workweek in a way that varies inversely with a comprehensively defined unemployment rate - as an alternative to downsizing (see www.timesizing.com). The idea, he explained to me, is essentially about "spreading the work that is available.... It's easier (and probably more practical) to share skills and work than it is to share income or wealth."
  [or than it is to come up with enough artificial makework to keep everyone spinning their wheels at an arbitrary pre-technological 40 hours a week forever as automation and robotization take over more and more human employment.]
  Anticipating criticism from the libertarian right and socialist left, Hyde says both sides are naive about market regulation. Libertarians think regulation is the problem and socialists think regulation is the solution, he says. But time-sizing, Hyde insists, recognizes that while libertarians make a good point about market efficiency, there never has been a completely unregulated market society (and it's not at all clear that such a society would be desirable or practical). Timesizing says "it's not regulation itself that matters - it's the kind of regulation that matters."
  [There are three ways to go: no regulation (libertarianism), much regulation (socialism = a burgeoning maximum of stifling detailed controls) or little regulation (timesizing and its successors = a stable minimum of freeing generalized controls), theoretically just a single all-sufficient groundrule, so well-designed and well-positioned in the body economic that it can obsolete all the others. By comprehensively embodying the concept of "forest," it can supercede thousands of concepts of "trees." The search for this single all-sufficient groundrule is the economic designer's Quest for the Holy Grail. Our candidate for "holy grail" is a common range of worktime per adult person throughout the economy, i.e., a common integrating workweek range, whose lower limit is set by an annual referendum that defines "unemployment" in comprehensive terms that include conventional Labor Dept. rose-colored unemployment plus welfare, disability, homelessness, incarceration, and "optional" early retirement {e.g., "any adult who has averaged less than X working hours per week for over the past Y weeks is 'unemployed' and any unemployment rate over Z% is too high and should trigger a downward adjustment in the workweek at a rate of 1/½/¼ (circle one) hour per year/half/quarter/month (circle one)"}.]
  Even though shorter workweeks have over the past century been promoted left and right - from Republican icon Teddy Roosevelt to the liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith - there are economic problems that would have to be dealt with before widespread time-sizing could be implemented.
  As it stands now, millions of Americans aren't making enough money working 40 hours a week to make ends meet. In order for a shorter workweek to be attractive to those who don't make enough to get by on, there would have to be a way to reduce work hours without reducing workers' [below a certain level] income. And there is also the problem of health care costs.
  [The low-income design problem can be solved along the lines of Fred Best's 1988 book, "Reducing Workweeks to Prevent Layoffs - The Economic and Social Impacts of Unemployment-Insurance Supported Work Sharing" (Temple University Press). The health insurance design problem can be solved along the lines of Hawaii's 1990-91 employment-based single-payer system (before they messed it up modifying it for the expected Clinton version which would have ruined small businesses) or along the lines of Canada's government-based system.]
  If we stop ourselves from being seduced by the profane notion that humanity lives for bread alone in the supreme service of the god of economic growth, then we ought to be able to find a way.
  [The notorious 1920s-and-ever-since Gospel of Consumption described by Ben Hunnicutt in chapter 2 of his wonderful 1988 opus, "Work Without End."]
  Brings to mind a fellow by the name of Brian Czech. I met him in August at a brainstorming conference in Oberlin, Ohio. After we got to know each other a bit over several days, he gave me a book he wrote called "Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train: Errant Economists, Shameful Spenders and a Plan to Stop Them All" (www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9057.html). I highly recommend the book - not only because Czech, a conservation biologist, challenges the "growth at any cost" philosophy of the late Julian Simon, but he manages to entertainingly combine the insights of ecology and economics in lay terms.
  One particular passage in Czech's book cuts to the heart of the matter. "If you've ever purchased a train ticket, you can probably recall having two concerns: where the train was going, and how fast the train would take you there. And those concerns are clearly listed in order of importance. The direction of the train matters most; speed is only helpful if the direction is correct," Czech writes. "If we find that we are going in the wrong direction, or worse yet on a runaway train regardless of direction, we might savor every clank of inefficiency the old train can impede itself with."
  Many Americans are concerned about the no-limits-to-growth track our economic train has been barreling down, piloted by mainstream Republicans and Democrats. [And in the more immediate future, many more Americans are concerned about the "Race to the Bottom" that mainstream economists and analysts keep pushing on us in the name of simplistic "free trade" and "global competitiveness." If we keep working longer and longer workweeks and accepting more and more wage&salary concessions, we'll all wind up in sweatshops that look very much like the Third World. There's absolutely no point in being globally competitive if 3rd-world status is the prize offered to winners of the global "competition."]
  And some [Americans], who are troubled by an economic vision that has been fostering mindless consumption and a time-poor society, are organizing things like *"Take Back Your Time Day"....
  [And some more Americans, in the immediate present, are troubled by not having enough income to consume at all, including 5.4 million Americans on disability, probably an equal number of homeless Americans, plus 2.1 million Americans in prisons and jails and another 4 million on parole or probation. WHERE ARE THE JOBS promised by our current makework-based government "solution"? They have never kept up with demand except during World War II. The makework, minimum-wage model is lethally flawed. Timesizing replaces it with a sharework, market-wage model, - with what the arrogant makeworkers have ridiculed as the Lump of Labor Fallacy - Timesizing divides up the existing market-demanded work and gets government OUT of the business of straining for sufficient artificial work to keep people spinning their wheels for an arbitrary and permanently rigid 40-hour workweek. And of course that automatically ends some of the biggest abuses in government, such as patronage dba pork-barrelling and war-mongering dba Pentagon-bloating. It's time run-of-the-mill economists quit parrotting the Lump of Labor crap about "human wants are not limited, so how ridiculous to think that the number of jobs is limited" and realize that if jobs only depended on wants, Africa for example would have the most jobs in the world instead of massive pervasive unemployment. And while they're at it, they might ditch their nonsense about "technology creates more jobs than it destroys." If that were true, there'd be no reason to bring in quantity-improving technology, and as for quality-improving technology, the fact that much of it has far outstripped market demand is proved by the collapse of the recent Internet bubble, not to mention the fact that high fidelity products have gone beyond human hearing and computer speeds have now exceeded any requirements but those of popup ads which we don't want anyway.]
  According to [Time Day's] organizers: "On Friday, Oct. 24, 2003, thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans will just say no to the overwork, overscheduling and overstress that threaten to overwhelm our lives." "They'll take the day or part of it off, and join in hundreds of activities to initiate a much-needed national conversation about work/life balance and how we can reclaim it. The date falls nine weeks before the end of the year, making the point that we Americans now work nine weeks [per year] more than Western Europeans do."
  That train is heading in a new direction. Are you going to get your ticket?
  Sean Gonsalves is a columnist with the Cape Cod Times. E-mail: sgonsalves@capecodonline.com [Here's some feedback that Sean has already received to this op ed column -]
  
  • Hi Sean,
    I appreciated your op-ed this morning (Riding on a Runaway Train). I agree with your insights. And, through Barnstable County Human Services, we've assembled a significant quantity of research data, from more than 2,500 Cape Cod Households, that support your conclusion, and recommendation - "The Human Condition 2001 Project" (THC-2001). The strongest finding of the THC-2001 was that households do not have enough time - for their spouses, their children, friends; for relaxation, what for thousands of years was understood as "Sabbath". This fact correlates with tremendous amounts of stress, anxiety, and depression reported in Cape Cod households - 44% of households report "having a lot of anxiety or stress", and 84% of those households which report "high levels of need" [also] report "having a lot of anxiety or stress". These 28% of households reporting high levels of need are home to the majority of children on Cape Cod, so it's no surprise that there are high levels of emotional and behavioral problems reported for children and teenagers. Written comments from households, more than 1,000 of them, put a personal touch on the statistics.
    What can be done? I think TakeBackYourTimeDay is great. I'd like to see lots of sectors involved. Maybe a "My View" or something in the Cape Cod Times, about THC-2001. Suggestions?
    If you'd like a look at the whole Human Condition 2001 Report, it's on our website at *http://www.bchumanservices.net/thc2001/thc2001IRORFA.html. Start with the index; several of the index items include "inadequate time...." Or, I can send the whole thing on a CD. On November 12, 2-4 pm, we're facilitating a Community Forum on the findings at the Hyannis Campus, Cape Cod Community College, ACCCESS Program. I'd welcome your participation.
    Keep up your great work. Keep me posted.
    Best regards,
    [Cape Cod reader]
    [And here's an email from another reader -]
    
  • Sean,
    Great article in Alternet about trimming the work week not the work force. It is something I have been doing for over a decade. But then I grew up in Europe and learned about the need to balance leisure with labor from early on. Most Americans do not seem to realize that there is another way to live. There's more to life than working and consuming. I am thankful for my international perspective, which offered me the courage to seek the freedom I have that makes my life fulfilling.
    Once again, great article.
    Sincerely,
    [Alternet reader - (apparently Sean's article was picked up by Alternet)]
    
  • [Here's one of his few negative responses, and surprise surprise, it's from a reader trained as a conventional economist - someone with a vested interest in keeping our current economic problems going as long as he can or gosh, he might lose his job -]
    The idea of trimming the work week is, as you stated, not new. Unfortunately, I think it would fail to accomplish its desired ends.
    Were the work week to be shortened, it could come about in (basically) two ways.
    
    1. First, the work week could be shortened with no change in hourly wage rates.
       [This could only happen with companies in profit, or with government help along the lines of Fred Best's idea of supplemental income from the unemployment insurance system (search on "Fred Best" above).]
       This would, of course, reduce unemployment to some extent - assuming it is introduced during a time of non-voluntary unemployment.
       [Or during a time like the present when voluntary unemployment in terms of welfare is being cut.]
       But there is no guarantee that unemployment will be distributed evenly across all industries, so that the right number of qualified workers will be affected.
       [The distribution of unemployment is less important than the distribution of training, especially on-the-job training, as we found out in World Wars I and II. A gradual reduction in the workweek, such as the 2-hr/yr reduction in the USA 1938-40 from 44 hrs/wk to 40 or the 1-hr/yr reduction planned in France 1982-87 (the plan got sidetracked after only reaching 39 hrs/wk in '82) would tend to push workers with high-demand qualitifications into overtime first - and the incidence of that overtime could then be used to target, trigger, pace and even finance on-the-job training.]
       Also, even assuming qualified workers are ready to step in, we cannot say that they will be equally efficient.
       [It's such a joke when conventional economists presume to talk about efficiency, when they espouse the "efficiency" of unlimited downsizing that leaves survivors demoralized, burdened with the tasks of the downsized, and without any training, as described in "Getting a lean staff to do 'ghost work' of departed colleagues," by Carol Hymowitz, WSJ, B1 (it's today's first downsizing article - 10/22/2002 #1). We contest this blatant nonsense and maintain that a high-morale lifetime-employment-guaranteed staff will be infinitely more productive and efficient than a demoralized staff faced with unpredictable ushering out the door, and we prove it by reference to Lincoln Electric's experience since 1959 when it instituted a lifetime job security based on adjusting their workweek up and down, not their workforce.]
       And if [qualified workers] aren't [equally efficient], then that would cause reduced output and/or higher costs - both of which would reduce the number of goods available for consumption.
       [Oh dear, more of conventional economics' focus on Productivity - regardless of marketability. These morons want ever improving productivity via downsizing - even though they're downsizing the very markets for said productivity. It's high time we got beyond this blindered supply-side fad (and the previous blindered demand-side fad) and designed a more sustainable "balance-side" approach.]
       A shortened work week with no change in hourly wage rates will also reduce the purchasing power of those who originally held the jobs, in essence meaning that they will be directly subsidizing any benefits that come about for the others.
       [But the fact that a shortened workweek allows the job market to quickly absorb the horde of anxious jobseekers willing to do jobs for less soon harnesses market forces to RAISE hourly wage rates (and monthly salaries) to restore and increase the purchasing power beyond that of thoes who originally hogged those high job hours. And in any case, if there's anyone who should be penalized to benefit others, it is surely the overworked who should be penalized to benefit the un- and under-employed, thus disincentivizing and phasing out overwork and allowing the un- and under-employed to support themselves, instead of taxpayers having to support them. In short, better that unbalanced workoholics subsidize training and hiring than innocent taxpayers!]
       
    2. Second, the work week could be shortened with a corresponding increase in wage rates, such that all the workers will be earning in a week what the originally employed workers were earning.
       [This is only possible with companies in profit or governments willing to subsidize the transition, possibly via a modified unemployment insurance system as in Fred Best's book, "Reducing Unemployment to Prevent Layoffs - The ecnomic and social impacts of unemployment insurance-supported work sharing" (Temple, 1988).]
       This certainly would have the effect of raising production costs, meaning that the marginal businesses will probably fail - which would cause unemployment.
       [Not if it's done Fred Best's way, and in a shortened workweek situation, marginal businesses would be strengthened by stronger domestic markets, as reported by France during the two years when their 35-hour workweek was really gaining traction (1999-2001 - see, for example, 4/29/2001), and any resulting unemployment would be quickly absorbed back into the shorter-workweek-strengthened job market, especially if Reuther's "flexible adjustment of the workweek against unemployment" was implemented - meaning "if unemployment goes up, the workweek comes down."]
       The fact that non-voluntary unemployment existed in the first place would have been a strong indication that wage rates were already above equilibrium.
       [This assumes that nasty labor unions have forced poor employers to pay higher than market wages and so poor employers, who can hardly keep afloat on the revenues from unchanged employee productivity, are exceedingly reluctant to hire - a situation that conventional English-speaking economists are convinced is the key to The European Problem. (Of course, perfect USA and Britain don't have any problem because economists there have very rosily defined unemployment statistics and the 2.1m prison inmates, the 5.4m disabled and the 2.1-5.4m homeless are "externalities" that they, as strict economists, don't have to consider.) They strangely recognize downward inflexibility of ordinary employees' wages as a brake on the achievement of their ideal free-market equilibrium without recognizing downward inflexibility of top executive compensation as a brake, regardless of how astronomically that compensation has skyrocketed. And apparently they have also completely forgotten the lesson of the Great Depression - that overall economic equilibrium can be achieved at very low levels of capacity, meaning, with very high unemployment. At its highest during the Depression, "wonderful" free-market equilibrium took official unemployment up to 25% in a context of a workweek that was totally uncoordinated with technology levels. Back to this statement. If wage rates are ALREADY above "equilibrium," poor struggling employers are going to have even higher production costs if the nasty workweek reduction is done without a corresponding decrease in pay, never mind the waves of technologically multiplied output that have been and are going on throughout these decades - which seems to be another comfortable "externality" for run-of-the-mill economists. Basically, their whole economics, and this statement, is based on a very very simple economic model.]
       Perhaps this could be instituted under a regime of monetary inflation, but then inflation would be lowering real wage rates, which is to say that, again, the new workers would be subsidized by the original workers.
       [That's all right, pal, don't strain yourself trying to rationalize workweek reduction in the absence of recognizing technologically-boosted productivity and the possibility - and necessity - of centrifuging the huge and dysfunctional concentration of spending power that has come about thanks to sinking labor into ever deeper surplus by rigidly controlling/regulating/freezing the workweek - by not even talking about it or worktime as an economic variable, except in the negative terms of the "average manufacturing workweek" - and certainly not as a control variable, let alone the central, critical, pervasive, paradigmatic control variable of our lifetimes.]
    The idea of shortening the work week carries the unstated assumption that there is only so much work to go around.
    [Oops, gotta nail this one through the heart. Not only is there a limited amount of human work to go around today, but the inrush of automation and robotization determines that there is a shrinking amount of work. When are conventional economists going to "wake up and smell the coffee"?! For God's sake, take a tour through Toyota and meet/greet the ROBOTS!]
    Since wants are unlimited, this would seem to be an incorrect assumption.
    ["Wants are unlimited." Does it ever occur to neo-classical English-speaking economists, their successors and foreign admirers that this directly contradicts the neo-classical revolution itself? The whole point of the marginalist revolution was explore the limits at which prices settled, and that meant the limits of demand. Come to think of it, does it ever occur to these economists that "wants" and "demand" are synonyms in economics!!! It's obvious from the news every day that demand is limited, so why don't these morons admit that wants are limited? Can't they see the nose in front of their face? Or are they suddenly going to recoginize a difference between wants with no spending power, and demand with spending power, in which case wants become economically irrelevant and they should stop blathering about them altogether. And the total nonsense of this statement can be demonstrated from another angle. If it was unlimited wants that determined the amount of paid work available, Africa and Mexico would have more good jobs than anywhere else in the world, instead of massive unemployment! What is the matter with conventional economists. Their brains run around in a narrowly circumscribed treadmill of comfortably (to them) familiar phrases and buzzwords. They can no longer think outside the box, and very little inside the box either.]
    Politically too, shortening the work week implies that government should have the ability to dictate the length of the work week - a position contrary to freedom of contract.
    [Contracts don't need the "freedom" to undermine themselves and self-destruct, and the constitutionality of government workweek regulation was established in 1938 when the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act did it, and implicitly in 1865 when the 13th Amendment ended the uncompensated (and unregulated!) workweeks of slavery (without compensation to owners), and explicitly in c.1500 BC when Moses promulgated the 4th Commandment, reducing the workweek from seven to six days. Every game has rules, including the market game, and the most basic one to level the marketplace and maximize its activity is the inclusion of all the potential participants. A fixed workweek in a context of forced disemployment due to waves of work-saving technology is contrary to maximum market activity and consonant with ultimate market death. A workweek that varies inversely with comprehensively defined unemployment is contrary to market death and consonant with maximum market activity. Pick one.]
    P.S. You mentioned in passing "King George and his laissez-faire capitalist comrades." While it's true that they may attempt to use the rhetoric of free enterprise, George Bush and the Republicans (with the possible exception of Ron Paul) are no laissez-faire capitalists. Steel, lumber, and agricultural policies come to mind immediately as examples of their favoring market intervention.
    [So even the self-proclaimed prophets of "free trade" can't implement this simplistic caricature of a policy without major exceptions.]
    
  • [Here's another negative response, this time from a non-economist reader -]
    I don't understand how anyone can think a business can be competitive and amass the same revenue by receiving less work for the same pay.
    [Ever heard of technology? Take the Toyota tour and open your eyes. And while you're at it, do you really want to win the Race to the Bottom?]
    It might have been different when the US was the only game in town and when a reduction in hours caused all competing business to reduce the work week - US firms are now competing with Asian and African businesses and the American worker is seeing jobs move to Ghana, Malaysia, etc - where people work longer for less.
    [Do you really want to live the way they do in most of Asia and Africa? There's no necessity for US firms to compete with Asian and Afrian businesses for US markets. And for most of our history, they didn't. Why not? Ever heard of tariffs? That's how high living-standard economies have always maintained their high living standards. It's only during occasional bouts of the simplistic "free trade" fad that we get the nonsense about "globalization is inevitable" blahblahblah. How much "free trade"/freedom of access do the wealthy tolerate in their gated communities when their living standards are at stake? How much do they contemplate as their short-sighted free-trade-for-others fixation reduces their own economies to Third World conditions?]
    Businesses have reduced revenue, firm values are down - companies like Lucent, Polaroid, and Xerox are on the rocks. I don't see how this proposal would do anything more, if enacted, than to sink the ecomony deeper.
    [It does it by centrifuging the work and the spending power OUT of the unspendable concentration is has funnelled into because of a 62-year-old pre-technology workweek and resulting labor surplus and manhour cheapening. And once spending power is moved from those who don't spend it to those who do, all our latent domestic markets are re-activated (unemployed, welfare, disability, homeless, prisons, early retired) and "a rising tide lifts all boats" - including the wealthy's, who now have difficulty finding sustainable investments because they have concentrated so much spending power in their own few pockets that they are actually strangling the markets away from their own investment targets. Why aren't mainstream economists talking/researching this?! It's their own "marginal efficiency of capital," i.e., of concentrated money.]
    What am I missing, if anything?
    [Apparently, anything beyond what you're fed by the shortsighted wealthy and their 2-guy media. Hope this starts you thinking for yourself.]