Timesizing® Associates - Homepage

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Timesizing News, November 1-15, 2002
[Commentary] ©2002 Phil Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622, Porter Sq, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080

11/15/2002  basic timesizing in the news, aka flickerings of strategic hope - nothing current so we retrieve a late arrival -

• (10/22)   International Rectifier earnings up but market weak, Reuters 10/21/02 17:13 ET via AOLNews.
  EL SEGUNDO, Calif...- International Rectifier Corp. Monday reported higher first quarter sales and earnings, but also said it was planning short-term shutdowns and shorter work weeks to address "weak market conditions." The company, which power management technology, reported net income of $11m or 17 cents per share, compared with $9.6m or 15 cents per share in the year-ago period. ...CEO Alex Lidow said in a statement, "Automotive, defense and industrial business was strong, but demand fell short in high-end information technology applications, and the resulting mix shift put grow[th] margins under renewed pressure." The company said it was evaluating steps to enhance its competitive position and address weak market conditions, and may consolidate factories. It is also planning some short-term plant shutdowns and shorter work weeks.
  [These are two kinds of timesizing. Plant shutdowns are a rather primitive kind, but International Rectifier's shorter workweeks may be more advanced - we don't have the details. Most advanced, of course, would be a corporate workweek that fluctuates weekly or monthly with corporate revenues, similar to Timesizing's Phase 4, and an overtime policy that uses the incidence of overtime as a targeter for training and hiring, similar to Timesizing's Phase 2. Primitive or not, these methods seem to have allowed International Rectifier to completely avoid layoffs and the accompanying morale and productivity hits. We congratulate CEO Alex Lidow and his associates for some pretty advanced and gutsy thinking that goes against the general current of downsizing, a current that is leading the economy nowhere but down. Please patronize our timesizing companies. They are going against the stupid but widespread "strategy" that is pushing us all back into recession and depression. Click here for *International Rectifier's website and Internet store.]

• British firefighters, defying government, strike over wages - Troops are ordered to stand in at fires, straining the British armed forces, by Alan Cowell, NYT, A10.
  LONDON...- Ignoring last-minute government entreaties, Britain's 50,000 full-time firefighters marched out tonight on their first national pay strike in 25 years, closing down most urban firehouses and leaving the military with its fleet of aging fire tenders to respond to emergencies from car wrecks to blazing buildings....
  The firefighters say their 40% pay demand is meant to bring their wages to a level commensurate with their professional skills.
  [Well, during a global labor surplus, we can all say that.]
  They argue that particularly in London, their wages are not enough to feed, house and clothe their families. Many have second jobs.
  For their part, government negotiators have linked their offer of 11% over two years to demands for changes in the Fire Brigade's union-backed working conditions, which include provisions like a ban on advance scheduling of overtime work..\.. Andy Gilchrist, the leader of the Fire Brigade Union...called that offer laughable....
  [This is a new one on us. Isn't overtime supposed to be on an emergency basis only? If you're scheduling it in advance, why aren't you calling a temp agency instead, and spreading the work and spending power?]

• French truckers open to negotiation on pay demands, Reuters 11/12/02 15:50 ET via AOLNews.
  French truckers, who have threatened to block roads for weeks if their pay claims are not met, hope they can strike a deal with employers at talks beginning next week, a union leader...Sylvette Concas, who is responsible for the transport division at the CGT union..\..said on Tuesday.... The truckers want an extra month's salary and a reduction in their working hours to 152 hours per month from 169 hours....

• Lebanon MEA threatens to replace pilots over terms, by Liln Noueihed, Reuters 11/11/02 11:33 ET via AOLNews.
  BEIRUT...- Middle East Airlines (MEA) threatened on Monday to replace its existing Lebanese pilots with foreigners unless they accept contract terms that have helped Lebanon's flag carrier to cut its losses....
  [Oops, the drop in travel and pilot layoffs at major airlines everywhere has capped the bargaining power of Lebanese pilots. Ordinarily they could say, Ha, what foreign pilots want to come to troubled Lebanon for a job?!" but under the circumstances, there might be a few just desperate enough.]
  ...MEA Chairman Mohammed al-Hout told a press conference at Beirut airport, "We have 124 pilots and the firm needs 100 to operate. Anything below 100 pilots we will replace from abroad."
  [So if they've already got 24 extras, how come they're trying to pressure their pilots into bigger workloads??? -]
  ...The new contracts do not cut pilots' salaries - which average almost $10,000 a month for a captain [not too shabby] - but increase their working hours, which pilots complain endanger safety.
  [$120,000 annual salaries AVERAGE in Lebanon? Time to trade money for the safety of shorter workhours, guys. You're never going to make headway on both time and money in this global glut, and if you pick money instead of time, you'll worsen the glut and eventually drive down the money anyway.]
  The state-owned company has also cut 1,000 staff and axed some of the staff benefits.
  To protest, the pilots have decided to work the minimum possible under existing contract terms. The LPA [Lebanese Pilots Assoc.] held a 12-hour strike last month that disrupted 6 flights.
  MEA has given the pilots until Nov. 18 to sign the new contracts or resign with a special compensation package. "If they do not sign or resign [nice ring to that, what?!]...we will take suitable legal measures reaching up to mandatory redundancy," Hout said....
  [There it is again - Ben Hunnicutt's 1988 subtitle to his book "Work Without End" = Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work - though he did not focus on the background labor glut that carried this regressive transition. Juliet Schor in her 1991 "Overworked Ameican" did allude to the folly of employees who, in general, have gone for short-term pay-and-consumption instead of short-term leisure (and thereby clobbered both.)]
  MEA operates 9 leased aircraft....
  [Sheesh, how does it keep even 100 pilots occupied with only 9 planes?? - that's 11 pilots per plane. And how does it pay them an average of $120 G's?]
  The airline...has lost some $450m since the central bank [ie: taxpayers?] was forced to buy it from the brink of collapse in 1996 [but] it expects to record no operating losses in 2002..."for the first time in 26 years"..\.. citing a busy summer season and the reforms started in 1998....
  [And a little additional motivation ... by fear -]
  Hout said on Monday privatisation would not happen in 2003.
  [But stay tuned for 2004. Ah, there it is again. "Motivating" employees by fear. This goes back a long ways. John Merson, in his wonderful 1989 book, "Roads to Xanadu," points out, "Dr. Andrew Ure in The Philosophy of Manufactures (1835)...realised that an inner change had to take place in individual workers, and the most powerful weapon to use to inculcate this internal work and time discipline was fear." This is spite of the tremendous success of the Japanese economy, based on Edwards Deming's 8th "Point for Management" = "banish fear from the workplace." And when the Japanese re-introduced fear in their workplace in the late 1980s and early 1990s by copying our downsizing, kaBOOMskies, their economy almost immediately went into the toilet and has stayed there ever since.]

1. 11/09 Congress will take up welfare law, by Laura Meckler, AP via AOLNews.
   WASHINGTON - The debate over welfare policy - how much welfare recipients must work, how long they go to school, how much to spend on child care - will begin anew this year. Congress failed to renew its landmark 1996 overhaul this year, and with the GOP taking back the Senate, key players say they'll start over again when lawmakers return next year. ...Members of Congress remain divided over some basic questions: ...Should recipients be forced to work more hours each week?... Should the program continue to bar legal immigrants, who were cut out of welfare and Medicaid programs in 1996?
   [Question: how did they get legal immigrant status? Has the requirement of being self-supporting and solvent and having a financial sponsor gone completely out the window? Imports, immigrants and births - the "population variables" - need to be settled by binding referendum on a secret ballot.]
   Earlier this year, the House passed a welfare bill that echoed the plan put out by pResident Bush. It directed $300m per year to marriage programs [huh?!], required states to put more people to work and required each welfare recipient to work more hours. The Senate Finance Committee followed with a bill supported by most Democrats and a few Republicans allowing states to offer education and training to more people and still count them as "working" in meeting federal standards.... Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the incoming Finance chairman, will have to negotiate with moderates of both parties on his committee to come up with a bill that can [pass the committee]. Even he is not on board with all the pResident's plans. For instance, he is not yet persuaded that states should be forced to make people on welfare work 40 hours per week, as the White House insists, an aide said....
   [At this point, the White House should only be insisting on self-support and on a short enough nationwide workweek and tight enough overtime-to-training conversion to make wages high enough, by market forces, to accomplish that universal self-support. Grassley sounds like a guy who has a few more grey cells than your average GOP troglodite.]

2. 11/09 Peru mine strike said to be illegal but continuing, Reuters 11/08/02 15:42 ET via AOLNews.
   LIMA...- Peru's biggest copper company, Southern Peru Copper Corp., met union leaders on Friday for more talks to try to end a 9-day strike over conditions at its Toquepala mine after Peru's Labor Ministry declared the stoppage illegal, officials said.... "The Ministry has declared the strike illegal. At the moment, there's a meeting in Tacna between all sides and it seems there'll be a deal," a Labor Ministry spokeswoman said. ...The strike - the first at Toquepala in 14 years - was called over working hours and an early retirement initiative....
   [And a couple of hours later -]
   11/09 Talks to end Peru Toquepala strike drag on, by Eduardo Orozco, Reuters 11/08/02 19:25 ET via AOLNews.
   LIMA...- Talks between Peru's biggest copper company, Southern Peru Copper Corp., and union leaders to try to end a 9-day strike over conditions at the Toquepala mine failed to reach a deal on Friday but were expected to continue on Saturday, a union leader said.... Workers say Southern wants them to work 12 hours a day for 14 days at a time, without overtime, followed by 7 rest days, despite a court resolution ordering Southern to comply with an 8-hour-workday law....
   [And a couple of days later -]
   11/11 Union at Peru Toquepala mine ends 11-day strike, Reuters 11/10/02 20:51 ET via AOLNews.
   LIMA...- Union leaders said on Sunday they had ended an 11-day strike that paralyzed production at the Toquepala mine...after reaching a deal with management.... "We've ended the strike. We've reached a deal with the company to end arbitrary dismissals and on the subject of working hours, we're still talking," Toquepalaunion official Clemente Trujillo told Reuters....

1. Big labor could pay price after GOP gains - Targets include regulations on overtime, family leave and dock workers union, by Carlos Tejada, WSJ, A4.
   [Well, if regulations on overtime weaken, employment will concentrate further and under-employment will spread further. Then producers (manufacturers and service providers) will join big labor in "paying the price" and shortly after that, investors will join big labor and producers in "paying the price." When led by the short-sighted and narrowly interested, the entire nation eventually pays the price. Markets don't arise by magic. They emerge from wages, wages arise from employment, and human employment in the age of automation and robotization absolutely requires sharing the vanishing work. And even primitive work sharing requires strict overtime enforcement, while advanced work sharing requires overtime- and overwork-to-training&hiring conversion.]

2. [and speaking of the deterioration of overtime enforcement and the ensuing domino effect right down into the 3rd world -]
   C.H. Robinson employees sue for OT, AP 11/07/02 20:46 EST via AOLNews.
   MINNEAPOLIS - Current and former employees of C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc. filed a lawsuit in federal court Thursday accusing the transportation freight giant of failing to pay overtime wages. The plaintiffs allege that nearly all of the Eden Prairie, Minn.-based company's sales force was mischaracterized as exempt to deprive them of overtime wages for working more than 40 hours a week.
   [Hey if "managers" and other salaried employees want to be patsies and offer a blank check on their lives, that's their funeral. Check out the bunch in this other article, "No '9 to 5' in creative field: Executives surveyed spend average of 54 hours each week on the job," PRNewswire 11/-07/2002 10:30 EST via AOLNews. Distract some people with "creative" flattery and they'll fawn their way right into slavery. Who are the targets of these particular flattery? Advertising and marketing executives, the most fad-driven conformists there are!]
   The company strongly denied the accusations. "Robinson is a people company...," said Laura Gillund, VP of HR.
   [Must be a real-life personification of Catbert, evil HR director, becaaause -]
   According to the complaint, Robinson, a company with $3B in revenues, failed to pay its sales force overtime for many years even though the employees were required to come in early, stay late, often work on weekends and be on call around the clock outside of regular work hours.... Last month, 14 women filed another federal lawsuit accusing Robinson of gender discrimination, saying the company created a "flagrantly hostile" work environment and routinely denied women promotions, equitable salaries and overtime pay. That lawsuit seeks class-action status for more than 1,000 former and current female employees..\..
   Seymour Mansfield [of Minneapolis lawfirm Mansfield, Tanick & Cohen], lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said more than 2,000 current and former employees could become part of the [second] lawsuit if they join a part of a class action. Robinson shares fell....
   [That's the only things these cretins understand.]

3. Air Canada's regional carrier mulls 391 job cuts, Reuters 11/07/02 11:10 ET via AOLNews.
   ...To cope with with a 30% plunge in short-haul travel this year this year..."There has been an employee surplus identified, and we're just starting the process of working through what that will mean at the end of the day," Debra Williams, spokeswoman for..\..Air Canada's regional airline, Jazz,...told Reuters. "We're hoping to mitigate the impact as much as possible [by] means of special leaves of absence, job sharing, that sort of thing...," she added....
   Based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the regional carrier was formed in January 2001 through the merger of its four regional airline brands, and was named Jazz this year. Jazz has a fleet of 122 aircraft and flies to 80 destinations in Canada and the United States. Air Canada share slipped....

4. Ssangyong Motor 9-month net soars on SUV sales, by Kim Myong-hwan, Reuters 11/07/02 02:30 ET via AOLNews.
   SEOUL...- South Korean sport utility vehicle (SUV) maker Ssangyong Motor Co posted a 33-fold rise in net profit for the first 9 months from a year ago on Thursday, aided by strong sales of its new Rexton model.... In...the Jan-Sept period..., sales jumped to 2.47 trillion won a year earlier as demand for SUVs surged along with increased leisure time as the country starts adopting a 5-day workweek....
   [So we need to pry people away from these polluting and gas-guzzling SUVs, or increased leisure is going to accelerate humanity's suicide.]

• Toquepala workers mull Southern Peru strike offer, Reuters 11/06/02 17:34 ET via AOLNews.
  Workers at the Toquepala copper mine belonging to Southern Peru Copper Corp. said on Wednesday they were studying a company offer to end a week-old strike.... The strike was called over working hours and an early retirement initiative.... Workers say Southern wants them to work 12 hours a day for 14 days at a time, without overtime [pay], followed by 7 rest days, despite a court resolution ordering Southern to comply with an 8-hour-workday law..\..
  Union leaders, \such as\ Cristina Briceno,...and the company, Peru's top copper producer, have been holding talks brokered by the labor ministry to try to end what is the first strike at Toquepala in 14 years. The mine is located in the southern city of Tacna [Peru].... Some 400 staff employees work at Toquepala as well as contract workers who are not taking part in the strike.
  [So how many ARE taking part in the strike, DUH?]

1. [labor stupidity peaks]
   Strike for longer work week, NYT, W1.
   SEOUL, South Korea...- More than 80,000 factory workers went on strike today to protest proposed legislation to cut the workweek from 5½ to 5 days, but they promised to go back to their jobs after the government said it would postpone action on the bill....
   [Guess we can forget about South Korea showing the way forward. Its labor movement is just too suicidally near-sighted. This is like regular working stiffs in the USA voting for the big-biz suits in the Republican Party, not that the Dems are any different. And with no strong 3rd parties, this country is saying Hello to sweatshops and third-world living standards.]

2. [here's someone with a little smarter attitude -]
   Working to live, letter to editor by Anja Galeski of Frankfurt an der Oder, NYT, A22.
   [The main Frankfurt in Germany is Frankfurt am Main - i.e., located on a different river.]
   Re: "A dream desk and an alarming bed" (Berlin Journal, Nov. 1): I agree with Mathias Knigge, the inventor of a desk with a built-in inflatable pillow: We need reminders that we work to live - not the other way around....
   [that is, we don't live just to work - usually on somebody else's small agenda]
   Will we heal our struggling economies by reducing the number of employees? ...People who still work will have no more time or energy to consume anything, because they actually work for three [until the downsizing cuts consumer markets accordingly], whereas those who would have the time and energy, since they are unemployed, won't consume too much either, just because they cannot afford anything besides what is necessary.
   [Good job with your English, Anja - not bad at all.]

• [another major piece of America's self-sabotage falls into place -]
  Economic squeeze has more students working overtime - Soaring costs and lagging aid create punishing routines; College tradition goes sour - A 12-hour shift at the [cocktail] bar, by Robert Tomsho, WSJ, front page.
  ...The ability to work your way thru college has long been a symbol of American educational opportunity and personal achievement. As students, former Prez LBJ worked as a janitor, and Nobel economist Milton Friedman waited tables. But with tuition rates soaring, even at the public colleges that are supposed to be the affordable option, carrying on the tradition has gotten tougher.
  After adjusting for inflation, the average tuition at a 4-yr public [college] increased 117% between 1981 and 2001. The rise was 123% at private schools. The increase in financial aid available per full-time student lagged, at 112%, during the same period, while the inflation-adjusted median family income rose only 25%...
  To meet the rising prices, a growing number of college students have resorted to sometimes withering workweeks. Studies show that working beyond 15 to 20 hours a week can result in lower grades and higher dropout rates. Many students are well beyond that. Nationwide, 74% of all full-time undergraduates were working in 1999-2000 and they averaged 25.5 hours per week on the job, according to the most recent federal statistics.
  [Hmm, assuming 40 hrs of study, that 25.5 hrs of work gives us a total workweek of 65.5 hrs/wk, roughly the average overall workweek in America in 1900. Nothin' like preparing our youth for "progress American-style."]
  That was up from 1992-93, when about 65% of full-time undergraduates were working and they averaged 23.5 hours.
  [So this particular American suicide weapon was already well-advanced 10 years ago.]
  Over the same period, the percentage of full-time undergraduates who were [also] working full-time, or at least 35 hours a week, rose to 19.7%, from 13.5%..\..
  [So in this big transfer of funds, where is "advanced" America putting its dough now?]
  The changes in tuition economics reflect
  • increased university spending on technology [e.g., computers]
  • and faculty salaries
  • as well as a long-term shift by the state and federal governments toward placing more of the burden of higher education costs onto students and their families. Since the 1980s, financial-aid polic[y has] moved away from need-based grants in favor of loans.
  • Meanwhile, as a proportion of budgets in many states, higher education has given ground to areas such as corrections [i.e., prisons] and Medicaid, where spending increases are often mandated by formula,
    [That is, we've moved money away from reinforcing healthy self-supporting lives to bandaiding the dependent lives of the criminal, the disabled and the elderly - and as Milton Friedman says, you tend to get more of whatever you subsidize.]
  • and to kindergarten-thru-12th-grade education, where political pressure for educational reform has been strongest....
    [Bucky Fuller used to say we spend the least money on early-life education, which has the most potential influence on the human being, and the most of higher education, which has the least. We should reverse it, but reversing it seems to assume that we've already achieved a thorough-going timesizing economy where interminable, irrelevant, individually financed higher education rationalized by potential future self-support has been completely replaced by pervasive, skill-shortage-driven, largely private-sector-financed on-the-job training.]

• Britons fear violence in the workplace, Reuters 11/02/02 00:29 ET via AOLNews.
  LONDON -...Research by the Trades Union Congress found 30% of workers rated violence and threats as one of their top five health and safety concerns.
  [However -]
  The survey of 5,000 union safety representatives found overwork or stress remained the biggest worry, cited by 55%....

1. S. Korean car sales jump, Daewoo back in race, by Samuel Len, Reuters 11/01/02 04:18 ET via AOLNews.
   ...Financial industry workers won a five-day workweek in May, while various government ministries are experimenting with a shortened week, which is likely to boost leisure activities.
   [AND leisure industries.]

2. Klamath River recreation use studied, by John Heilprin, AP 11/01/02 19:56 EST via AOLNews.
   Returning the Klamath River for recreational users would reap more economic benefits than diverting it for farmers, loggers and hydropower producers, according to the U.S. Geological Survey [USGS]. Earlier this year Interior Secretary Gale Norton ordered the diversion of water from the river straddling the California-Oregon state line.
   The USGS report puts the economic value of outdoor pursuits such as fishing and boating along the Klamath and its major tributaries at $4.3B annually. ...Four billion dollars of that is based on the assumption that people's recreation time is as economically valuable as time spent working. The remaining $300m a year is based on actual expenditures.
   The report puts the economic value of farming, logging and hydropower in the basin at $4.9B in one-time payments, including habitat restoration and compensation for leasing of regional fishing rights. The report does not provide a figure for what farms and industries generate for the region each year.
   [In short, despite the ecology-friendly conclusion, the report may not be providing the complete set of data needed to come to that conclusion. But the language in this article is so fuzzy and clipped, who knows what's really going on here.]
   ..Overall, the USGS report uses an updated methodology to confirm earlier findings from similar studies in 1990, 1995 and 1999, said Douglas Posson, director of the USGS science center in Fort Collins, Colo., where the report was prepared. "It's consistent with the previous science in this arena," he said of earlier studies that also assumed leisure time has as much economic value as work time.
   ..\..The Klamath [River] has become the focus of an emotional tug-of-war between commercial anglers, American Indian tribes and environmental groups who want to force the government to release more water and farmers who experienced a shortage of irrigation water last year due to record drought....
   [On balance, we'd prefer to make the case for recreation time based on revenues from leisure industries rather than confusing work and play.]

3. Opinion - U.S. economy and rates by David Beadle, Reuters 11/01/02 10:17 ET via AOLNews.
   ...Lenders will only give you cash when you aren't desperate.... Since lenders cherish stability as a key factor in determining whether or nto you will receive financing, isses such as a lost job or lost work time are exactly the triggers for loan denial....
   [So positive, reduced worktime may be seen by some, e.g., lenders, as negative lost worktime.]

• Newspaper Guild, Reuters begin contract talks as employees don red shirts in show of solidarity, PRNewswire 10/31/2002 19:29 EST.
  NEW YORK...- As hundreds of Reuters employees donned red "Newspaper Guild" t-shirts in a show of solidarity, their negotiators kicked off contract negotiations with proposals to strengthen employment security at a U.S. arm of the London-based news agency while company management proposed slashing pay, benefits and employee rights. ...The Newspaper Guild of New York...represent[s] the company's editorial, technical and sales support employees....
  Company managers want to cut the pay of the more than 500 Guild-represented employees by freezing salaries for a year while lengthening the workweek and slashing healthcare benefits.... The company also proposed weakening employment security....
  [Here again, a situation where longer workweek is linked to job insecurity, contrary to the received wisdom that you have to "work hard to get ahead."]