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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 -

11/14/2002  primitive timesizing in the news, aka flickerings of strategic hope - 11/13/2002  primitive timesizing in the news, aka flickerings of strategic hope - 11/12/2002  timesizing consciousness in the news, aka flickerings of strategic hope - 11/09-11/2002  timesizing consciousness in the news, aka flickerings of strategic hope -
  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....

11/08/2002  timesizing consciousness in the news, aka flickerings of strategic hope -
  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.]

11/07/2002  timesizing consciousness in the news, aka glimmers of strategic hope - 11/06/2002  timesizing consciousness in the news, aka glimmers of strategic hope - some bad news & some good news -
  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.]

11/05/2002  timesizing consciousness in the news, aka glimmers of strategic hope - 11/03/2002  timesizing consciousness in the news, aka a glimmer of strategic hope - 11/02/2002  primitive timesizing & timesizing consciousness in the news, aka glimmers of strategic hope -
  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.]

11/01/2002  timesizing consciousness in the news, aka glimmers of strategic hope -
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