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Timesizing News, December 1-16, 2002 +Nov.30
[Commentary] ©2002 Phil Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622, Porter Sq, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080

12/14-16/2002  timesizing consciousness in the news, aka flickerings of strategic hope -

1. 12/14 Class action filed on behalf of RadioShack managers, PRNewswire 12/13/2002 16:31 EST via AOLNews.
   LANCASTER, Pa...- A class action lawsuit was filed [yester]day in Philadelphia County against RadioShack, based on its alleged failure to pay overtime wages to certain store managers. The lawsuit is called Mark Goldman v. RadioShack Corp. [It] alleges that "Y" store managers in Pennsylvania regularly work in excess of 40 hours per workweek, without being paid overtime wages..\.. A "Y" store is currently defined as one with an annual sales volume above $500,000.... The suit alleges that this violates both the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and 2 Pennsylvania claims (the Minimum Wage Act and the Wage Payment and Collection Law)..\..
   Joseph Roda and Michele Eagan, of the Pennsylvania firm of Roda & Nast PC [who] filed the lawsuit on behalf of Mr. Goldman and all other persons who managed a RadioShack "Y" store in Pa. at any time in the past 3 years...say that the federal law may provide more money for each week of unpaid overtime wages, while the Pa. laws may allow a recovery for a greater number of weeks. Filing the lawsuit with both the federal and Pa. claims allows potential class members to take advantage of the benefits of both laws.... The case is similar to one that was brought against RadioShack in Calif. in 2000. That case resulted in a settlement of almost $30m.

2. 12/16 Overtime budget at Fire Dept. swells because of retirements - Fire officials struggle to staff firehouses during a hiring freeze, by Michelle O'Donnell, NYT, A28.
   Overtime for firefighters is soaring as the [NYC] Fire Dept. struggles to staff firehouses, which have seen a surge in retirements since Sept. 11, 2001. By last month, only five months into the fiscal year, the department had already spent $61.3m of its original $73.7m overtime budget, according to city officials.... When the pool of available firefighters shrinks, other firefighters must work overtime, at a pay rate of time and a half. Last week, the department reported 671 vacancies in its allotted 8,800-member uniformed force. Despite the large number of firefighters retiring, departures until recently had been offset by new hires. In October, however, the city's hiring freeze canceled the department's fall academy [ie: training class]. That forestalled any replenishment of the ranks, forcing more firefighters to work overtime to cover the vacancies....

• (12/06)   Decade-long effort to reform Euro MP pay founders, Retuers 12/05/02 13:43 ET via AOLNews.
  BRUSSELS...- A decade-lond effort to reform pay and conditions for European lawmakers foundered on Thursday, sparking allegations some of them want to stay on a "gravy train" of generous pay and expense [account]s.... The disparaging term is often directed by Euroskeptics at EU officials, said to enjoy high salaries, low taxes, short work hours and big expense accounts..\..
  [It would be worth a lot if they would do only one thing = spread those short work hours.]
  Green and Liberal members of the 626-seat European Parliament accused Socialist and Christian Democrat rivals of causing the certain failure of a rule to reform pay by including elements that would not be accepted by EU governments....
  [It'd be real nice if the Greens and Liberals would get a little smarter and more discriminating about the targets they attack. If they had jumped on long hours and focused their efforts on that central critical and strategic holdup the last 50 years, we'd have solved most of the other problems on their unprioritized wishlists by now.]

• 4 in 10 of public, more than one-third of physicians say they have personally experienced medical errors - Survey shows strong disagreement between physicians and the public on effectiveness of potential solutions, PRNewswire 12/11/2002 18:44 EST via AOLNews.
  Some 42% of the public and more than one-third of US doctors say they or their family members have experienced medical errors in the course of receiving medical care, with significant percentages reporting serious consequences, according to a new survey by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation....
  Physicians and the public disagree substantially in their views on some of the key proposals: ...
  • Two-thirds of the public said it would be very effective to reduce the work hours of physicians in training (66%) compared to 33% of physicians....

1. WorldWatch - ...Europe -...Briefly:, WSJ, A15.
   LISBON - A general strike shut down much of Portugal, forcing schools to cancel classes, reducing hospital care to emergency treatment and clogging roads. The strike was called by the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers to protest proposed changes in labor laws that unions say will alter [ie: lengthen?] working hours and erode job security.
   [And the probable source -]
   Portuguese strike to protest labor law, by Barry Hatton, AP 12/10/02 10:04 EST via AOLNews.
   LISBON, Portugal - A national strike in Portugal on Tuesday forced schools to cancel classes, reduced hospital care to emergency treatment, left garbage uncollected and clogged roads with traffic as most public transport stopped running. The strike as called to protest proposed changes in the labor law that unions claim will alter working hours and erode job security...
   "The government can't ignore this," said Manuel Carvalho da Silva, leader of the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers, or CGTP, which called the strike. He estimated more than 80% of workers stayed at home.... Labor Minister Antonio Bagao Felix...claimed fewer than 30% of employees joined the strike.... The CGTP, representing roughly 870,000 workers, called the stoppage to oppose the labor law change that has been made public but has not yet been presented to Parliament. Over the past 2 months, civil servants have staged 3 strikes against the proposed legislation.... Attempts by previous governments to change the law failed due to fierce resistance from the unions. The proposed contemplates more flexible working hours, short-term contracts, experimental employment periods, and mid-contract changes to job descriptions.
   ["More flexible working hours" has become a code in France for rolling back workweek reduction.]
   It also would broaden justifications for firing workers, making it easier for employers to lay off staff.
   The government says the legislation is needed to improve productivity and encourage foreign investment.
   [As if Portugal "needs" foreign investment, or productivity that has no markets. Seems TPTB (the powers that be) have to learn over and over again the need to balance supply with demand, production with consumption. The Great Depression was not lesson enough. So it will be repeated. Timesizing is neither supply side nor demand side, but "balance side" at last, because the demand-strangling effects of concentrated work and income are offset by automatic centrifugation of skills and employment.]

2. Newark author says companies shouldn't wait for year-end reviews to thank employees, PRNewswire 12/10/2002 14:01 EST via AOLNews.
   ...Some examples of ways to reward employees..\..according to Chester Elton, the Newark NJ-based co-author of the new book "The 24-Carrot Manager"...are:
   • Send a card home to the workers' families who have been affected by the employees' long working hours.
     [Yeah, like a greeting card will really save a marriage, or keep the kids off drugs. Pathetic.]
   • ...
     [The other two are too trivial and even privacy-invading to repeat.]

• Birmingham Steel-Nucor deal, WSJ, A12.
  Birmingham Steel Corp. closed the sale of its assets to Nucor Corp. for $615m.
  [Nucor is our major corporate working model of timesizing. Here's hoping this adventure into the unnecessary world of acquisition doesn't sink it with debt as adventuring in South America did to Lincoln Electric in the early 1990s.]
  Birmingham Steel, which filed for bankruptcy protection in June [6/04/2002 #1], said its plan of reorganization under Chapter 11 became effective upon closing. If it's sold its assets, what's left to reorganize?]
  Under the plan of reorganization, the company's stockholders will get 47 cents a share, and the shares of stock are cancelled.

• P.C. makers will furlough workers, Reuters via NYT, B4.
  LOS ANGELES...- Personal computer [PC] makers Hewlett-Packard Co. [HP] and Gateway Inc. are sending employees home without pay for the December holidays, a money-saving tradition that has become familiar to workers in the technology industry's 2-year economic downturn.
  [A primitive ad-hoc kind of timesizing to avoid downsizing. But don't get the idea that timesizing necessarily involves less pay. That's only if the company is in trouble, and Dell, now on top in PC sales, isn't -]
  Managers and nonessential employees at Dell, the nation's largest PC maker, will also get time off, but their vacation will be paid, a spokesman said.
  HP[-Compaq], the No. 2 PC maker, is requiring most employees in North America to take off the week of Dec. 23, as HP and Compaq[-DEC, its other component,] which HP bought in May, did last year. Workers can use accrued vacation but must take time off without pay if their vacation is used up, an HP spokesman said. Contract workers in HP's internal technology division will also take off 20 workdays, from Dec. 9 to Jan. 10, said Arch Currid, the HP spokesman.
  [Finally they name him.]
  Gateway will send home nonessential employees without pay from Dec. 24 through Dec. 31, Brad Williams, a company spokesman, said.

1. Italy approves layoffs for Fiat, risking strikes, by Alessandra Galloni & Luca di Leo, 12/06/2002 WSJ, A5.
   ROME -...As protesters angrily pushed through police barricades..., the government agreed to grant Fiat long-awaited "crisis status." This allows the company to dip into a special fund to help finance 5,600 temporary layoffs, which fall mostly at Fiat Auto's factories across Italy but also affect some of the company's auto-parts businesses.... In a concession to government, Fiat agreed to close its Sicilian plant for only 6 months, instead of at least one year.
   [Giving the employees a fixed-length leave, rather than an indefinite layoff.]
   Fiat also agreed to allow employees at other plants to work on a rotating basis, instead of staying home.
   [Aha, worksharing on a rotational basis, which we will all be involved in once technology-linked timesizing proceeds so far as to push the workweek down below which management would become exponentially more difficult, so alternating longer workweeks are resorted to. Here, Fiat has been "forced" beyond downsizing to primitive timesizing in order to reduce domestic job and market destruction. In fact, this is probably how it's going to go in the United States and Japan. Blocked from the traditional depression "solutions" of war (too dangerous and/or unpopular) or plague (too slow-acting), governments will downsize until they realize they're not going to have any economy left. Then they will be forced to "discover" timesizing. After awhile, they will realize that they could save a lot of tax money, most of which is going to supporting the un-self-supporting, by extending timesizing and deepening the cuts in the maximum workweek. Then a few other nations, observing their experiences, will decide to take a shortcut from not yet completely ruined economy to timesizing, thereby avoiding the worst pain that the first, "have to be forced" economies have gone through.]
   But in return, Italy's center-right administration gave the green light for as many as 2,900 permanent layoffs for workers approaching retirement, compared with just 500 in a plan Fiat had originally presented Oct. 9.... In June, Fiat plans to lay off an additional 2,000 workers in the hope of getting back into the black by 2004, when the company can exercise its option to sell part or all of its 80% stake to GM....
   [Clearly Fiat, at the moment, doesn't yet "get" the toxicity of downsizing and the timesizing imperative. Well, there's plenty of pain in store for them; in fact, all the pain necessary to smarten them up, however long it takes.]

2. Factbox - Main issues, platforms in S. Korea election, Reuters 12/05/02 03:43 ET via AOLNews.
   SEOUL...- South Korea's 35m voters go to the polls to elect a successor to Pres. Kim Dae-jung on Dec. 19, with 2 main candidates offering contrasting policies on North Korea and the economy, Asia's 4th biggest.
   [after Japan, China and Russia, assuming we're regarding Russia as Asian and not European and assuming Russia has grown faster than South Korea since their 1999 GDPs of SK $407B and R $401B?]
   Following are the policies on major issues announced by the main candidates, Roh Moo-hyun of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party and Lee Hoi-chang of the opposition Grand National Party:
   ...ECONOMY
   
   • ROH - South Korea's conglomerates need further reform and curbs on financial activities to reduce their dominance of the economy and check government-business collusion. Pledges to implement a 5-day working week [currently 5½-day with Sat. am] and improve benefits for the working class, including foreign guest workers.
     [Still hasn't learned the labor-surplusing wage-damping economy-battering effects of foreign guest workers. See Phase 5 of the Timesizing Full Employment Program re plugging the leaks presented by the population variables of imports, immigrants and births.]
     
   • LEE - Aims to create 2.5m jobs through investment in education and technology,
     [Still hasn't clearly realized the power of worksharing in preference to makework (e.g., education, our makework realm #12, strives to ke^tm;ep people out of the labor-glutted job market as long as possible generally toward the beginning of their lives) or more labor-saving devices (aka technology, which if it really, per cheerleaders' insistence, created more jobs than it destroyed, would completely rule out almost all downsizing).]
     and would rationalize the tax system, including lowering taxes for low-income groups. Advocates safety net for poor. Says consensus between management and labour a condition for elimination of Saturday shift to create 5-day working week.
   [At least they're both talking about the non-war, non-plague solution that we're ultimately all going to be forced to accept if we want to have any consumer base and economy left = sharing the work by cutting the workweek.]

3. [and some timesizing consciousness struggling to break through from another source in America -]
   The Leader's Edge research reveals why executive women are leaving their high level positions, Business Wire 12/05/2002 09:01 Eastern via AOLNews.
   BALA CYNWYD, Pa...- In an effort to understand why female executives are leaving their corporate positions at a rate twice that of males The Leader's Edge(TM) recently undertook...a research study aimed at high level executive women.... The sample consisted of over 100 executive women, interviewed by telephone, who had voluntarily left their positions.   18 states and a cross-section of industries were represented in the study. The women had salaries of $150,000 and above, with 1/3 earning over $250K. Key findings [re] why women leave..\..included:
   
   • Corporate culture 39%.... Respondents expressed disappointment in management that did not value diversity of thought and believed their roles were not respected. They stated that information was not shared [or that] values displayed by management [did not] correspond...with their own..\..
   • Work/family balance 31% [and] a need for more flexible working hours.... Even in those organizations where flexible working arrangements were available, women were reluctant to participate [because that] made other employees and top management perceive them as being less committed and...threaten their positions. Often when exceptions were made, women were asked not to share their experiences for fear of setting a precedent in the company..\..
     [From the context, we'll infer that "flexible hours" here refers sloppily to shorter hours as well as merely to moved-around 40+ hours.]
   • Career development 13%
   • New direction 11%
   • Money 6%....
   Molly Shephard, founder of The Leader's Edge, has more than 20 years' experience in career development consulting, leadership development and executive coaching. ...To learn more..., visit www.the-leaders-edge.com [or phone] 610/660-6684....

• [700 jobs saved, for now -]
  American Airlines plans to cut flight attendants, Reuters via NYT, C7.
  DALLAS...- [The nation's largest airline will] cut about 1,100 flight attendant jobs as it tries to save money by operating fewer flights. As American spokesman, Todd Burke, said that through Jan. 7, American would ask its flight attendants to volunteer to share jobs or take leaves of absence.
  [Sounds like a primitive form of worksharing aka timesizing to reduce layoffs. We aren't told if the leaves of absence would be with full or partial pay. We do have a hint about just how 'voluntary' these programs are and how many layoffs they're hoped to prevent -]
  "It would allow flight attendants to make some decisions during that time," Mr. Burke said. American will determine how many layoffs it needs after seeing how many people enroll in voluntary options. The layoffs would begin Jan. 31, he said. American, a unit of AMR Corp., has about 21,000 active flight attendants, and those who may be involved in the layoff will receive notices sometime next week.
  [So the notices will kinda encourage people to 'volunteer.']
  Mr. Burke said American had signed a one-time deal with the Assoc. of Professional Flight Attendants, the union representing flight attendants, that would cap the number of people it could lay off in this round at 400.
  [So they hope there'll be enough job sharing and leave taking to avoid 1100-400= 700 additional layoffs.]

1. I don't want to work harder. I want to work smarter - AMD me, full-page ad, WSJ, B5.
   [Here's an example of what Ansell Adams called "chance favoring the prepared mind." One doesn't often hear the phrase "work smart, not hard" any more now that our CEOs have become so unskilled at anything but distracting attention from their incompetence by generating mergers, mayhem and downsizing, but here's one company that has revived the phrase in the publication that needs to hear it most, the Wall Street Journal. The ad is for the AMD Athlon XP processor (AMD = Advanced Micro Devices), and since we're not talking about hod carrying here, "hard work" calls to mind long hours rather than sweaty brows. The implication, then, is that shorter working hours are desirable, and possible if you do your job intelligently - quite a revolutionary concept in a publication that has become a promoter of long hours regardless (see their frontpage slam of Europe for better work-life balance, 8/8/2002]. The fact that the ad features a female employee (she does look a bit harried) lends credence to the view that shorter hours are being referred to in the phrase "I want to work smarter," since women are generally more interested in work-life balance than men. The rest of the ad makes it clear that we're talking about saving time -]
   The AMD Athlon^tm XP processor is fast. Very fast. And fortunately, speed is just the beginning. This processor is about more than just megahertz. Its unique design results in more work per clock tick, giving your computer a more efficient way to work, and you, a smarter way to work. ...Visit www.amd.com
   [Of course, today's CEOs are still capable of reversing the constructiveness here into destructiveness by scrabbling after more productivity in the same manhours (rather than same output in less time) which, used to enable downsizing, shrinks the workforce-consumer base and induces recession.]

2. Gov't, Keidanren, Rengo agree to promote work sharing, Kyodo News 12/03/02 19:40 EST via AOLNews.
   TOKYO...- Representatives from government, business and labor sectors compiled a document Wednesday [do they mean Tuesday or are they issuing this press release in advance?] aimed at ensuring job security in the deteriorating labor market by means such as promoting work sharing.... The representatives included Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda; Health, Labor & Welfare Minister Chikara Sakaguchi; Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) Chairman Hiroshi Okuda; and Kiyoshi Sasamori, president of the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo)..\..
   In the document, the employers promised to do their best to maintain job security in the belief it is their social responsibility, while their labor counterparts promised to cooperate with employers on diversifying work styles to include work sharing....
   The document was drafted at the request of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi about a week after representatives agreed at their Nov. 26 meeting [see 11/27/2002 below] to work harder on stabilizing the nation's job security.... The November meeting was the first of its kind involving representatives from the government, business and labor sectors in one year.

• S. Korea monthly auto sales fall, outlook healthy, by Samuel Len, Reuters 12/02/02 04:17 ET via AOLNews.
  SEOUL...- South Korean automakers unveiled stronger sales in November from a year ago, although sales were down from October as buyers held off making purchases to get their hands on next year's models.... Hyundai said in a statement on Monday the monthly decline was attributed to "customers delaying purchases until 2003 models are available, as well as lost production due to strikes."
  Protesting against a government proposal for a shorter workweek, unionised workers at Hyundai held a 4-hour strike in November, while rejected extra work for 3 days. Workers had criticised the government's 5-day workweek plan saying it would cost them holidays and hit wages....
  [You can't help people who don't understand that it's help and don't want it.]

• 12/02 Table - Japan Oct overtime pay up for third month, Reuters 12/01/02 20:30 ET.
  [Want to know why Japan is still in the economic toilet and has been for the past 12 years? Here's a hint-]
  TOKYO...- The average overtime pay of Japanese wage earners in October [18,045 yen or $147] rose 1.4% from a year earlier and was up for the 3rd straight month, data showed on Monday.... In terms of hours worked, overtime rose in October for a 4th straight month, and was up 4.7% from a year earlier....
  [This despite scattered worksharing efforts in Japan at the local, prefectural and company levels. And what is the logical result of this continuing concentration of vanishing market-demanded human employment in Japan? Yooouu guessed it -]
  Totaly monthly wages based on employees' contracts fell 0.9% to an average 279,445 yen in October, while total cash earnings fell 0.7% to 284,003 yen....
  [In short, by not spreading the work around and keeping a lot of people unemployed and willing to do your job for less, Japan is continuing to clobber its consumer base and its domestic demand. What should Japan be doing about overtime? It should be automatically converting it to training&hiring.]