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Timesizing News, May 1-20, 2003
[Commentary] ©2003 Phil Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622, Porter Sq, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080

5/20/2003  timesizing consciousness in the news, aka glimmers of strategic hope - nothing current, so plumbing the barrel of late arrivals -

• (10/04/2002)   Working for the weekend - Two quirky books about labor and leisure that are worth reading - if you have the free time, by Jeph Jacques, Hartford Advocate 10/03/2002, p.27, via Tony Schinella.
  [The books aren't the only quirky thing here.]
  ...When asked in a national survey what the one commodity they wanted more of was, most Americans responded, "time." Even with all our so-called time-saving devices and strategies, we feel time slipping past us faster and faster every day. There never seem to be enough hours in the day to fulfull all our needs, accomplish all our goals, or satisfy all our desires.... The desire for efficiency [suggests one book] is a big part of owhat makes us feel that life is slipping [past] us.... Efficiency is effectively sucking the leisure out of our leisure..\.. It is this situation that average Americans find themselves in today, in an ever-accelerating world where time is quickly becoming even more valuable that money.
  How can we, as both individuals and [as] a society, find a way out of this vicious cycle of rushing through our weeks to reach a weekend that goes by too quickly?
  [...if we still have a weekend! The author ignores the most obvious and important answer = fight for a shorter workweek.]
  ...Two fairly recent books...provide some...perspective. ...Both books conclude that the average worker in America has more [free?] time today than at any other point in our history.
  [Happytalk alert! (And possibly coverup or gross ignorance!) Wassily Leontief in "The Distribution of Work and Income", p.100ff. in The Mechanization of Work, produces data showing that "the length of the normal workweek today [1977, 41.8 hours] is practically the same as it was 35 years ago [(1942), while] concurrently, the U.S. economy has seen a chronic increase in unemployment from one oscillation of the business cycle to the next." And the whole point of Juliet Schor's 1991 book, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (Basic Books), was to show that American worktime has actually increased by the equivalent of one month a year since 1945. There's something fishy about these books if the reviewer's statement is true.]
  Today, the most commonly reported length of a working week is 40 hours, when in decades [NO!] and centuries [yes, but ancient history] past it was 60 or more.
  [A pretty simplistic statement from an article supposedly focusing on this topic. The average workweek was 68.4 hours which, rounded, would be 70 in 1840, and around 59 hours in 1900, according to the tables on page x of Roediger & Foner's Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day, (Verso, 1989). And here's another red flag -]
  Workers are also receiving more pay per hour than at any time in history..\..
  [Juliet Schor on p. 80, "The second cause of longer hours has been a steady reduction in hourly rates of pay. Workers paid by the hour - a majority of U.S. employees - saw their average wage peak in 1973. Since then, it has declined substantially and now [1991] stands at its mid-1960s level." This trend has not reversed since 1991 but gone further. What planet does this reviewer - or the authors of the books reviewed if that's his source - live on? Here are the 2 books -]
  
  1. From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend: A short, illustrated history of labor in the United States [by Priscilla Murolo & A.B. Chitty (New Press: 2001)] is a...concise, engrossing history of the many struggles the working class has had to undergo to achieve the freedom that we enjoy today [and] describes [how] it was not until Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal restructuring in the 1930s that the 40-hour workweek became standard and a minimum wage was established..\..
     [Actually the 40-hour workweek wasn't established until the summer of 1940.]
  2. Time for Life: The Surprising Ways Americans Use Their Time [by John P. Robinson & Geoffrey Godbey (Penn State U Press, 1997), is] scientific but very readable. [It] describes in minute detail the everyday activities that consume the bulk of most Americans' time [based on] an exhaustive research project.... The authors analyze everything from TV and computer use to grocery shopping and personal hygiene, with a watchful eye for telling trends and patterns. ...Their study...revealed a...trend toward party between the sexes. They found that women are spending more time in the workplace, but are making more money and are balancing out the time spent as mothers and wives accordingly.
     ["Balancing out"?? Here it is again -]
     Men, in turn, are accepting more responsibilities around the house, thereby balancing out what was once a large discrepancy between the free time enjoyed by men and women.
     [Simpleton alert. We're getting the distinct impression that reviewer Jeff Jacques doesn't have the gray matter of a dust mite. Responsibilities around the house were women's "work" before the advent of over-population and the devaluing of reproduction and motherhood.]
     Robinson and Godbey also probe the negative aspects of modern American leisure.
     • They describe the almost compulsive need for modern Americans to use their free time in the most efficient way possible.
       [1997 was probably too early to include the invasion of erstwhile free time by cellphones.]
     • We spend less time cooking and eating meals now than every before.
     • We emphasize "quality time" spent with family and friends - packing the greatest amount of social interaction into shorter and shorter periods of time.... What once would have been a day-long [or at least afternoon-long] family event \like\ a trip to the zoo...is not often condensed into a few rather stressful hours in the afternoon, bookended by long drives to and from the zoo..\..
     • We spend more time engaged in activities that can be done in combination with other pursuits - reading while listening to the radio, or reading while driving [WHAT???], for example....
       [This idiot must have meant, "reading while being driven to work."]
     • The notion of instant gratification is another impediment to our enjoyment of free time. Why spend a day at the zoo when we can drive through it in three hours.
       [We can drive through it in 1-1½ hours max!]
       Why spend 10 hours reading a novel when we can see the condensed movie version in an hour and a half?]
     • ...Many Americans still manage to find time to read books and patronize art museums.
     • In fact, studies show that the more engaged and informed a person is, the more fulfilling that person's use of free time will be. The evidence suggests that activities that connect us with the world around us are more fulfilling than reclusive pastimes....

1. Retirements allow cops to avoid layoffs, by Laurel Sweet, Boston Herald, 22.
   ...Hoping to avoid any layoffs in public safety, Mayor Thomas Menino inititated a voluntary workforce reduction plan. Police officers who are older than 55 or have more than 20 years on the job are eligible to retire with a one-time bonus of 20% of their salary..\.. The tentative "early" retirements of 96 Boston police officers, including the department's top homicide cop, have spared the careers of more than 170 patrolmen, Commissioner Paul Evans said. "We will not do layoffs," declared Evans, who two months ago feared he'd have to gouge deep into his 2,122-officer force to sate the city's need for budget blood-letting.
   [OK, worklife reduction is not as flexible or sustainable as workweek reduction, but it's still kicking around worktime instead of workforce and as such, a form of timesizing, not downsizing - although in the case of early retirements, it's not a matter of the whole workforce suffering a little so a minority can avoid paying the whole price because early retirements do involve people leaving their jobs.]
   ...The average age of officers taking the buyout is 60, with the median number of years on the job 33. The loss of higher salaries means Evans can hold onto more lower-paying entry jobs, he explained.
   [An interesting aspect of this case study is that it highlights a complicating factor that we seldom mention in our general attempt to present the basic concept of trimming worktime to avoid chopping jobs. In this case the "interesting aspect" comes out positive, but it often goes the other way. We're referring to the fact that when you trim the worktime of senior or highly paid employees (including executives), you may get a bonus in the number of jobs you save. Here we're only trimming 96x40= 3,840 working hours but since they're highly paid, senior-employee working hours, they are buying the continuation of 170x40= 6,800 less highly paid working hours. That's why we're always careful to say, on our homepage, for example, "instead of just trimming its workweek 12% (to five 7hr2min days for the whole company, including top executives)," because if you include an hourscut for some of these grossly overpaid guys (in the gender-general sense) - and trim the corresponding percentage of their salary - you don't have to so deeply trim hours - and corresponding pay - for everyone. This leads us back to the fundamental observation that the primary "leak" in today's Downsizing Capitalism is The Great Leak Upward, not The Great Leak Downward into unemployment insurance, welfare, disability, state hospitals, homeless services, prisons and dependence-on-the-taxpayer in general. That was highlighted lately in another area by the outcry about $600m in pork that senators tried to tack onto a $75B military appropriation bill. In both cases, neither leak is desirable, but we sure don't spend anywhere near a realistic proportion of time&energy worrying about The Great Leak Upward, and waaay too much worring about the Downward. The first-step solution to the economic Upward Leak is employment-balancing a la "flexible adjustment of the workweek" e.g., Timesizing. The solution to the political-military leak is more democracy - losing the Electoral College, beefing up referendums and citizen initiatives... - generally doing an 'end run' around the whole corrupt mess in congress. Of course, that's going to take a lot more savoir-faire than we generally have now not only in phrasing alternatives even-handedly but also in outlining the decision tree in every controversial issue. Because why? Because our biggest problem in political debate is that we're talking to one another not only from completely different branchings on the decision tree but usually from different levels on those branchings as well. An example here would be worth a thousand words. Let's see. One example. The debate over the invasion of Iraq. Some supporters wanted to justify it by focussing on how bad Saddam was and how there was "proof" that he had weapons of mass destruction. Some critics wanted to invalidate it by focussing on the fact there was no real and proximate threat to the USA. The fork in the decision tree was closer to where the critics were focused, because the branches diverged depending on your answer to the question, do we ever do a first strike, a pre-emptive war? And some critics answer here was a flat No. So anything the other critics, or any of the supporters said from then on was completely irrelevant to them. They had made their decision at a higher branching level on the decision tree. Back to the article -]
   ..\..Still, the good news comes at a price.... The overall departures represent a 4.5% reduction in Evans' uniformed workforce, including 37 patrolmen, 14 detectives, 20 sergeants, 6 sergeant-detectives, 9 lieutenants and 1 lieut.-detectives. Also departing are 5 captains, 2 capt.-detectives and [Paul] Farrahar, the lone deputy superintendent out of 10 within the department..\..
   Deputy Supt. Paul Farrahar, the department's head of homicide, has filed papers to leave at the end of June.... Farrahar, who turns 62 of Tuesday, has served the department for more than 32 years....
   "We're indebted to these officers," Evans said, "because they're saved young officers' jobs."

2. [reverse timesizing -]
   The flight attendant - Forced to work longer hours for far less pay, by Micheline Maynard, NYT, A12.
   ...March [1] United Airlines...began eliminating 14 flights to and within Asia. The cutbacks, announced as [pointless!] war loomed with Iraq, were worsened by the drop in travel because of SARS..\.. Tony Retkowski, a flight attendant for United [said,] "First it was the war...then SARS was the [last straw]"..\..
   On May 5, United scrapped its direct flights from Chicago and San Francisco to Hong Kong. Passengers bound for Hong Kong on United must change planes in Tokyo - and even that is more difficult, since United eliminated one of its two flights a day between Chicago and Tokyo.
   Each of those flights carried as many as 20 flight attendants, and their elimination meant those employees had to find other destinations. Since trips are awarded on seniority, the cuts bumped Mr. Retkowski from international trips to domestic ones, which he had not flown regularly since 1997....
   The contrast is noticeable. On a domestic flight, "you're talking about an hour and a half with just a beverage service versus a 14-hour [international] flight with three meal services," he said. "It's quite different." His paycheck is very different too. In 2002, Mr. Retkowski, whose decade of service places him in about the middle of United's seniority-based pay scale, earned just under $42,000, flying about 65 hours a month. (Flight attendants are paid for the time they spend in the air, not while waiting for assignments or while performing paperwork before and after flights.)
   [Well, there's a little slice of slavery right there!]
   Now Mr. Retkowski is flying 80 hours a month, but he estimates his salary will drop by more than $12,000 this year because domestic flights pay less per hour than international trips. Mr. Retkowski is a reserve attendant, filling in regularly for attendants who are on vacation or ill.
   To make up for the drop in wages, Mr. Retkowski has taken two part-time jobs - one with a friend's company that paints house interiors, the other at a hotdog stand on a Lake Michigan beach. He has encountered other flight attendants with whom he once flew to Asia moonlighting as waitresses and behind the counter in clothing stores....

• (5/15) Feature - Too rich to 'reform' [our quotes], Germans cling to status quo, by Emma Thomasson with David Crossland & Michael Steen, Reuters 05/14/03 05:23 ET via AOLNews.
  SINDELFINGEN, Germany...- The local council [in this] south-west German town [which is] home to carmaker DaimlerChrysler \and was\ once so wealthy it could afford pedestrian crossings in marble, is broke. ...Corporate tax revenues [have] slump[ed] as the economy has stagnated.
  The boom times may be over, but Sindelfingen is not exactly poor.
  • Unemployment is 'just' [our quotes] 5%,
    [but when times were really good in the 1940s, any unemployment over 2% was (correctly) seen as alarming - and incumbent politicians have no incentive to keep unemployment figures catching the bulk of the problem - quite the contrary, - we wouldn't be at all surprised if the same trends weren't at work in Germany]
  • and it boasts a state-of-the-art sports stadium,
    [we'd argue that city-financed stadiums are also a negative indicator - indicating makework, and a felt need for makework = job desperation, and the lack of insufficient work-sharing, and a technologically outdated, overlong workweek]
  • a brand new shopping mall
    [that'll be the first to turn into a ghost town if they go through with these "reforms"]
  • and town hall
    [more makework]
  • and streets filled with gleaming Mercedes cars.
    [could merely indicate insufficient centrifugation of spending power]
  • Buses run on time
  • from a spotless station,
  • shops close for a leisurely lunch,
    [generally no one in the world has a clue how low the workweek should go for robust economies at our level of technological work-saving - we're too busy feeling guilty about what little leisure we have "stolen" from the Puritan work ethic for eg: leisurely lunches, and Germany has "stolen" a lot more than Americans]
  • crime is low.
    [which can be merely an indicator of unsustainable-because-dependency-breeding liberal social supports rather than sustainable prosperity.]
  • Workers enjoy six weeks leave
    [you can't access the future by manipulating the workyear - it's just too inflexible, - you've got to bring in flexible adjustment of the workweek a la Walter Reuther]
  • and, in the unlikely case of losing their jobs, will receive generous benefits.
    [Touché. The future lies not in subsidizing misfortune - which only serves to make it permanent - but in accentuating the positive, reinforcing the healthy and sharing the vanishing work. That takes a flexible, market-oriented, private-sector-based worksharing system like Timesizing. It ain't sustainable unless the private sector cleans up its own mess, in terms of disposable, and discarded, employees.]
  • There are no vagrants.
    [But government-dependents alias taxpayer dependents are just high-priced vagrants, because they have been completely excluded from what relatively little human employment is still required in an age of constantly rising levels of efficient technology, the heritage of thousands of our clever predecessors, whose blessing we have soured into a curse by just "not getting" the timesizing imperative. Our suicidal alternative? Downsizing.]
  Except for much of the former communist east, where unemployment is over 20% in places, this comfortable picture is mirrored across much of Germany. It helps to explain why Germans are so attached to the status quo despite warnings that their welfare system is about to collapse and unemployment could mount to 5 million this year.
  [And what's that in percentage terms? We aren't told, which is odd considering the rash of percentages given later.]
  ...German retirees can expect a state pension of 67% of their final salary, the unemployed receive benefits of 57-67% of their previous pay and Germany has 50% more hospital beds that the EU average. These are costs a stagnant economy can no longer afford
  [but it's only stagnant because they're falling behind in consuming their own technologically multiplied output - because, in turn, they're falling behind in centrifuging their national income dba spending power - because, in turn, they're falling behind in centrifuging their diminishing national "income" of market-demanded, human employment]
  due to stubbornly high unemployment and a rapidly ageing population.
  [Bingo.]
  But the painful cuts needed are not vote-winners, at least in the short term.
  [If they'd wake up to the implications of the technology, and the timesizing, not downsizing imperative, we bet that fluctuating adjustment of the workweek, generally downward, would be more of a vote-winning cut than cuts in services, because it only requires a change in management style toward suturing more frequent shifts. Managers keep avoiding this, hoping they can go on forever passing the costs to the general public via lower social services (or higher taxes), but the more they force others to change instead of themselves, the more they starve their own markets and build pressure for themselves to change.]
  ...Otmar Issing, EU Central Bank chief economist, said the crisis is invisible to most Germans. "They travel and come back and say it's much better here than abroad," he said..\.. For the time being, the only Germans feeling the squeeze are those responsible for balancing the books like [Sindelfingen] Mayor Voehringer \who is\ battling to close a yawning hole in the town's budget...and [federal?] Finance Minister Hans Eichel.... Eichel said the situation had to get worse for Germans to bite the bullet.
  [Only the power elite, the management class, has to "bite the bullet," and only in terms of their management style and emphasis.]
  "In a 'democracy' [our quotes] people are only ready to accept the necessary changes to their status when the crisis is visible to virtually everyone."
  [And not even then, if they have no idea what the real "necessary changes" are. All that's on the table in Germany is the usual outdated left-right liberal-conservative nostrums -]
  ..\..Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has proposed a package of welfare cuts and labour market 'reforms' aimed at reviving the stagnant economy,
  [which will succeed only in further damaging the national consumer base]
  but faces fierce opposition to it from unions and left-wingers within his own Social Democratic Party..\..
  [Thank God. But they don't have the sustainable solution either. They just want to perpetuate subsidies for unsustainable dependency-creation, rather than making self-support MUCH easier - as easy as it should and must be during an age of runaway worksaving technology.]
  Sindelfingen Mayor Bernd Voehringer...a member of the opposition Christian Democrats, says Schroeder's plans do not go far enough.
  [Yeah, this dummkopf probably wants cuts on the scale of the "great" USA so Germany too can have high crime and millions on disability, on the prison and in prison.]
  ...Oliver Schmid...who runs a luxury jewellery store in Sindelfingen, said..."When you think about what a normal worker at Daimler earns for a 35-hour-week, it isn't hard work compared to running a small business or being a doctor and they get 32 days holiday [US: annual vacation]. Nobody wants to give up what they've got."
  [Even der klein-gehirnete (small-brained?) Oliver thinks the answer is more unmarketable productivity from longer, not shorter, worktime put in by necessarily fewer, not more, workers. Dumm dumm dumm. And in case there are any supersensitive Deutschers reading this, yours truly is not just another one o'them "non Angli, sed angeli" throwing around his "body English" but is in the process of joining the Boston-area German society (Boylston Schul-Verein) on the strength of his father-in-law's birth in Berlin 95 years ago (Werner Jurow) and his cousins-in-law's countrymusic band still based in the Berlin suburb of Finsterwalde (Bernd "Papa Joe" & Sylvie "Mama Joe" Klar).]

1. [some new info about Lufthansa's timesizing -]
   Lufthansa losses nearly double in 1Q, by David McHugh, AP 05:14/03 08:27 EDT via AOLNews.
   FRANKFURT, Germany - ...Lufthansa lost 356m euros ($409m) in the three months ended March 31 compared with a loss of 186m euros a year ago..\..due to the SARS illness and the sluggish world economy.... Lufthansa has cut ticket prices, offering limited quantities of cheap, no-advance-purchase tickets within Germany and more cheap seats for European travel with 42-day advance purchases. It faces competition within Europe from several new airline offering cheap tickets, often to popular vacation destinations.
   The company has sought to cut costs by reducing working hours for ground personnel and flight attendants, and has tentatively agreed on similar reductions with its pilots' union....
   [and a new mention of some old info -]
   Lufthansa warns of loss as Asia traffic slumps, by Jeff Mason, Reuters 05/14/03 11:17 ET via AOLNews.
   FRANKFURT - ...Europe's 3rd largest passenger airline posted a first-quarter operating loss that was wider than analysts expected..\..and warned on Wednesday [5/14] it would plunge to an operating loss this year as SARS and the weak economy pound demand in the worst crisis ever to hit the air travel industry....
   'The only good thing is they have a strong balance sheet," Commerzbank's [Dominic] Eldridge said, adding however that Lufthansa had some high capital expenditures coming later in the year.
   Lufthansa has cut staff working hours and grounded 70 planes along with its regional partners....
   [And so far, no layoffs - so, timesizing, not downsizing.]

2. [and now, some tragicomic relief -]
   Shirk ethic: How to fake a hard day at the office - White-collar slackers get help from new gadgets; The faux 4 a.m. e-mail, by Jane Spencer, WSJ, D1.
   [This is how sick we've become - we're "shirking slackers" if we're not sleep-deprived, working at 4 a.m. The inside blow-out called "Faking it" has 6 suggestions, of which we excerpt the first 3 -]
   
   • e-mail timers...- Go to bed early, but make team members think you're burning the midnight oil by timing messages to send at 3 a.m.
     [So not working all night is now "going to bed early"?]
   • RIM Blackberry handheld...- Leave work early to avoid traffic, but send a few Blackberry messages from the road to cover you tracks.
     [So here we're enjoined to join the smart set in dissing safe driving and screw around in the car with a handheld, more complex than a cellphone.]
   • GoToMyPc.com...- Log on to your work computer during vacations....
     [In short, invade your own privacy 24/7 - become a slave.]
   [Pathetic. And here's part of the text -]
   A recent ethics survey by the Society for HR Mgmt found that 59% of HR professionals said they personally observed employees lying aboaut the number of hours they worked: some 53% reported that they saw employees lying to a supervisor, a jump of 8% in 6 years.
   [But then, how can you blame employees when this is the message they're getting from above -]
   Still, some employers not only tolerate the technology but use it themselves. "If you're a boss, and you send e-mails at all hours of the night, the subtle message you're sending employees is, 'I'm working, why aren't you'," says Anne Warfield, a career coach in Edina, Minn....
   [To which the answer is, "Because I've got a life. Why haven't you?" To which the answer is, "Because I've got no power in this technology-downsized job market than you. By the way, you're job's been cut." And then the next month, the boss's job gets cut. This is self-downsizing capitalism for you, and there is an alternative = self-optimizing capitalism = Timesizing.]

1. As funds disappear, so do orchestras - Symphonies cut staff, budgets and entire seasons - A call for arts administrators to try new tactics, by Stephen Kinzer, NYT, B1 & B9.
   ...The musicians of the Houston Symphony went on strike for 3 weeks in March and April and in the end were forced to settle for a contract that imposed sharp curbs on wages and benefits.... The plight of the Houston Symphony reflects the challenges that orchestras are confronting across the country. Houston, the nation's 4th-largest city [after, in uncertain order, NY, LA, and Chicago], has had a full-size symphony orchestra since 1972..\.. Ed Wulfe, a Houston real estate developer who helped mediate the dispute in this city...said the orchestra was vital.... Critics of orchestra management are not so sure. They suggest that if a city cannot come up with the money to support a symphony orchestra, perhaps it does not need one....
   The musicians' strike in Houston ended with the signing of a contract that calls for the cancellation of 10 concerts in the season, cuts in staff size and salaries, higher healthcare premiums and mandatory unpaid furloughs for musicians....
   [I.e., primitive timesizing, to limit or defer downsizing.]

2. "Black Tuesday" strike paralyses France, by Mark John with Toni Vorobyova & Chris Noble & Rebecca Harrison & Dominique Rodriguez, Reuters 05/13/03 11:07 ET via AOLNews.
   [For the pension aspects of this story, see our eroding retirement page for today, 5/14/2003.]
   PARIS... - Strikes against plans to overhaul state pensions crippled French air and rail traffic and closed schools on Tuesday as unions said more than a million workers staged the strongest street protest in years. France's conservative government said it would not back down on 'reforms' [our quotes] forcing workers to contribute more and retire later to avoid an impending funding crunch. But it sought to avoid further strikes by hinting at concessions for low-earners....
   [The challenge this government is blowing, is how to sustainabilize the pension situation without damaging the French consumer base and sending the economy into a tailspin. The U.S. and most other developed nations have the same challenge and are also blowing it. It's a subset of the major challenge facing humanity during our lifetimes - how to sustainabilize the injection of work-saving technology vs. the need to maintain a constant number of human workers as markets for all the goods and services the technology is producing. The previous government took a big step in the direction of meeting this challenge by chopping the workweek from 39 to 35 hours -]
   Polls show the French, who enjoy retiring early and often benefit from a 35-hour workweek [= l'exception francaise!], would prefer to increase pension contributions than work longer.
   [Oh yeah, we'd all like to have our cake and eat it too - until we discover the vulnerabilities of the resulting parasitism.]

• France: Bracing for strikes, Reuters via NYT, A6.
  Nationwide strikes were set to halt most planes, trains and buses in France today, and close schools, hospitals and other services as trade unions mobilized a major one-day protest against planned pension changes that would have the French pay more and work longer before they could retire.... Teachers also plan to join the 24-hour stoppage. In Paris, up to 90% of Metro [= subway] trains will be halted and bus services will be cut by 2/3, officials said..\.. The strikes were expected to result in 4 in 5 flights being canceled, France's aviation authority said. The state railway company expects to cancel 2/3 of mainline services....

1. 5/10   Hong Kong: Cost cuts at airline, Bloomberg via NYT, B2.
   Cathay Pacific Airlines asked all of its 14,000 workers to take four weeks special leave to cut costs after the SARS outbreak caused the worst slump in bookings in the airline's 57-year history. All employees, including the chairman, James Hughes-Hallett, and the CEO, David Turnbull, will be asked to take four week off [between] June [and] September.
   [This is classic timesizing to avoid downsizing - though still with primitive and inflexible workweek-per-workyear units instead of the advanced and flexible working-hour-per-workweek units. Four weeks is 4/52= 7.7% of a year. So let's estimate that this is similar to a 7.7% workweek cut that would save 7.7% of the jobs in the company workforce, that is, 7.7% of 14,000 = 1,078 saved jobs.]

2. 5/12   Lufthansa, Dow Jones via WSJ, A12.
   Lufthansa, struggling with the effects of a slow economy and worries about SARS reached a tentative agreement to cut costs by reducing pilots' hours, the German airline and...the pilots union Vereinigung Cockpit said. The two sides said the agreement involves a reduction in working hours, as well as pilots taking their vacation time early. They didn't say how much money would be saved. The agreement matched the contributions exacted from ground personnel and flight attendants last month, the company said. Lufthansa has cut seat capacity and labor costs in recent months due to sluggish economic growth and a sharp slowdown in business on its Asian routes due to SARS. The agreement still must be ratified by employee representatives and the company's top management.
   [Here's the AP version -]
   5/10   Lufthansa to reduce pilots' work hours, AP 05/09/03 12:56 EDT via AOLNews.
   FRANKFURT, Germany - German airline Lufthansa, struggling with the effects of a slow economy and worries about the SARS illness, reached a tentative deal to cut costs by reducing pilots' hours, the company and the pilots union Vereinigung Cockpit said Friday. The two sides said the agreement involves a reduction in working hours, as well as pilots taking their vacation early....
   [No point in repeating this - it's too close to the WSJ version. How about Reuters -]
   5/10   Lufthansa, pilots agree on shorter working hours, Reuters 05/09/03 10:35 ET via AOLNews.
   FRANKFURT...- Germany's Lufthansa and pilots union Vereinigung Cockpit said on Friday pilots would start working shorter hours, in line with other airline workers, to help shore up company earnings in the current aviation crisis. The airline and union said in separate statements that they had agreed in principle on measures that the pilots would take to help out Europe's third largest airline by passengers, which is expected to post a wide first quarter loss next week.
   Like other airlines worldwide, Lufthansa is suffering from a decline in demand brought on by the weak economy, war in Iraq, and SARS virus.
   Working hours have already been cut for thousands of cabin and ground crew, who are represented by a different union from the pilots. Vereinigung Cockpit said the airline's commitment to avoid forced redundancies over a certain time period had been helpful in the negotiations for the "crisis contribution."
   No further details were available, the airline said, until the measures were formally agreed by both sides, likely late next week. Lufthansa said the pilots' measures were equivalent to those agreed with other Lufthansa staff.
   [And in a general round-up -]
   Eurostocks week ahead - Banks, airlines, charts in focus, Reuters 05/09/03 9:52 ET via AOLNews.
   LONDON...- Earnings from heavily weighted banks such as UBS may propel European stocks above key psychological levels next week, but the rising strength of the euro looks set to continue weighing on exporters....
   Lufthansa, which has been grounding planes and reducing employee work hours as it grapples with a severe industry downturn, is expected to post a first-quarter operating loss of 299m euros ($342.5m)....

3. 5/10   Air Canada pilots offer to take two-month wage cut, by Robert Melnbardis, Reuters 05/09/03 10:35 ET via AOLNews.
   MONTREAL...- Air Canada's pilots are offering their insolvent airline a two-month, 10% wage cut to try to help ease its cashflow problems, their union said on Friday. The 3,300 pilots at Air Canada, the largest airline in Canada and No. 11 in the world, will vote to ratify the offer by May 23. It calls for a 10% wage cut for June and July.... The Air Canada pilots said they have been operating under a work-sharing program that reduced flying hours and "produced a substantial savings to the company" over the past 16 months....
   [Followup -]
   Canada: Airline cuts flights, by Bernard Simon, 5/15/2003 NYT, W1.
   Air Canada, based in Montreal, is grounding 11% of its fleet and suspending service on a dozen routes in response to a steep decline in traffic caused by intensifying competition and the outbreak of SARS. The airline, which is in the process of restructuring under [bankruptcy] court protection, reported a Q1 operating loss of C$354m (U$257m), up from C$160m a year earlier. The operating loss in April [alone] was C$152m [ie: nearly half of entire Q1 loss], with traffic between Canada and the U.S. down 18% from a year earlier. Traffic on Asian routes has fallen by about 60%.
   [This industry is toast.]

4. 5/10   Bill offers option of compensatory time - Family -friendly idea, some say, but others prefer overtime pay, by Steven Greenhouse, NYT, A13.
   [This is a second big treatment of comp-time-for-overtime substitution by the Times. We commented fully on this comp-time bill on 4/10 & 4/4 #1 and 3/26 and 2/09 #2.   Contrast the proposed law that modifies eligibility for the overtime-pay premium by pay range, discussed on 3/28 & 3/27 #3 & 3/23 and 3/18 and 2/06 & 2/01-03 #1.]

5. [some backward timesizing -]
   5/11   Increasing work hours hit 2-earner families hard, by Kimberly Blanton, Boston Globe, G1.
   While growing numbers of people are unemployed or underemployed, the lucky majority who still have a job are probably overworked. The time squeeze falls hard on two-earner couples juggling work schedules, daycare pickups, and children's sick days.
   They probably don't need anyone telling them they're exhausted. But Barry Bluestone, director of the Center for Urban & Regional Policy at Northeastern University, recently provided data to legitimize their complaints. Bluestone, a panelist at the work-family conference in Boston last weekend - cosponsored by the Brandeis University Community, Families & Work Program and by Boston University's journalism school - said America 3 years ago eclipsed Japan to become the world's most overworked nation. In most countries, work time has moved downward - but not here.
   [Ah, shouldn't that be "to become the developed world's most overworked nation" and "in most developed countries"?!]
   Mainly because of the influx of women into the US workforce, the average hours an individual works annually has been on a steady upward trend since the early 1980s, rising about 180 hours, to more than 2,020 hours currently. Couples in which both partners work put in a total of 2,850 hours in 1965 and by 1997 were clocking 3,450 hours per year - that's 600 additional hours per couple.
   [Here the article sounds like it's onto the growing labor surplus and it's depressing effect on labor bargaining power, ergo decreasing wages and increasing worktime.]
   What drives the workaholic trend is complex, Bluestone said, but falling wages through the mid-1990s are one explanation.
   [Here Bluestone wimps out, citing one effect [of labor glut] as the ultimate cause.]
   Although wages picked up at the end of the 90s, early data indicate they have resumed their decline. "If the boss offers you additional overtime, you take it," he said. He also blamed "greater job insecurity," which drives people to work longer hours....
   [That's not an "also blamed," Barry. That's another effect of labor glut. The article goes on and on listing the flavors of the problem without even thinking of designing a solution - as so many academics love to do. God forbid we should talk solution and lose our awe of their eternal problem-savoring lectures!]

1. Agfa suffers from tourism decline, cuts more jobs, Reuters 05/08/03 06:15 ET via AOLNews.
   BRUSSELS...- Agfa-Gevaert became the latest victim of the global decline in tourism, saying on Thursday it would cut another 200 jobs in its photographic film business as people travelled less and took fewer pictures. Shares in the Belgian image technology specialist fell over 4% as the group posted a smaller-than-expected profit for the first quarter and said it would also cut working hours at the film division....
   [Cutting hours to restrict cutting jobs.]

2. German chemical workers to get 2.6% pay raise, AP 05/08/03 15:57 EDT via AOLNews.
   ...The deal between employers and the IG BCE union, valid for 13 months starting May 1, applies to Germany's 580,000 chemical industry workers....
   Last year, IG BCE secured a 3.6% raise over 13 months - a deal that was followed by far tougher negotiations for German manufacturing workers between employers and the country's largest industrial union, IG Metall.... Following a brief strike campaign, IG Metall settled for a 4% raise over 12 months from last June and then 3.1% for another six months. The agreement expires in December.
   This week, IG Metall has staged short strikes as part of an effort to win a shorter work week in the country's struggling east.

• [a whole new shorter worktime initiative in Hungary -]
  (4/13/2002) Government supports working time reduction, by Andras Toth & Laszlo Neumann of the Hungarian Academy of Science's Institute of PoliSci, 04-12-2002 EIROnline HU0212102N via Anders Hayden via SWT e-list.
  In November 2002, the Hungarian Prime Minister, Péter Medgyessy, announced that the government supports the demands of trade unions to reduce statutory normal weekly working time gradually from 40 to 38 hours in the current parliamentary term. Negotiations over working time cuts will now be held in the tripartite National Interest Reconciliation Council, despite employers' misgivings.
  The reduction of working time is increasingly becoming a central bargaining demand for Hungarian trade unions at national level. Regular weekly working time is a central issue in the current round of tripartite negotiations over increases in the national minimum wage and recommendations for the annual wage increase for 2003. In exchange for making concessions to the employers’ side in the area of wage increases, unions have demanded the reduction of statutory normal weekly working time from 40 hours to 39.5 hours in 2003, and to 38 hours by 2006.
  In Hungary, regular working time is virtually regulated by the Labour Code, as it is rarely an issue for sectoral or company-level collective agreements. The 40-hour statutory working week has not changed since 1992, though a minor decrease in annual working time took place in the 1990s due to the introduction of new bank holidays. An amendment of the Labour Code's working time provisions depends on the willingness of the governing coalition parties. Although the election programme of Hungarian Socialist Party (Magyar Szocialista Párt, MSZP), now the major party in the government, had made promises concerning the reduction of working time ( HU0206101F [see below] ), until now the government had remained silent on this issue.
  However, at the fifth congress of the National Association of Hungarian Trade Unions (Magyar Szakszervezetek Országos Szövetsége, MSZOSZ), held on 22 and 23 November 2002 ( HU0212101N [see below] ), Prime Minister Péter Medgyessy announced that the government supports the demands of the unions to reduce weekly working time gradually to 38 hours in the current parliamentary term.
  While the Prime Minister's announcement was welcomed by trade unions, employers expressed their misgivings concerning the working time reduction. The president of the Confederation of Hungarian Employers and Industrialists (Munkaadók és Gyáriparosok Országos Szövetsége, MGYOSZ), the major employers’ association, cautioned that a working time reduction in the midst of a recession could have a negative impact on the competitiveness of the Hungarian economy and could delay the recovery of industries in crisis. The vice-president of MGYOSZ, who is a regular negotiator for the employers in the tripartite National Interest Reconciliation Council (Országos Érdekegyeztetó Tanács, OÉT) ( HU0209101N [see below] ), warned that the reduction of working time would not only increase labour costs, but also would practically result in a 5% decrease of GDP, which would eventually undermine the government's long-term economic development programme.
  [The usual groundless fears held over from the pre-technological age.]
  The Alliance of Young Democrats (Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége, FIDESZ), the major opposition party, expressed its opinion that working time reduction should be an issue to be agreed on by employers’ organisations and trade unions, taking into account the impact on employment and wages, and such issues should not be exposed to short-term propaganda interests of political parties.
  Following the declaration of the Prime Minister, at a meeting of the National Interest Reconciliation Council on 29 November 2002 it wasagreed that the national tripartite body will launch negotiations on the reduction of working time with a view to reaching agreement by June 2003.
  [Unfortunately we just realized there should be more recent followup so we haven't got it yet, but here are some of the background references -]
  HU0206101F
  Victorious MSZP promises comprehensive reform of industrial relations system, by Andras Toth & Laszlo Neumann, 02-07-2002 EIROnline HU0206101F.
  ...In the area of the national-level social dialogue, the MSZP programme envisages the reversal of all major measures introduced by the previous government. It promises to re-establish the tripartite Interest Reconciliation Council (Erdekegyezteto Tanacs, ET) with an extended responsibility covering not only narrowly understood labour market issues, but all major policies having an impact on working life and the social situation of employees....
  HU0212101N
  (4/13/2002) MSZOSZ congress launches major structural reform, by Andras Toth & Laszlo Neumann, 04-12-2002 EIROnline HU0212101N.
  The November MSZOSZ congress demanded that the National Development Plan, currently under preparation, should target meeting European social standards and fighting discrimination of any kind. The congress demanded:
  • a 33% increase in real wages in the current parliamentary term;
    [arbitrary, excessive, abrupt, rigid and unnecessary - see below]
  • an increase of the value of the minimum wage to reach 60% of the average net wage,
    [arbitrary, excessive, abrupt, rigid and unnecessary - see below]
  • the creation of 350,000 to 400,000 jobs in the next 2 years
    [achievable only by worksharing and only by being prepared to lower the workweek repeatedly as often as necessary, as far as necessary - which will incidentally increase real wages much more flexibly, healthily and realistically (more market-oriented) than any arbitrary government action]
  • a cut in weekly working hours from 40 to 38 hours within 3 years beginning immediately with a half-hour reduction in 2003; and
  • measures to combat discrimination....
  HU0209101N
  (9/19/2002) National-level tripartite forums reformed, by Andas Pulai, 18-09-2002 EIROnline HU0209101N.
  On 27 July 2002..\..on the initiative of the Hungarian government...together with the employers' organizations and the trade unions, an agreement was concluded to renew cooperation within the framework of the reformed National Interest Reconciliation Council.
  • The Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Economic Affairs and the Minister of Labour & Employment Policy represented the government in signing the deal, indicating the importance of the event (the Ministry of Labour has recently been re-established...).
  • Employers were represented by all six national trade union confederations which had been part of earlier national-level tripartite forums
  • and, in a similar way to earlier national-level tripartite forums, employers were represented by all nine national organisations....
  [Hey, this sounds just like the three-sided developments in Japan in the fall of 2001 - see 11/29/2001 #1 and followup stories.]

• S. Korea auto sales climb on strong U.S. exports, by Song Jung-a, Reuters 05/02/03 04:47 ET.
  ...Hyundai and its competitors face an uphill battle with labour unions. Negotiations over wages and working hours are set to start in earnest this month, and the new government of Roh Moo-hyun is seen as labour-friendly....
  [Forget the wages. Just pour the heat on for shorter working hours and the resulting end of chronic labor surplus will swing market forces over onto your side and take care of wages and benefits more fully, sustainably and flexibly than you could have dreamed. And your employer will prosper from the stronger domestic consumer base.]

• East German workers seek shorter workweek, AP via WSJ, A22.
  FRANKFURT - Germany's biggest industrial union staged walkouts to press for a shorter workweek in the formerly communist east, targeting 3 Volkswagen AG [VW] plants and an Adam Opel AG factory.
  Factory workers in the economically depressed east must work 38 hours a week instead of 35 for the same base pay as their counterparts in the more affluent west, because firms say they can't afford the same labor costs.
  [So we infer that the proposal is to cut the east German workweek from 38 to 35 hours.]
  More than 6,000 workers in 2 states took part in the warning strikes, kicking off a campaign scheduled to spread to other parts of the east over the next few days, said officials at the union, IG Metall. The push comes before contract talks with employers expected to start next week.
  Employer representatives rejected the union demand. The head of the industrial employers' association in the state of Saxony argued that the 38-hour week was key to making the east attractive for investors.
  [You don't need outside investors if you have a fully activated domestic consumer base, and the only way to do that without war or makework is ... sharing the vanishing work by cutting the workweek to spread the work around.]
  IG Metall, which represents 1.7m workers across Germany, says it is time to start leveling the difference between the regions 13 years after Germany's reunification. It also said cutting hours would create up to 15,000 more jobs in the east by spreading available work among more employees. Unemployment in east Germany is 19.6% - twice the level in the west.
  [Hey, maybe east Germany, in undeniable crisis, will turn out to lead the world in this strategic policy, utterly central for any substantial progress, not the French or the Japanese.]
  The stoppages hit VW plants in Chemnitz, Dresden and Zwickau, and an Opel factory in Eisenach. Opel is a unit...of General Motors Corp. About 250 workers at an Alcatel SA electronics plant in Arnstadt also walked off their jobs for an hour.

1. 5/03   U.S. unemployment rate up, payrolls down 48,000, by Caren Bohan, Reuters 05/02/03 08:57 ET via AOLNews.
   [but]
   ...The length of the average workweek decreased sharply to 34 hours in April from 34.3 in March....
   [It should be a positive indicator of our advancing levels of efficient superproductive technology when the average workweek goes down and gives us all more free time. Although this average-workweek reduction represents widespread timesizing, it is taken as a negative indicator of downsized production - not necessarily so in the context of advanced technology - and downsized market demand - necessarily so only in the context of the overwhelming dominance of downsizing in response to technology, rather than timesizing. Further, buried in another article -]
   5/03   U.S. treasuries jolted by jobs, swamped by supply, by Wayne Cole, Reuters 05/02/03 17:01 ET via AOLNews.
   ...Said Sadakichi Robbins, head of global fixed-income trading at Bank Julius Baer..."The fall in hours points to a big drop in industrial production and even overtime slackened, which doesn't portend a revival in employment any time soon."...
   [Here we see another perverse contemporary habit - analysts' view of overtime as a positive. It's bad enough that, because of our flawed overtime-regulation design, many employees see overtime as a positive - to their own cost due to depressed wages resulting from more concentrated working hours per person throughout the economy and more, better quality and more desperate, do-it-for-less-than-you jobseekers. Here's a fuller version that Reuters issued the next day -]
   5/04   Deeper look at jobs numbers prompts gloom, by Andrea Hopkins, Reuters May 3, 2003 07:12 AM ET via Portside.com via Ken Ellis via SWT e-list.
   WASHINGTON - The drop in U.S. jobs in April may not have been as bad as many had feared, but bleak signals within the data have economists convinced the labor market is even weaker than the headlines suggest. While some market watchers expressed initial relief at the 48,000 decline in employment last month, which was not as dire as the expected 53,000 job loss, a closer look left them gloomy about a near-term employment recovery.
   Labor Department figures show the work week fell to 34.0 hours from 34.3 in March, aggregate weekly hours slid a steep 0.7 percent, manufacturing hours declined to 40.5 from 40.8 and overtime hours dipped to 3.9 from 4.0. Which means that not only were there fewer workers on the payroll last month, but they were working fewer hours and less overtime - effectively cutting the amount of work done by more than the drop in jobs suggests.... The drop in the work week to 34 hours matches a bottom set in 1996 and scraped along every now and then - including in July last year and Oct. 2001 - when conditions are grim. The data have been kept in this form since 1964..\..
   "So if you look at the overall report, while the headline employment decline was actually smaller than we expected it to be, the rest of the report was certainly more negative," said Tim O'Neill, chief economist at Bank of Montreal/Harris Bank. "No matter how you cut this report, there is nothing in it that would suggest that the labor market is on the verge of picking up.... If you take the decline in employment - that is the number of people employed - and you adjust the average work week, what you get for April is a level of employment down about 3% annualized below the Q1 level. So this is not good," O'Neill said..\..
   Together with the decline in manufacturing hours worked, the shorter work week left Anthony Karydakis, senior financial economist at Banc One Capital Markets, warning of "some serious softness" in the labor market. "The fall in hours points to a big drop in industrial production, and even overtime slackened, which doesn't portend a revival in employment any time soon," Karydakis said....
   [Interesting. This last quote was attributed to Sadakichi Robbins in the version above, and both articles are from Reuters. Editors!!]

2. [Japan shares our confusion -]
   5/03   Fathers put priority on work over child-rearing: survey, Kyodo 05/02/03 07:22 EDT via AOLNews.
   TOKYO...- Roughly one in two fathers say they think child-rearing and family business are as important as their work but most of them place priority on work, according to a labor ministry survey released Friday.... Those fathers who thought they should reduce their work hours when their children were born comprised 29%, but those who in fact did so totaled 6.5%, according to the survey....
   Another survey, conducted in Tokyo, showed 50% of fathers do not have dinner with their children as they come home late after work, a higher proportion than in the previous survey six years earlier [36%].... Only 13% said they come home before 7 pm, deemed early enough to have dinner with their children....
   [We and the Japanese praise and laud "family values," while strangling off family time. And generally we Americans puff and blow about "freedom," while ignoring the most basic freedom, free time, which makes possible the exercise of all the other freedoms.]

1. General Dynamics Corp., Dow Jones via WSJ, B4
   Gulfstream Aerospace Corp...will shut down its primary manufacturing operations in Savannah GA for 4 weeks and furlough 1,000 employees, citing weak demand for its business jets. Gulfstream, a unit of defense contractor General Dynamics Corp., said the furlough of about 14% of its staff would run from June 30 through July 27 at the Savannah plant, where it makes several models of large-cabin, midrange and long-range jets. ...A downturn in the economy and a drop in corporate travel have hit the aviation industry hard....
   [So timesizing instead of downsizing is saving 1,000 jobs here. And the Times' version adds some background -]
   General Dynamics Corp., NYT, C4
   ...Falls Church VA, the world's 3rd-largest maker of corporate jets, [will] close a Savannah GA plant that makes Gulfstream business jets for 4 weeks and furlough more than 1,000 workers as it slows production to cope with a drop in demand.
   [The actual press release is -]
   Gulfstream announces limited four-week furlough program; Furlough is in response to reduced market demand for business jets, Business Wire 05/01/2003 090:15 Eastern via AOLNews.
   SAVANNAH, Ga...- Gulfstream Aerospace, a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics [yester]day announced a four-week shut-down of its initial phase of manufacturing operations in Savannah, placing more than 1,000 employees on furlough from June 30 to July 27. Management and non-management employees in direct manufacturing departments and designated employees in support departments will be affected. Customer deliveries and customer service will not be affected....
   [Compare Cessna on 3/21/2003.]

2. Asians agitate for changes on May Day, AP 05/01/03 10:27 EDT via AOLNews.
   Thousands of people in Indonesia, South Korea and the Philippines celebrated May Day on Thursday by protesting for higher wages, better hours and political change.... In Seoul, South Korean marchers demanded that their working week be shortened from six days to five. They also chanted anti-globalization messages, including "Down down WTO!" referring to the World Trade Organization, which promotes global trade. Hundreds of police watched the rally but did not intervene....
   In recent years, the Chinese government has allowed workers to celebrate May Day with a weeklong vacation - a holiday season designed to encourage travel and spending that gives the economy a big boost..\.. But in China's capital [Beijing], streets were eerily empty as workers stayed home, fearful of catching the SARS virus.... The holiday was shortened this year because of the SARS outbreak, and the government - fearful that travelers might spread the disease - advised people to stay at home....
   [More info stuck in articles about Cuba and Europe -]
   Cuba's Castro says U.S. is provoking war, by Alexandra Olson, AP 05/01/03 22:43 EDT via AOLNews.
   ...In Asia, thousands of people in Indonesia, South Korea and the Philippines celebrated May Day by protesting for higher wages, shorter work weeks and political change....
   [and]
   May Day violence mars holiday celebrations in Europe, by David Crossland, Reuters 05/01/03 18:31 ET via AOLNews.
   ...In Seoul, about 20,000 people joined a rally demanding a shorter working week, better conditions and job security....

1. Factbox - SARS impact on European companies, Reuters 04/30/03 09:10 ET via AOLNews.
   An increasing number of European companies have said the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) has impacted their businesses....
   [Reuters runs thru a bunch of companies that have been negatively impacted by SARS, and guess what, they put Lufthansa first, maybe sensing that it's onto something with its timesizing to avoid downsizing. Reuters has a couple of sentences for each company but we'll only give the flavor for Lufthansa cuz it's the only one that's doing anything futuristic, and just identify the rest.]
   
   • Lufthansa - The German airline said it was grounding 15 more planes and reducing working hours for ground staff. Lufthansa said demand on Asian routes was down as much [as] 85% due to the deadly SARS virus....
   • Bulgari - the Italian jeweller...said sales in Hong Kong had "fallen...in double digits"....
   • JC DeCaux - the French outdoor advertising company...expected its transport division to suffer...especially in the Asia-Pacific....
   • Ericsson - Swedish telecoms equipment maker...said the outbreak of SARS had made some operators postpone investment....
   • Carnival - the world's biggest cruise firm....
   • WPP - the advertising and communcations company....
   • Anglo American - global mining giant....
   • Airbus - the European planemaker....
   • Intercontinental Hotels Group - British....
   • HSBC - [its] Asian unit....
   • Philips - the consumer electronics firm....
   • Burberry - The British luxury fashion label....
   • Rolls Royce - The UK aero-engine maker....
   • Austrian Airlines....
   • Air France....
   • Stagecoach - the British bus and train operator....
   • British Airways....
   • KLM - the Dutch airline....

2. Court allows overtime wage lawsuit against RadioShack to proceed in Pennsylvania, PRNewswire 04/30/2003 12:05 EDT via AOLNews.
   A federal court in Pennsylvania has certified a Plaintiff Class in a lawsuit that challenges RadioShack's failure to pay overtime wages to its "Y" store managers. A "Y" store is currently defined as one with an annual sales volume above $500,000.... Several hundred former and current managers may be part of the Plaintiff Class. The certification was granted in an opinion and order written by Judge Franklin Van Antwerpen of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, in the lawsuit of Mark Goldman v. RadioShack Corp....
   The lawsuit claims that RadioShack "Y" store managers regularly work in excess of 40 hours per workweek, without being paid overtime wages. The suit claims that this violates the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and two Pennsylvania laws. [It] seens to recover the unpaid overtime wages, plus additional relief, for all former and current RadioShack "Y" store managers in Pennsylvania who did not receive overtime wages for overtime work at any time on or after Dec. 11, 1999. It is similar to a case that was brought against RadioShack in Californa in 2000, which resulted in a settlement of almost $30m..\..
   RadioShack...claims that it is not obligated to pay overtime wages to its "Y" store managers pursuant to exemptions that are available under the federal and state laws....
   The attorneys representing the Plaintiff Class are Joseph Roda and Michele Eagan of Roda & Nast PC in Lancaster PA and Elizabeth Hartweg of the Wexler Firm in Chicago IL.