Timesizing® Associates - Homepage

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Timesizing News, June 14-20, 2003
[Commentary] ©2003 Phil Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622, Porter Sq, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080

6/20/2003  primitive timesizing & worktime consciousness in the news this weekend = glimmers of strategic hope -

1. [here's a twist - a one-time workweek reduction to relieve power shortages -]
   Japan: Honda Motor Co. sets day off, by Ken Belson, NYT, W1.
   One of Japan's carmakers [will] halt production for one day at its factories and research centers in the Tokyo area to preempt a potential power shortage. Honda will shut 16 factories and research outlets on July 24 and make up the production later. Honda [will] save enough electricity to supply 30,000 households. The Tokyo Electric Power Co., Tokyo's main electricity provider, has warned of possible power shortages this summer. The government forced Tokyo Electric to shut its nuclear reacters after the utility admitted to falsifiying nuclear safety reports.

2. Xerox ranks among '100 best places to work' in technology; Company makes Computerworld list for 7th year, press release by Bill McKee & Kara Choquette, Business Wire 06/19/2003 08:00 Eastern via AOLNews.
   Xerox Corp. again has been named as one of the top 100 IT workplaces in the U.S., according to IDG's Computerworld annual "Best Places to Work in Information Technology" survey.... Xerox has long worked to help employees balance their personal and professional lives by offering a broad variety of work/life benefits such as on-site fitness facilities, eldercare services, flex time, job sharing and telecommuting....

1. East German strike to hit carmakers next week, Reuters 06/18/03 14:59 ET via AOLNews.
   Top German carmakers BMW and Audi said on Wednesday the strike in eastern Germany by engineering union IG Metall would affect production at western German plants from June 23. The strike over the length of the working week in eastern Germany has hit the Brandenburg plant of ZF Friedrichshafen, a major supplier of transmissions to most German carmakers.
   ...The length of disruption depended on the length of the strike....
   Europe's biggest carmaker Volkswagen, which has been hit by the strike directly at its Saxon[y] factories, said it was still producing cars in western Germany but that the supply was getting tighter....
   About 11,400 workers are expected to down tools in eastern Berlin, Brandenburg and Saxony on Thursday [6/19] as IG Metall fights to cut the working week for eastern German engineering employees by 3 hours to the western German standard of 35 hours. The strike, which started last month, spread to Brandenburg and Berlin on Tuesday [6/17] having originally targeted companies in the state of Saxony....
   Employers have seen the longer working week in the east as an incentive for manufacturers to move production there....
   [Employers often make the mistake of thinking "it's all about them," never mind their markets.]
   "It was the goal to create as many jobs as possible in the new German states (in eastern Germany). We must now reconsider this intention, given the current circumstances"..\..said Ernst Baumann, head of personnel at BMW in a statement.
   [He's right, but not in the way he thinks. The advance of exponentially output-increasing technology means we must abandon job creation in favor of work sharing. There just aren't enough "jobs" of any fixed workweek to go around on a permanent basis any more. The definition of full-time "job" must be derigidified and made a gradually fluctuating entity, and the overall pool (yes, or "lump") of technology-shrunken human employment must be automatically spread to all potential employees in order to keep active and maximize the consumer base.]
   [Here's some additional input from the more specific and shorter AP version -]
   East German strikes hit BMW plants, AP 06/18/03 16:30 EDT via AOLNews.
   Luxury automaker BMW AG said Wednesday [6/18] that strikes for a shorter workweek in formerly communist eastern Germany will disrupt production at several plants in the west of the country next week.
   The IG Metall union on Tuesday extended its 2-week-old strike campaign to Berlin and the surrounding Brandenburg region - hitting among other companies ZF Getriebe GmbH, which supplies gearboxes for BMW's 3-series models. BMW said production will be stopped at plants in Munich and Regensburg starting next Monday, while it will be restricted at 3 further factories in Dingolfing, Landshut adn Steyr. ...The disruption...will mean a reduction of some 1,800 a day in the number of cars produced....
   IG Metall, Germany's largest industrial union, is demanding a gradual shortening of the economically depressed east's 38-hour workweek to the 35 hours worked in the west. On Wednesday, some 11,400 downed tools, the union said. The union is seeking a deal similar to one reached with the eastern steel industry June 7 that gradually cuts the workweek to 35 hours by 2009. It says eastern companies can afford shorter hours, 13 years after German reunification made the region part of the capitalist west.
   [Note the irony. Shorter hours, often associated with the left, as in "formerly communist eastern Germany," are actually already in place in the "capitalist west." If anyone needs a demonstration that shorter hours are a centrist, not a leftist issue, this is it. But then we have the downright plain shortsighted ornery inertia of vocal employers on the scene, even at the expense of real German reunification and ending the second-class citizenship of their east German brethren. Hitler had a lot of bad ideas, but one they could really use here was his desire to really unite the German-language areas.]
   Industry rejects that argument, saying lower pay is a key factor for investing in the east, which still lags economically and has chronically high unemployment.
   [Industry leaders just can't seem to connect the dots.]
   With the economy on the brink of recession [ANYthing but admit it!], Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government also opposes the strikes.
   [An entire cast of Dummkopfs! So BMW gets threatening - against its own German brothers and its own employees -]
   BMW suggeted the strikes may affect further investment in the east. "It was our objective to create as many jobs as possible through our engagement in the new federal states," a German term for the east, BMW personnel chief Ernst Baumann said in a statement. "Under the present circumstances we have to review this position."
   [Yeah, these guys just LOVE playing the unsustainable disparities. West Germany has big markets because people are employed and well-paid because the unionized workweek is generally lower. East Germany has small markets because people are unemployed or poorly paid because even the unionized workweek is generally higher. Are you guys serious about reuniting Germany or aren't you? Are you serious about solving the "brink of recession" or aren't you? It can't be good for west Germany to perpetuate a no-question RECESSION in east Germany, with over 19% unemployment. QUIT THE SANDBAGGING and just DO IT! Where's your Geman efficiency and self-pride, you Schweinhunds? YOU'VE got nothing to lose in the short-term except an extra $5000 Cartier watch that you don't really need and that meaningful German reunification will bring you half a dozen of in the mid-term.]

2. [widespread 35-hr workweeks, 6-wk vacations - what's not to like in Germany?! - but as ever, you can always find someone complaining - "another sh*tty day in paradise!" -]
   Minister urges shorter holidays to boost German growth, by Clifford Coonan, Reuters 06/18/03 11:26 ET via AOLNews.
   BERLIN...- Economy Minister Wolfgang Clement raised hackles in Germany on Wednesday when he said cutting generous public holidays and annual vacation days was a sure-fire way of boosting growth in Europe's biggest economy.
   [Boy, these guys just don't understand the technological imperative - cut worktime drastically or suffer permanent depression. Germany needs to cut the workweek enough to give all its 10.4% unemployed a share of the vanishing human employment, vanishing because next to Japan, it's probably the most automated economy there is. Working more hours per person - making more unsaleable goods and services - is simply not an option. You either grow markets along with your solution, or you don't got a solution.] "It makes sense to have a debate about work and how to maintain employment," Clement told a news conference after the Social Democrats-Greens coalition cabinet passed a number of "reforms" [our quotes] to Germany's "over"-regulated labour market.
   [How to maintain employment? Either stop technological innovation and get branded a Luddite, or substitute timesizing for downsizing in response to it. Or, go back to our usual "solution," have a big war or plague, and kill off all our excess labor.]
   Clement said cutting back holidays would make German labour more competitive.
   [Sure, if you want to join the competition to see who can turn their first-world nation into a third-world nation fastest = "the race to the bottom." It's amazing how many people even in Germany and France have no clue about the meaning of technology. They still think work is infinite, the job market is infinite, "if we produce it, they will buy." What planet do they live on? Don't they look around?]
   "We need to compete internationally. I'm not looking for wage costs like in China or Taiwan...
   [No, you're looking for wage costs like in China or India or Bangadesh.]
   but wages must become more competitive," Clement said.
   [Then what do you suppose will happen to your already weak domestic markets, moron? And it's your domestic markets, not your export markets, that are keeping Germany Inc. going.]
   ...He told news magazine Stern this week Germany was "close to the limit" as far as vacation days, public holidays and working hours were concerned.
   [No, Germany is just close to the limit of Clement's limited imagination and vision of the future, which looks uncannily like a vision of the past, with plenty of long hours and low pay.]
   Clement's comments caused a storm among Germans, who are fiercely protective of their lengthy leisure time, with church leaders and even members of the centre-left coalition condemning the suggestion. Germans have anything between 9 and 13 public holidays a year, depending on the state [eg: Brandenburg, Saxony, etc.] they live in, compared to 11 in France and 8 in Britain, many of them based around religious festivals or holy days. Germans also have 30 days of vacation [six 5-day workweeks] on average a year, more than any other country in the 15-nation European Union where holidays average 26 days, according to figures from Eurostat.
   Analysts say the fact that many religious holidays fall on weekends next year will boost GDP growth by around a ½%, which forms a hefty chunk of the 1.5% growth forecast by many economic institutes....
   [Sure, but who you gonna sell it to? The US auto industry is having week-at-a-time plant shutdowns cuz they can't sell what they've already made!]
   Hard-working Germans?
   [Who cares?! The question should be "Smart-working?", not "Hard-working?"]
   While Germans have a reputation abroad for being hard workers, they have more leisure time than many of their fellow Europeans.
   [That's probably because they're more automated than many of their fellow Europeans and they can produce more in less time with better technology.]
   
   • Germans enter the workforce later than in other countries with many university graduates not starting work until they are 28 years of age.
     [So university fills a double role, as in the US - it prepares them to handle all the super-productive technology, and it serves as a big makework campaign - item 19 on our "realms of makework" page.]
     
   • Workers in Germany often retire earlier because of structures which allow them to save up overtime during their careers and many retire before their 60th birthdays.
     [Thank God, or German unemployment would be even higher than 10.4% and German domestic demand alias consumer markets would be even weaker.]
     
   • The working week in most industries is generally around 35 hours, which is low in comparison with some other European countries.
     [And high in comparison with some others, because only the unionized sector in west German is on a 35-hr week, the rest are on 37½ and the east German unionized sector is on 38. A lot of the rest both west and east are on 40 or above.]
   ...Christine Scheel, a tax expert from the Greens junior coalition partners, pointed out that states with fewer holidays often had more unemployment than ones with more.
   [You don't share the vanishing work so you get more people excluded from working.]
   "This discussion is nonsense," Scheel said.
   [Amen to that, sister!]
   Clement said that Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had reacted in a "reserved" way to his suggestion about trimming holidays.
   [Sure, if he doesn't want to refocus on trimming the workweek and he doesn't want to totally wipe out his economy.   Here's another angle on the costs of this blockheaded refusal to share the vanishing work -]
   German leaders approve economic 'reforms' [our quotes], by Tony Czuczka, AP 06/18/03 14:22 EDT via AOLNews.
   BERLIN - Nearly 10,000 German businesses have failed in the first quarter of this year, official data showed Wednesday. Meanwhile, the government sent parliament an economic "reform" bill [our quotes] meant to combat stubbornly high unemployment.
   With Germany in the third year of an economic slump, the 9,747 bankruptcies were the 2nd-highest quarterly total ever recorded, the federal statistics agency said. About 100 more businesses failed in last year's third quarter.
   The "reform" plans, which Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder presented with considerable fanfare in March, call for slashing the length of jobless benefits and easing Germany's stringent job protection laws to encourage small businesses to hire.
   [Gee, that's exactly what Japan did in the late 1980s when it dismantled its traditional lifetime employment, and guess what happened to it virtually within a year = mass downsizings and a deeper economic slump that has lasted ever since. The problem with Schroeder's so-called reforms are that they assume something that no longer exists, if it ever did = an infinite job market in the immediate term. It also assumes that people are staying unemployed just because the benefits are good and not mainly because the job openings just aren't there. And government makework won't work either. Japan tried that on a huge scale over the past 12-13 years and it was just a drop in the bucket. The only policy big enough to make the private sector cure itself is fluctuating adjustment of the workweek. That means inching the workweek downward until un- and under-employment come down to where you want them, preferably below 1%.]
   Schroeder is struggling with an economy on the edge of recession and a 10.4% jobless rate. Business leaders and economist say Germany's costly web of social programs, jointly financed by companies and employees, is part of the problem.
   [No, it's the ineffectual socialism and micromanagement in the economic basement that is substituting for the powerful centrifugation of spending power that a much lower, unemployment-tied workweek should be providing. Lose even the weak centrifugation of even those social programs and the economy will go into freefall.]
   The "reform" bill's architect, Economics & Labor Minister Wolfgang Clement, stirred debate this week by suggesting that Germans spend too little time working. "In terms of vacation time, public holidays and working hours, we have without doubt reached the limit," he told Stern magazine.
   [Why do they pick the most outdated, unimaginative, backward-looking brains for these high posts? This guy just wants to bring back the smoky mills and sweatshops of the early industrial revolution, when our technology was not a fraction as productive as it is today. Can't he learn from Japan's mistake? From the USA's? From Britain's? Can't he learn from France's relative success, even with Chirac watering down their 35-hour workweek?]
   ...Under the draft law approved Wednesday by Schroeder's Cabinet, jobless benefits generally would run for a year [12 mos.] at the most, compared to 32 months [2-2/3 yrs] now. Unemployed age 55 or older would be entitled to 18 months [1½ yrs].
   The bill would loosen legal restrictions on firing for companies with five employees or fewer. The government says that would encourage hiring, because firms would avoid the risk of expensive and time-consuming proceedings to lay off workers in a downturn.
   [Talk about confusion. Individual firing for just cause is completely different from laying off employees in a downturn. Firing for cause is intelligent and necessary. Layoffs in a downturn need, in most instances, to be dropped in favor of hours cuts in a downturn. Unless we make that substitution, we worsen the downturn. We must move from unsharing = piling all the pain on just a few, and overloading the survivors, to sharing alias all being in it together = spreading the pain of the downturn across everyone in the company, including and especially those at the top, and thereby invoking the advantages of insurance = the pain is minimized and lessened and often trivialized by spreading thin, instead of being concentrated and consolidated and loaded on a few employees who are completely deprived of all their working hours, thereby maximizing the trauma, for them and their dependents, and then, surprise surprise, we need another "last round" of layoffs a few years (or months, or weeks) later because of what we've done to the general consumer base. So bottom line - individual firing for cause, yes - whole-group hours cuts for downturn, yes - group layoffs for downturn, no.]
   Even higher on Schroeder's agenda is to curb rising costs in the national health insurance system, which is also financed with payroll taxes.
   [OK, switch that financing to patients with the ability to pay, and to graduated income taxes. Burden individual hypochondria and individual income excess, and unburden business.]
   Parliament on Wednesday began debate on a 400-page government proposal...that would make patients pay a higher share for prescription drugs and hospital care, free employees from contributing to long-term disability insurance and limit dental benefits.
   [Well that certainly burdens individual hypochondria - but the real problem in a downturn is the overconcentration of income, "over" because it focuses more spending power than can be spent. How do you know when the pendulum swings from positive and constructive "saving" for good big-project investment to negative and destructive "hoarding" for useless chest-thumping and "positional goods"? By when the economy shifts from slow inflation to slow deflation. The start of deflation is a sure sign that your centripetal forces on income have overwhelmed your centrifugal forces, and your concentration and consolidation of income in the top brackets is now actually suctioning the markets away from its own investments. From here on in, there are only stock bubbles in your future, no more sustainable growth. So at our primitive stage of economic evolution, the onset of deflation is the key symptom - (though in the future we may be using some multiple of the P/E ratio, because that happened a lot earlier and was attributed by the wise to simply having no alternative destination for the astronomical amount of income at the top - it had to go into stocks no matter how foolish and historically unprecedented).]
   Opposition leaders pledged to cooperate with Schroeder's center-left government in seeking "reforms."
   [OK for the real reforms, like easing firing for cause. Not OK for the destructive "reforms" like easing mass layoffs alias downsizing. And downright troubling that even in shorter-worktime Germany, they're still not talking about nationwide "fluctuating adjustment of the workweek against unemployment" alias timesizing.]
   "Let's talk about this openly. We want this to succeed," Franz Muentefering, the parliamentary leader of Schroeder's governing Social Democrats urged the conservative opposition during the lower-house debate.
   [All the talk in the world isn't going to help if neither the liberals nor the conservatives have a real Third Way on the table. Timesizing delivers liberals' social goals with conservatives' small government, because it focuses on the minimum necessary regulation of the center of the economy, instead of ignoring an imbalance there and regulating everywhere else. The center of the economy is work. The central issue is the reduction of human work by advancing technology. The simple response is, share the vanishing work by cutting the workweek. You either do that or you shrink your consumer base by downsizing your workforce with layoffs. It doesn't get any simpler than that.]

3. [and back home in totally clueless America, here's a big "oh-oh" -]
   Many Americans say they will skip summer vacations, WSJ, D3.
   ...About 58% of people surveyed in early June said they're not taking a vacation this summer or have delayed their vacation plans because of financial worries, according to Harris Interactive Inc., based in Rochester, NY [in a] survey...commissioned by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which runs the historical attraction in Virginia.... The survey has a margin of error of ±3.1%..\..
   [That's put in just to make you think it's really scientific and some "random" sampling of just 1,014 people can really represent all 280,000,000 Americans.]
   Half of the 1,014 survey respondents said the size of their family budget for "nonessential expenses" was a major influence on making vacation plans.... About 61% of respondents expressed a preference to drive rather than fly to the vacation destination. But the majority of respondents, 58%, said that last-minute deals aren't very important when choosing the destination, an indication that they don't have the capital to swing an extended family excursion....
   [Their conclusion seems a bit of a stretch - quite a bit of a stretch.]

1. East German strike escalates, hits auto plants, additional reporting by Madeline Chambers, Reuters 06/17/03 09:46 ET via AOLNews.
   BERLIN...- German engineering union IG Metall stepped up its 2-week strike in eastern Germany on Tuesday, bringing production to a halt at several plants in the economically depressed region. IG Metall, fighting to cut the working week for eastern German engineering employees by 3 hours to the western German standard of 35 hours, said 11,000 workers downed tools in eastern Berlin, Brandenburg and Saxony on Tuesday. Previously, only companies in the state of Saxony had been targeted in the strike which started last month and which the centre-left government has called irresponsible given high unemployment in the area.
   [The left can be pretty stupid.]
   The strike on Tuesday targeted the Hennigsdorf plant in northern Berlin of Canadian transport engineering company Bombardier and a DaimlerChrysler plant in Ludwigsfelde, Brandenburg.... Europe's biggest carmaker Volkswagen has been hit by the longer-running strikes in Saxony. It has lost production of 1,100 cars each strike day at its Mosel plant and 3,400 engines per day at its Chemnitz factory....
   Employers have seen the longer working week in the east as an incentive for manufacturers to move production there. The head of VME engineering employers' group, Harmann Kleiner said: "This strike is threatening to ruin one of the few business advantages of the east."
   [An anachronistic advantage in the age of highly efficient and productive technology.]
   Several car and parts makers have recently built up production in eastern Germany, particularly Saxony, which has seen about 5B euros of investment in the auto sector in the last 10 years. But the DGB trades union federation said a shorter working week could help create jobs. "After all, the introduction of the 35-hour-week in the (former West German) engineering sector in the early 1980s secured and created over 3 million jobs," said Dieter Schultz, DGB chairman for the Berlin-Brandenburg region.
   [Unfortunately this is too long ago (20 yrs) for us to count now.]
   [Note also related AP photo caption -]
   An unidentified employee, caption of AP photo/Sven Kaestner 6/17/2003 via AOLNews.
   ...of DaimlerChrysler car factory in the east German city of Ludwigsfelde south of Berlin reads a union's newspaper headlining "Strike will expand" after the strike started in this factory Tuesday, June 17, 2003. German union expanded the strike in its third week to the region to the region of Brandenburg and eastern part of Berlin for its fight to cut the work week for 320,000 factory and steel workers in the eastern parts of Germany from 38 hours to 35 - the same as for their colleagues in the more prosperous west in Ludwigsfelde DaimlerChrysler produces the Vaneo van and transport vehicles.

2. G.M. sets further cut in output of Saturn Ion, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
   General Motors will stop producing the...small car for 2 extra weeks because of slower-than-expected sales of the auto's sedan model. The company, which is based in Detroit [nooo kidding], will halt an assembly line at its Saturn plant in Spring Hill TN for 4 weeks, starting June 23, including 2 previously scheduled weeks for the company's nationwide annual summer shutdown.
   [Classic (but primitive) timesizing, not downsizing. Unspecified jobs saved.]
   Ion production will resume July 21....

3. Workweek for teachers, letter to editor from Dean Alfred Posamentier of Ed School of City College of NY, NYT, A26.
   Re "Klein to alter school week, irking union" (news article, June 13):
   [hmm, they musta dropped that article from the national edition]
   I applaud Schools Chancellor Joel Klein for consolidating the negotiated time increase with the teachers' union into a meaningful block of time for teacher training on the new citywide curriculum.
   [Looks like NY schools are going 'backwards in time.']
   I recall another negotiated time increase in the school day when I was a highschool math teacher in the Bronx in the mid-1960s.
   The additional minutes were spread over the entire week by increasing class periods by less than 5 minutes each. We teachers did not even notice this minuscule increase in time. In turn, it had no effect on the students' instruction.
   [That works the other way too. Vital but gradual changes can be designed to be virtually unnoticeable.]
   Mr. Klein's designated block of time for in-service training is crucial if this new curriculum is to be presented effectively.

4. Depression hits one in six Americans, study finds by Maggie Fox, Reuters 06/17/03 16:00 ET via AOLNews.
   WASHINGTON...- 16% of Americans - more than 30m people - will suffer major depression at some point in their lives, costing employers more than $30B in lost productivity, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday [6/17]... Kathleen Merikangas of the National Institute of Mental Health...reported \from a\ survey...of more than 9,000 adults across 48 states...that about 13m Americans, or more than 6%, had an episode of major depression in the past year....
   A separate survey by Walter Stewart and colleagues at the AdvancePCS Center for Work & Health in Hunt Valley MD found the costs of depression affected more than just the patients and their families. Stewart, now at the Outcomes Research Institute at Geisinger Health Systems in Danville PA interviewed 1,190 working adults and found that 9.4% of all workers currently have some form of depression. They lose, on average, 5.6 hours of work each week, as compared to 1.5 lost hours due to illnesses among non-depressed workers.... "Most of the lost work time - 81% - occurs while employees are at work, and is invisible to employers," added Stewart, who said employees filled out diaries while at work to log their productivity.

1. [say what you will about the French, Boston is using the French workweek for teens -]
   Mayor Menino and 100 Boston teens kick-off summer jobs program; Students...begin first day of work [yester]day at Fleet; Begin 6 weeks of MCAS [state test] tutoring, press release by FleetBoston Financial's Joseph Goode (781-788-7253, joseph_l_goode@fleet.com), Business Wire 06/16/2003 11:26 Eastern via AOLNews.
   ...Fleet is one of 50 top Boston-based businesses that will employ over 1,200 students this year, a 20% increase from the previous year. The students will work a 35-hour work week and will be paid on average $7.50 per hour.... The goal is to provide a job for every qualified young person who wants one, with an aim of employing 8,000 teens this summer.
   [They better hurry. They still have 8000-1200= 6800 jobs to go and its already June 17. On the face of it, they got (40-35)/40= 12½% more jobs by going with a 35-hour workweek instead of 40. Why not get another (35-32)/35= 8.6% or even (35-30)/35= 14.3% more jobs beyond that by using a 32-hour or 30-hour workweek?]

2. [plans for personal workyear reduction, alias vacation -]
   Getting away from work - but not too far, by Richard Breeden, WSJ, B5.
   More small-business owners are planning to take a vacation this summer than last, but most expect to worry about the firm while away.
   A total of 66% of small-business owners said they planned to get away for at least a week this summer, up 15% from last year, according to a survey conducted for American Express by International Communications Research.... The South leads...with 74% of the owners intending to take a summer break, while only [53%] in the North Central region are planning a respite. [The Northeast is 66% - from chart.] And small firms with lower annual revenue - under $200,000 - are much less likely to have owners planning time off, 56%, than small businesses of greater scale, 74%.
   ..\..73% [overall] said there still would be plenty of business worries on vacation, including concerns about
   • customers receiving proper service,
   • who will be in charge,
   • missed opportunities,
   • breakdowns
   • and security.

1. [timesizing saves 900 jobs amidst Canada's mad cow scare -]
   6/14   Lean times for beef town in Canada's mad cow scare, by Jeffrey Jones, Reuters 06/13/03 18:23 ET via AOLNews.
   BROOKS, Alta...- Normally 750 people would be busy on a Friday cutting meat among the labyrinth of conveyors that fill...the processing floor at Lakeside Packers, just outside the town of Brooks in southeastern Alberta. But the huge room was spotless and devoid of employees, as it has been often in the weeks since a single case of mad cow disease...bovine spongiform encephalopathy..\..prompted worldwide bans on Canadian beef and forced Lakeside's managers to scale back shifts....
   Some good news
   Brooks got its first good news in weeks on Friday when federal Human Resources Minister Jane Stewart came to town to announce a C$9.8m emergency program under which Lakeside workers can toil for half their usual hours and get employment insurance benefits to make up the difference in wages.
   [That's presumably a 20-hour workweek.]
   Company officials hailed the 26-week "worksharing" scheme, saying it allowed the sprawling plant to avoid as many as 900 layoffs, which would have crippled the local economy.
   [Right in line with Fred Best's "Reducing Workweeks to Prevent Layoffs - The economic and social impacts of unemployment insurance [UI]-supported work sharing" (Temple: 1988), and our own Timesizing, Not Downsizing.]
   Other workers in Alberta's ranching, feedlot, processing and trucking businesses have not been so fortunate. Provincial officials say...500-800 people have been laid off in the mad cow crisis, and another 500 could be let go as early as next week unless the border reopens or the industry gets quick government aid.... "I think every business in town has probably seen the impacts of it. People aren't spending their money because of reduced hours and reduced incomes," said Steve Rohrich...an assistant plant engineer at Lakeside. "It's uncertain times and no one knows how long it's going to last."
   [Bet the ones with reduced hours are spending more than the ones with no hours due to layoff. And we're all in for everlasting uncertain times as long as we keep downsizing in response to technology - instead of timesizing as a standard operating procedure to protect our centrifuged spending power and dynamic markets. Here's a report that came out ten minutes later -]
   RPT - UPDATE 3 - Aid mulled for Canada's hard-hit beef industry, by Allan Dowd with Roberta Rampton & Jeffrey Jones, Reuters 06/13/03 18:33 ET via AOLNews.
   Canadian farm ministers, who are eyeing both...loan guarantees \and\ direct financial aid...to help the beef industry in its struggle with mad cow disease, said on Friday they hope to come up with a relief plan by the middle of next week.... "The ship is going down.... We can't afford to wait weeks, we've [only] got days," said Neil Jahnke, president of the Canadian Cattlemen's Assoc. ...Earlier proposals that would have relied strictly on loan guarantees would only have hurt farmers, Jahnke said. "When you're in trouble the last thing you want to do is put on more debt. It was like throwing a stone to a drowning man," he told Reuters. The direct aid proposed by western premiers [= provincial governors] calls for businesses to take [ie: pay for] a 10% percent deductible on their claims, with the federal government paying 90% of the remainder of the claim [90% of 90%= 81% of the whole] and the provincial government paying [the last] 10% [of the remainder [10% of 90%= 9% of the whole].
   Ottawa also unveiled a C$9.8m emergency aid program on Friday to help prevent as many as 900 layoffs at at [hey, Jeff, this is your third repeated word (we finessed the other two) - get a grammar checker!] Lakeside Packers, in Brooks, Alberta, the country's biggest meat processing plant, owned by U.S.-based Tyson Foods Inc. {TSN.N}. Under the "worksharing" program, Lakeside employees will work have their usual hours and be eligible for employment insurance benefits to make up for lost wages. About 2,500 people work at the southeastern Alberta facility....
   Federal HR Minister Jane Stewart said she was prepared to consider similar schemes for other beef industry workers affected by the import bans.
   ($1=C$1.33)
   [And there's a photo -]
   Jane Stewart announces work sharing program in Brooks, Reuters/Patrick Price photo, June 13 2003 via AOLNews.
   Jane Stewart, Minister of HR Development, announces federal aid for Lakeside Packers in Brooks, June 13, 2003 as Wayne Daniels listens. The federal government pledged close to C$10m in a worksharing program with Lakeside Packers, [which] employs 900 workers [wrong, 2500 workers, 900 threatened layoffs!] that rely on the beef industry which has been severely hurt by the discovery of a cow that had Mad Cow disease. [photo caption]
   [Geez mabeez, 3 repeated words (the the, was was, at at) and a photo caption that ends like it was written by an 8-yr-old. Reuters is slipping - but then, it is a full moon & people are driving crazy too. (Our personal fave was 'was was'/wuzzwuzz.)]

2. [timesizing saves unspecified jobs for top-selling motorhome maker -]
   6/14   Winnebago profit almost halved on weak RV sales, by Susan Kelly, Reuters 06/13/03 18:29 ET via AOLNews.
   *Winnebago Industries Inc. {WGO.N} on Friday said its quarterly profits shrank by nearly half as the motorhome maker was forced to offer pricey incentives to move its recreational vehicles off dealers' lots.... Winnebago temporarily reduced production schedules during the quarter, introducing four-day work weeks to align output with lower sales, as shipments to dealers fell in the quarter ended May 31, the company said Friday..\..
   [So, looks like we're talking about 32-hour workweeks here, to avoid layoffs. This is a good company, despite the recent stock drop -]
   The stock fell as much as 13.35% to $34.50, making it one of the largest percentage losers on the NYSE.... "Dealers were hesitant to build up large inventories given the uncertainty around the war in Iraq," said Kathryn Thompson, an analyst with BB&T Capital Markets, whose "buy 2" rating on Winnebago is the firm's second highest....
   [Hey, BB&T knows what they're doin'. Here's the press release -]
   Winnebago Industries reports third quarter results and record nine months revenue, press release from Winnebago Industries' Sheila Davis (641-585-6803 or sdavis@winnebagoind.com), Business Wire 06/13/2003 07:00 Eastern via AOLNews.
   FOREST CITY, Iowa...- Winnebago Industries Inc. {NYSE: WGO} [yester]day reported net income from continuing operations of $9.0m for the third quarter ended May 31, 2003 versus $17.7m for the third quarter of fiscal 2002.... [However,] revenues from continuing operations for the first 39 weeks of fiscal 2003 were a record $619.5m versus $605.1m for the first 40 weeks of fiscal 2002.
   [So for the first two quarters, sales were hot as Americans, scared and broke, cashed in their stationary homes for mobile homes in record numbers, but once the loose screw, oops, cannon in the Oval Office started throwing our weight around, everybody battened down the hatches to wait it out.]
   "Revenues and earnings for the third quarter were impacted primarily by lower sales volume. Due to the lower volume, we reduced production schedules to better align Company and dealer inventory levels with retail demand expectations, decreasing plant efficiencies," said Winnebago Industries' Chairman, CEO and Pres. Bruce Hertzke. "Also contributing, but to a lesser degree, were incentive programs needed to move out final 2003 inventory and start-up expenses for our new Charles City Motor Home Manufacturing Facility. The comparison with last year's third quarter reflects the operation of the Company's factories on four-day work weeks for the first six weeks of the quarter versus running on an overtime basis during the third quarter last year," said Hertzke. "Also our fiscal year to date through the end of the third quarter was a traditional 39-week period this year versus a 40-week period in fiscal 2002."
   Hertzke continued, "Shipments for the Company's motor homes slowed during Q3 as a result of dealers' choosing to trim inventory levels due to
   • low consumer confidence levels,
   • uncertainty about the war in Iraq
     ['thaaank you, pResident Bush']
   • and the coming model year changeover.
   The third quarter was also impacted by competitive programs within the motor home industry. I am extremely proud that Winnebago Industries remained solidly profitable during the quarter in spite of
   • decreased volume,
   • increased competitive pressures
   • and start-up expenses from our new Charles City...Facility,"
   said Hertzke. "Winnebago Industries continues to have
   • a solid balance sheet,
   • an extremely positive cash flow,
   • no debt,
   • and a great name and reputation for product quality and customer service.
   We will continue to manage our business to achieve high profitability levels within the RV industry."
   Winnebago Industries is the top selling motorhome manufacturer with 18.4% of the combined Class A and C [motorhome] market [for the] calendar year to date through April....
   [And the same could be said for our other timesizers. Nucor Steel is the only remaining profitable American steel company, and Lincoln Electric has held onto its 40% of the market in welding equipment through thick and thin across the decades.]

3. 6/16   Pilots union agrees to start limited contract negotiations, Dow Jones via WSJ, A12.
   Delta Air Lines' pilots union agreed to open limited contract negotiations with management in response to the company's request for concessions.... Leaders of the Air Line Pilots Assoc. [ALPA] said the talks, which will open more than a year ahead of scheduled contract negotiations, won't include work rules, such as how many hours pilots work.
   [So they're putting off the issue that could get this whole operation on a sustainable basis. Brilliant.]
   Separately, the union said it will file a grievance next week with a special board of union and company representatives protesting Delta's recent furlough of pilots despite an arbitrator's ruling earlier this year that had halted them.

4. 6/15   Q&A - Marcy Goldstein-Gelb of MassCOSH, on child labor laws, talking to Diane Lewis, Boston Globe, C2.
   Mention the words "child labor" and images of young girls working in the Lowell MA textile mills around the turn of the [last] century are apt to come to mind. Today, federal and state laws spell out the kind of jobs teenagers can hold....
   Q. How many teenagers are injured yearly while working?
   A. More than 230,000 teenagers are injured in the U.S. while on the job. In 2000, the latest data I have, there were 73 teenagers in the country who were killed while working....
   Q. Why change the state's current child labor laws?
   A. Massachusetts' Uniform Child Labor Law was adopted in 1913. It excluded minors from dangerous jobs and also instituted the 40-hour workweek [for them]. But the law needs to be updated. There are different types of hazards now....

5. 6/15   War of the weeks - An attempt to revise the 40-hour workweek failed in Congress, but the debate over how the law should organize our time continues, by editor James Ryerson of NYT Magazine, Boston Globe, H1.
   [Which raises the question, was this in one of the NYTs that we didn't get (last Sun & Mon)? and ifnot, whynot?]
   Unlike the day and the year, which are sanctioned by the rotation and orbit of the earth, the week has no celestial defense.
   [Yes it does. One daily sun rotation (Aristarchus of Samos only figured out that it was an earth rotation centuries later, 3rd century BC, but his view lost out to that of Ptolemy of Alexandria, 2nd century AD, not to be vindicated till Copernicus published in 1543) was ascribed to each of the seven moving lights visible to the naked eye, including the sun: Sun, Moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn.]
   • Its [the week's] cycle is biblical in origin - the Fourth Commandment calls for rest every 7th day....
     [No, it's cycle is due to the only seven moving celestial lights and the dedication of one day to each of them, already established at least as early as the Babylonians. Only the restriction of the seventh day to rest is biblical in origin; that is, original to the ancient Hebrews, specifically to Moses, and recorded in the first and most important part of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah (Exodus 20).]
   • ...The French Revolutionary Calendar of 1793...experimented with a 10-day week.
   • In 1929, the Soviet Union introduced a 5-day week in which each fifth of the workforce had its own day off, with no common day of rest. ...The Soviet scheme severely disrupted family and civic life....
   ...Neither venture [of the 10- or 5-day weeks] lasted very long..., thereby vindicating the fateful words of Bishop Gregoire to the French revolutionaries: "Sunday has existed before you, and it will survive you."
   [The early Christians moved the Day of Rest from the seventh (Saturn's) day to the first (Sun's) day of the week.]
   But has Sunday really survived [as a day of rest]? In the U.S., the past 4 decades have witnessed the widespread repeal of so-called Blue Laws, which ban broad categories of work and commerce on Sundays - typically the sale of alcohol, but also activities like barbering and public entertainment. As a result, Sunday has lost some of its distinctive feel and purpose, humming along more like other days.
   The workweek too has become less distinct, with home time and office time blurring into each other thanks to cell-phones, the Internet, and other technologies. The 40-hour workweek, enshrined in law since [Oct. 24, 1940 (see Roediger & Foner's "Our Own Time," p.259)], has eroded over the decades as more Americans have moved into professional and other employment categories that are exempt from overtime rules.
   And the basic 40-hour rule itself has recently come up for consideration. Last week, the GOP-sponsored Family Time Flexibility Act, which allowed employees the option of receiving overtime pay in the form of time off [as if they don't have it already], died in the House of Representatives in the face of strong opposition from labor groups. ...
   In his recent book, "A Time for Every Purpose: Law and the Balance of Life," the Harvard Law professor Todd Rakoff reminds us that time is as much a social [construct] as a fact of nature. Our experience of time is created through a set of decisions that we can tailor to our changing needs.
   • To what extent should we coordinate our activities with daylight? [relevant to Daylight Savings Time]
   • How important are holidays and vacations in giving life its cadence? [relevant to specifying the length of the workyear]
   • What is the maximum number of hours an individual should work per week? [relevant to defining the share of human employment per person]
   ...The most divisive question has been the length of the workweek. In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act [FLSA], which mandated [a 44-hour workweek in 1938, a 42-hour workweek in 1939, and] a 40-hour workweek [in 1940], with overtime reimbursed at a rate of time-and-a-half [#hrs x 1.5], for a broad class of workers. (Executives, administrators, and professionals are exempt; approximately 70m of today's 150m American workers are not covered by the law.)
   Decades later, not everyone remains content with the status quo.
   • Some - including Jeremy Rifkin, author of the polemic "The End of Work" (1995), and the Boston College economist Juliet Schor, author of "The Overworked American" (199[1]) - have called for a shorter workweek.
   • In France, where workers already clock significantly fewer hours than we do, the national assembly in 2000 voted to shorten the workweek from 39 hours to 35, arguing that the policy would reduce unemployment by forcing employers to make additional hires.
   ...The provisions for overtime as set out in the FLSA can...be improved. Rakoff, for one, would like to give employees more control over when they have to work overtime in the first place - perhaps by raising the overtime premium to double-time, which would discourage employers from calling for extra work.
   [Not necessarily, with the skyrocketing costs of full-time benefits like health insurance these days, and besides, it would more strongly motivate people still employed full-time to finagle even more strongly for overtime - not a sustainable solution given the "elephant in the room" that editor Ryerson is ignoring; namely, with efficient technology constantly improving and sweeping through the service sector now automating jobs, having decimated the jobs in agriculture and manufacturing, one person working overtime while the person next door is about to lose the house because s/he was laid off and can't find another job is totally inefficient and damaging to the consumer base. Ergo the global economy has a job shortage = labor surplus = downward pressure on wages = 'trickle-down' is overwhelmed by 'flood-up' to the top income brackets, yielding liquidity-driven rallies alias stock bubbles.]
   More radically, he would greatly increase the number of workers who are subject to the overtime provision, including, for example, notoriously overworked law-firm associates.
   [And even more notoriously, medical students - see below 6/07/2003 #2 - and less notoriously, airline pilots and truckers.... We agree entirely with Rakoff's "radical" call here. As technology shoulders more human work, every nation's most precious vanishing resource becomes surviving market-demanded human employment. We just don't have enough to continue exempting nearly half (70m) of today's 150m American workers from the worksharing imperative imposed upon us by our own technological efficiency and productivity - if we want a sustainable economic system.]
   The purpose of the FLSA, he says, is best understood as not just avoiding sweatshops but helping society maintain a healthy balance between work and the rest of life. "Yes, we affirmatively want people to work," he says. "But we affirmatively want people not to work, also, because not-work activities - raising families, participating in religious organizations, all kind[s] of cultural things - are not the same as useless activities, from a social point of view."
   [Hm, that sentence sortof fizzled. Maybe if he had pointed out that one often hears, as a rationale for retirement or even early retirement, the need to "make room for younger workers," betraying a finite view of natural, market-demanded human employment, despite the scorn of those who sneer at such a "Lump of Labor Fallacy."]
   To the economist or the libertarian, Rakoff's fondness for regulating time would seem to scant the wisdom of the market.
   [The market can handle the details, but it cannot provide itself with the kind of framework that the 40-hour workweek provides, and that perhaps a lower-number workweek should provide now that we've been frozen at 40 for the last 63 years, after cutting the workweek in half over the previous 100-150 years. Advances in technological efficiency and productivity certainly haven't been frozen for the last 63 years!]
   What institution besides the market can take into account individual wishes, and balance the various interests and desires and commitments at play in society?
   [That's fine for the micromanagement, but for the overall share per person level, the "one person one vote" level, you need to define a level playing field or the game will break down. After all, we don't accumulate sports scores indefinitely across seasons - every season every team starts again at "zero games won." Without such simply and comprehensively defined game rules or groundrules, we fall into Chesterton's Pan-Utopian Trap and turn any paradise into hell.]
   After all, not all faiths [focus] their activities on Sunday,
   [a workweek limit doesn't say they should]
   and not all people prefer working limited hours.
   [That's why the Timesizing Program lets you work as many hours per week as you want - providing you reinvest overtime/overwork earnings in guaranteeing that you're doing it for love, not money (in the freely spendable sense). We don't want to stop everyone from working more than their share - just those are doing it only out of quantitative, inflationary, mercenary incentive. We'd love the "little toymaker" who's "never worked a day in his life" because he loves it so much, to work as long as he wants. How to separate the sheep from the goats? Mandatory reinvestment of overtime/overwork earnings as directly as possible in overtime-targeted skills, that it, in training and hiring. Thus we guarantee that after a certain point in each workweek, people either stop consuming this vanishing resource of market-determined employment, or they transform into producers of this vanishing resource by hiring trainees or assistants - or they get their overtime/overwork earnings taxed away from them so that a governmental Administration of the Job Market can, admittedly imperfectly, facsimilate the reinvestment in training and hiring that they should be doing. Quitting at the maximum workweek, on the other hand, is a kind of job insurance, with the premiums paid in terms of hours foregone, not dollars foregone. And of course, it's a lot easier to swallow if the determination of the workweek ceiling itself is not a silly top-down elistist arbitary process. That's why Timesizing adjusts the workweek by the unemployment rate, and redefines the unemployment rate, to comprehend the whole problem on non-self-support, by referendum.]
   But in the case of time, there may not actually be such a thing as truly individual choice.
   [Amen.]
   "Our joint social life depends on people having time that is not work time," Rakoff says. An individual can take a vacation, but it takes a society to create a holiday.
   [Whooboy. More functional is our discussion of the need to maintain our consumer base by spreading the vanishing work and maintaining or raising wages by avoiding the over-supply of labor inherent in high unemployment. Also more functional is our soundbite about free time being the most basic kind of freedom, providing, as it does, the 'space' for the exercise of all the other freedoms.]
   It's a point that seems to apply to time generally. You are free to ignore daylight saving time or set your watch locally to the noonday sun. But then how will you arrive on time to meetings, or get your children to school before the bell? For better and for worse, time is not a fluid resource that can be efficiently allocated according to individual taste,
   [we'd say, time is a fluid resource, but "time is not an elastic resource that can be arbitrarily allocated according to individual greed"...]
   but a bulky, inefficient and thankfully communal possession.
   [Phew, Ryerson is really groping here. The only thing that's "bulky" about time is the rigidity of the 40-hour workweek that has defined workshare per person for over the last two generations. The only situation where time is inefficient is where to protect that 40-hour historical accident and render it sacrosanct, we respond to every technological advance by chopping jobs and leaving increasing numbers unemployed, non-self-supporting and non-participating in the consumer base, instead of pouring a little less of the fluid time into each person's weekly "cup" - and paradoxically maintaining or raising their pay because we're avoiding the situation that the supply&demand-driven market always punishes = an oversupply...of human capital, ergo, lower pay and the sweatshop standard of long hours for low wages The "communal possession" part is fine - but try to tell that to the neo-con (artists) currently in the White House.]
   [Photo caption -]
   French workers march in support of the 35-hour workweek, February 2000.
   [Photo shows 'hardhat' holding sign, "Reduction du temps de travail," literally, "Reduction of the time of work," or smoother, "Reduction of worktime."]
   Workers of the world, take back your time, chart by Globe staff, Boston Globe, H4.
   [intro -]
   Americans may not work as many hours each year as Mexicans or Czechs, but they're far more industrious [or wheel spinning and face timing?] than their peers in Paris or Berlin. Not everyone is happy about this. On Oct. 24, activists affiliated with Cornell University's Center for Religion, Ethics & Social Policy are encouraging American workers to observe a national "Take Back Your Time Day" to protest "the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships."
   [How the heck did they come up with this twig instead of the root and source of Take Back Your Time Day = our own John de Graaf of Seattle? Oh well, whatever works.]
   The date, which falls nine weeks before the end of the year, symbolizes the 9 extra week Americans work each year compared with the average non-British Western European.
   [And we just realized tonight that Oct. 24 is the same day the 40-hour workweek took effect in 1940 - John de Graaf take notice! Then the chart shows six nations' average annual working hours in 2002. We'll append them to our annual hours story on 7/08/2001 #3.]