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Timesizing News, June 28-30, 2003
[Commentary] ©2003 Phil Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622, Porter Sq, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080

6/28-30/2003  huge primitive-timesizing & worktime-consciousness news this weekend = glimmers of strategic hope -

1. [Scott comes through bigtime in attacking the prevailing grunt culture -]
   6/29   Dilbert, 8-frame cartoon by Scott Adams, Boston Sunday Globe, cartoon section, front page.
   
   1. Alice, looking round out of her cubicle at Wally sauntering in late, "You're coming to work at nine-thirty?"
   2. Wally starts to turn around toward Alice, who stands angry in cubicle door, "By the time you get your coffee and get your bagel, it'll be ten o-clock!"
   3. Wally, expressionless, turns toward Alice, who clenches fists, "I started at six! I've already worked for four hours, and I'll probably stay late!"
   4. Wally, expressionless and motionless, while Alice, angry, holds her stomach, "Over the course of a lifetime, I'll work twice as much as you!"
   5. Ditto while Alice, light dawning, keeps holding stomach, "But...we'll be paid the same...and we'll both die anyway."
   6. Ditto while Alice, light registering, arms straight down, "So...I guess what you're saying is that you're smarter than I am."
   7. Ditto while Alice, furious, reclenches fists and throws back head to yell, "I curse the casual brilliance of your life strategy!!!"
   8. Wally resumes sauntering in late, tosses thought-summation to readers, "My bagel will be extra tasty today."

2. [and a 'qiki' = beautiful cartoon in Boston Globe this weekend -]
   6/28   editorial-page cartoon, by Horsey, Seattle Post-Intelligencer via Boston Globe, A10.
   [scene in diner - big fat guy, evidently a contract truckdriver or laborer, reading newspaper at counter says -]
   "Hah! Those crazy Europeans are writin' a constitution that'll guarantee them the right to limited working hours and paid vacations!"
   [Frazzled waitress answers -]
   Crazy. Right. Thank the Lord I live in a country where I work two jobs to support my family and haven't had a day off in three years.
   [Hey maybe some of John de Graaf's "Take Back Your Time Day" message is already getting around out there in Seattle!]

3. [here's a sample of the European "craziness" mentioned in the cartoon above - and also of U.S. ambivalence about it -]
   6/30   Norway can offer lessons to Iraq on redevelopment, by Bob Davis, WSJ, A2.
   Economists hoping to revive Iraq are studying Norway, of all place, for lessons in economic development.
   [The WSJ doesn't like Norway cuz it's a high-taxes small-income-gap left-leaning economy that works well (except for whaling), but according to colleague Kate, it is well-known as an oil country whose oil profits have been spread widely and benefited many.]
   
   • Norway is one of the few major oil producers to have made enduring gains since the 1970s.
   • Among Middle Eastern oil producers, income per person has actually declined during the past three decades, after accounting for inflation, despite the run-up in oil prices.
     [A mystery only if you carefully ignore, as the WSJ does, the little matter of uncapped income concentration alias The Great Leak Upward, and yielding The Black Hole Economy.]
   [So the rutted thinkers who pass for fashionable economists - in the dragged-back-from-the-dead supply-side fashion - have to find plenty wrong with Norway, even if it's (dammit) "one of the few major oil producers to have made enduring gains since the 1970s" - never mind the rest were following the bankrupt supplyside notions -]
   ...Compared with Iraq, Norway had many [go ahead, say it! - "unfair"] advantages. When Norway first pumped crude oil from the North Sea in 1975, it was a stable democracy [unlike Iraq], with honest civil servants [unlike Iraq], a well-established legal system and a large middle class. Median income trailed most of Western Europe, but was well above Iraq's. Also, Norway produces about 3m bbl of oil a day; before the war, Iraq [only] 2m bbl.
   [Now here's the big beef. Norway doesn't follow the IMF-World Bank-WSJ partyline about tax the poor, not the rich and avoid state-run businesses -]
   But, like other [go ahead, say it - "stupid"] oil nouveau riche, Norway was seduced by oil wealth [like Cheney wasn't?!]. A generous welfare system was expanded [galling!].
   [And worst of all -]
   Norwegians take 25 sick days annually, on average, and work only 26.5 hours a week.
   [This probably means on average, so we still know nothing about the definition of "full time" in Norway. But for the WSJ, it's all about them, "investors," and about exports, and never about consumers, i.e., domestic demand, despite consumer markets routinely constituting 2/3 of most economies, and it's never never about employees, even though there are rumors that there could possibly be some abstruse connection between employees and consumers.]
   Investment poured into the oil sector, but Norwegian manufacturers languished as the currency appreciated. Mobile-communications firms prospered in Finland and Sweden, but Norway missed the high-tech boom and was tethered to the rise and fall of oil prices.
   Europeans call this problem "Dutch Disease" - for the Netherlands economy , which stagnated after natural-gas deposits were discovered offshore in the early 1960s. The public sector became bloated, and exporters, outside of natural resources, suffered.
   Norway rebounded in the 1990s, largely by segregating the oil business from the rest of the economy. The Norwegian government lessened its oil dependence, and the private sector diversified. Norway's growth has slowed since 2001 [ours hasn't?], but many steps Oslo took are important for Baghdad [ie: Cheney in Iraq] too.
   
   • Sharing the wealth.
     [Here's an odd lead-off for the cheerleader of greed - but this is just smoke cover till Halliburton and Bechtel get firm control of Iraq oil.]
     Norwegian law makes clear that oil resources are owned by the Norwegian people - not by a particular clique or geographic area. ...It's still far from clear whether the Kurdish north and the Shiite south will make special claims to the oil fields there....
     [And we wouldn't want any such claims to get in the way of the "people" of Halliburton and Bechtel etc.]
   • Separate accounts. Starting in 1990, Norway funneled revenue from its state-owned oil business into a separate Government Petroleum Fund. Assets are expected to total $120B at year end - a huge sum for a country of 4.5m - and are invested in foreign stocks and bonds.
     [Aha, there's why the WSJ is going easy on Norway = Norway's huge sacrifice to get the rapacious American oil elite to leave them alone. And possibly get some stockholder restraining influence over the excesses of the CEOs of the (mostly American by any chance?) companies they're invested in. Of course the Wall Street Journal would want Iraq to sacrifice investing in itself to enrich Wall Street.]
     Norway uses only the return on the fund's investments, estimated at 4% annually, to balance the non-oil budget. The oil revenue accumulates year after year, and is designed eventually for the retirement of Norwegian baby boomers....
     [Quick, all you bankrupted American retirees - emigrate to Norway!]
   • Opening up.
     [A very important codeword for, take off your clothes and make signs like it's OK for us to rape you economically. We may not do it immediately, but it's important for our egos to think we could, anytime we want.]
     Norway's oil industry is so lucrative that it crowded out [or rather, vacuumed away] investment in manufacturing and other sectors. [But that's OK, because -] Oslo recognizes the need to make [its mfg] industry [tough and] competitive, partly by trying to keep its currency from appreciating too much [ie: getting too strong on currency markets] and by keeping its markets open to foreign rivals.... [= the big "rape me" sign of "free" trade (with whatever exceptions the White House wants this week) - Norway's main protection is inconspicuousness - better switch from killing whales to huge aquariums for getting to know them and learning their languages (go with Canada, "Sea lanes shift in Canada to save the whales," by Colin Nickerson, Boston Globe, front page) - and Japan's strategy of saying "yes," and bowing, to anything the White House wants this week and then going on with whatever it was they were doing in whatever way they were doing it]

4. [and back in the U.S. -]
   6/30   Doctors ordered: Work less - Limits to begin on residents' hours, by Anne Barnard, Boston Globe, front page.
   [Congratulations to the American Assoc. of Medical Students for their victory on this!]
   ...A [very long] workday is not unusual for young doctors, particularly surgical trainees.., who frequently work from 100 to 120 hours a week. But starting tomorrow, it will be against the rules.
   After years of debate, the national group that regulates medical residents has forbidden them to work more than 80 hours a week
   [Oh boy, what PROGRESS!]
   or spend more than 24 straight hours taking care of patients.
   [Crisis management run amok!]
   They can spend six more hours finishing paperwork or handing off patients, but not doing medical procedures.
   [What disgraceful, self-important and dangerous bullshit!]
   Cutting deep into a tradition of grueling workhours that defined medical training for much of the last century, the new rules have divided the medical community.
   [Just like only half the labor movement at any one time (eg: AFL vs. CIO in the 1930s) seems capable of "getting" the power-imperative of jobmarket-loosening workweek shrinking.]
   A growing number of physicians believe that more rest is safer for patients [no kidding!] and doctors alike, but many still worry that the change will take away from the practical experience trainees need [oh brother!], disrupt hospitals that rely on their labor [yassuh, massa, gotta keep dem plantations goin'!], or erode their commitment to put patients' needs before personal convenience.
   [The main thing patients need in this year of our Lord is an alert, well-rested physician!]
   The exact financial impact is hard to gauge, because work schedules can be erratic and vary among specialties. But at a typical large teaching hospital, if 60 surgical residents cut their average hours from 100 to 80, the hospital would lose 1,200 hours of labor each week. Mass General's surgery department alone requested 10 new job slots for nurse practitioners and physician assistants, which would have cost up to $1m a year; the hospital granted 5 [each?].
   [Here's the kind of sicko that's running our hospitals. Is it any wonder that American healthcare is a disaster?]
   "Truthfully, I am doubtful that it's going to work," said Dr. Andrew Warshaw, chairman of surgery at Mass General. He called the new rules "a precipitous response to external pressures without having considered the unintended consequences."
   [Louzy management speaketh - 80 years after the "last" 12-hour day vanished in America (see next story). How many centuries does he need before it's no longer "precipitous"? Not all doctors are that stupid -]
   Dr. Robert Barbieri, chief of obstretrics & gynecology at Brigham & Women's Hospital [Boston] has already moved his trainees...into night shifts that last no longer than 12 hours [grrreat!] and says it is exciting when well-rested residents show up to relieve a tired team. "They're so fresh; they're so ready," he said.
   [Yeah, wow, they got five hours sleep instead of just one. Barbari, not barbieri!]
   The rules were issued by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and were intended in part to head off a proposed federal law limiting residents' hours.
   They also reflect a broader change in medicine, Barbieri said: Recent medical-school graduates, half of whom are women, place a higher priority than did earlier generations on carving out time within a medical career for personal life and family.
   [We seriously wonder when this epidemic of self-sleep-deprivation got started in "medicine." It didn't seem to us that the old-fashioned family doctor who used to make housecalls was this self-important, unbalanced and chronically fatigued.]
   ...But even proponents of the new rules are in suspense this week as...new medical school graduates arrive to begin their 3-5 year residencies. No one is sure how cutting hours will impact residents' ability to master a growing body of medical knowledge or how already stressed teaching hospitals will find the money and workers to make up for residents' relatively cheap labor. ...The changes [affect] the nation's 97,000 residents, 66,000 medical students, and 105,000 medical faculty....
   [No wonder these morons get so many malpractice suits! They are sooo out-of-line.]

5. [here's a press release from a sector that's a little more in-line -]
   6/28   Starting Point survey: Employers here [N/E Ohio] lag nation in offering 'family friendly' policies, benefits - Helping employees balance work and family lives called key to attracting, retaining skilled workers, PRNewswire 06/27/2003 09:30 EDT via AOLNews.
   CLEVELAND...- According to a report released [yester]day by Starting Point for Child Care & Early Education, Northeast Ohio employers overwhelmingly say "family friendly" policies that help employees balance their work and family lives - like alternate work schedules and childcare services - are important to recruiting and retaining the highly skilled workers our region needs to be economically competitive. Nevertheless, the same employers lag behind their counterparts across the U.S. in implementing these programs....
   400 Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga and Lake county employers [were] queried...last summer [about] what types of programs they offered. A majority cited only two options - part-time jobs without benefits and 7-12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave.... One-fourth offered a compressed workweek....
   Nationally...over 20% offer job sharing \according to\ the 2001 Society of HR Mgmt Benefits Survey. [In Northeast Ohio, only 17% offer it.]
   For copies of the Executive Summary of the report, call Starting Point at 216-575-0061. The full report can be seen on the organization's website at *Starting-Point.org.

6. [and the battle for a 40-hour week continues in South Korea -]
   6/30   Strike hobbles rail service after arrests in South Korea - Government vows continued crackdown, by Don Kirk, NYT, C2.
   SEOUL...- A strike by railroad workers shut down more than half the country's rail service [yester]day, including most of the freight trains, after the police detained 1,500 strikers in a raid on a university campus on Saturday.... Strike leaders, rallying outside the National Assembly building, called [yester]day for higher pay and benefits as well as shorter hours for railroad workers and demanded that the government give up its plans to privatize the rail system. Workers fear private owners will lay off some of the system's 21,000 workers and be less willing to pay overtime and to improve conditions than the government corporation that now runs the system....
   [We're with them except - there should be no overtime. If they want more pay, they should upgrade their skills and switch to higher paying jobs.]
   6/30   S.Korea rail union rejects govt order to end strike, by Song Jung-a & Frances Yoon, Reuters 06/29/03 23:54 ET via AOLNews.
   SEOUL...- South Korean railway workers rejected on Monday [6/30 - story pre-emptively filed late on 6/29?] a government demand to end a strike over a [RR] privatisation plan in the latest eruption of labour unrest in one of Asia's fastest-growing economies....
   In a separate protest, thousands of workers are expected to hold massive rallies later on Monday over pay and conditions. The Federation of Korean Trade Unions, the country's largest labour umbrella group, has said more than 100,000 of its members will down tools for one day on Monday and thousands would stage a rally in central Seoul. The 940,000-strong federation is demanding the early introduction of five-day work week and higher pay raises....
   [Meanwhile, things are creeping backwards across the Japan Sea -]
   Japan May overtime pay up for 10th month, Reuters 06/29/03 21:31 ET via AOLNews.
   TOKYO...- The average overtime pay of Japanese wage earners, a barometer of income conditions, rose 4.5% in May from a year earlier to ¥17,979 ($150.20), data showed on Monday [6/30 - another pre-emptive filing].... In terms of hours worked, overtime rose in May for the 11th straight month, growing 5.5% from a year earlier....
   [You can't restore your consumer markets and your economy without strongly demotivating and eradicating overtime - except where companies reinvest 100% of their overtime profits, and any overtiming employees reinvest 100% of their overtime earnings, in overtime-targeted training&hiring to break open the bottleneck of skills that overtime signals.]

7. 6/28   Talks resume over E.German auto workers' strike, Reuters 06/27/03 11:29 ET via AOLNews.
   BERLIN... - Negotiations between engineering union IG Metall and employers restarted on Friday amid hopes for a deal to end a strike in eastern Germany for a shorter working week that has hurt output in the country's key car industry....
   [Thank God auto CEOs now have an excuse for lower sales!]
   Workers at car and steel plants in the still depressed former communist east have been on strike since early June, demanding a reduction in the working week by 3 hours to the 35 hours which is standard for their western colleagues.
   Productivity gap
   Employers say the 38-hour week for the 310,000 engineering employees in the east is justified because of lower productivity than in the west. But eastern workers say they feel like 2nd-class citizens 13 years after unification.
   [And frankly, they are.]
   IG Metall is demanding a gradual cut in hours which it says is justified by advances in eastern productivity.... The trade unions are traditionally close allies of the rulng Social Democrats but relations have soured of late as Schroeder has proposed "reforms" [our quotes] to welfare benefits and labour laws which the unions say will hurt workers' interests.
   6/28   Strike affects W. German Volkswagen plant, by Geir Moulson, AP 06/27/03 11:25 EDT via AOLNews.
   BERLIN - Germany's biggest industrial union and employers began talks Friday aimed at ending 4 weeks of strikes for fewer working hours in the formerly communist east, [gotta get "fewer working hours" as close as often to "shorter hours" as possible!] a dispute that is spilling over into the more affluent [capitalist!] west [that already has the shorter hours!].... Meanwhile, some 7,700 manufacturing workers walked off the job at factories in eastern Germany to underline the IG Metall union's demand for a 35-hour week.
   IG Metall, which represents workers in the manufacturing, steel and electronics industries, has made automakers and their suppliers a prominent target of its campaign for a shorter eastern workweek [or better, a Germany-wide workweek]. However, the increasing fallout at west German plants has drawn intense criticism and the union has softened its tone in recent days.
   Workers in the east currently work 38 hours for the same base pay as their counterparts who work 35 hours in the west.... The union says that, 13 years after Germany was reunited, companies have had enough time to even out working conditions, but employers say that a shorter workweek would raise already high labor costs and deter investment in the region [which needs more consumers, not investors!]. The union has suggested that a shorter workweek could be introduced at different speeds depending on individual companies' economic situations.
   Three weeks ago, striking workers in the steel industry won a gradual reduction to a 35-hour week by 2009. But the deal covered 'only' 9,000 workers [our quotes], and manufacturing employers have refused to extend it to the east's roughly 310,000 manufacturing workers.
   6/28   Union hardliner under fire over East German strike, by Kerstin Gehmlich, Reuters 06/27/03 11:30 ET via AOLNews.
   [Oops, now it's getting personal. That should help line up the ruling Social "Democrats" with the "Democrats" in USA and the ruling "Republicans."]
   BERLIN...- A four-week strike in eastern Germany's engineering sector which has harmed the country's key car sector and drawn widespread criticism has brought the...head of the powerful IG Metall union [Klaus Zwickel] under fire.... Criticism has also mounted inside the union against the strike's main initiator, left-winger Juergen Peters, who has been voted the preferred candidate of the union's central committee to head the 2.6m body [starting this] autumn.... "Peters wanted to use this strike as his personal election campaign," said Manfred Wilke, political scientist at the Berlin School of Economics. "He planned to present himself as the radiant winner and achiever of the 35-hour week in east Germany on election day in October. But that is not going to happen," he added....
   Workers in the formerly communist east want a cut in the working week from 38 hours to the 35 hours standard in the west. [Yeah, capitalist workers just shaddap and take whatever their top executives toss them, with a loud "Thank you, SIR!" And just look at the nerve of this guy -] "After 13 years of German 'unity' [our quotes], we are no longer willing to wait," Peters has said, adding the union had had no other option than to strike after talks with the employers failed. [Gawd, how unreasonable can you GET?!]
   Strike 'hurts' car sector [our quotes]
   ..."The strikes for the 35-hour week in the east have never been [voted in] by a large majority of workers," Klaus Franz, head of the workers' council at carmaker Opel, told a newspaper. [Dis here guy is a good capitalist worker. He don't want no 'damage' to happen to da union -] "...Someone who wants to head IG Metall must be able to develop strategies...so as to prevent any damage to IG Metall."
   [The whole reason the car makers could outstrike the strike was that they didn't need the output that badly. They've kept the German workweek so high relative to where the unemployment rate (19% in the east) tells us it should be for the German level of technology, and thereby kept so much employment so concentrated on so few worker-consumers, that they've crippled their domestic markets.]
   Peters, who worked as a locksmith before starting his union career at the early age of 24, earned himself a name in the fight to introduce a 4-day [28.8-hr!] working week at Volkswagen in 1993, preventing the loss of up to 20,000 jobs.
   [We thought it was in 1994, and 30,000 jobs.]
   But "economists" [our quotes] warn that the former communist east, where longer working hours have been justified by lower productivity, is still not ready for a shorter working week which could just drive investors to neighboring Poland or the Czech Republic....
   [On and on about irrelevant "investors" and nothing about relevant consumers. But the forces of Grind, disunity & self-destruction win in east Germany -]
   6/30   Union leaders end a strike for shorter hours in eastern Germany, AP via NYT, C2.
   BERLIN...- Union leaders called off a strike for shorter work hours in eastern Germany on Saturday, admitting defeat in the face of stinging criticism of walkouts that "hurt" [our quotes] Volkswagen, BMW and other companies.
   [If it was really hurting them, they'd have settled on the same type of gradual agreement that the steel companies conceded weeks earlier, but evidently the steel companies actually have some urgent orders to fulfil, while the car companies don't.]
   After all-night talks with employers broke down without an agreement, the IG Metall union said there was no prospect that the strike could achieve its goals. The union said it would seek deals with individual companies.
   "The bitter truth is that the strike has failed," the head of the union, Klaus Zwickel, said, acknowledging that public opinion had turned [or been turned by near-sighted big-money media] against the strike. "We will have to find other ways," he added.
   The union struck about a dozen factories in the southeastern state of Saxony and the Berlin region over the last four weeks. They sought to cut the workweek to 35 hours from 38, the same as in wealthier western Germany, for about 310,000 workers in the former communist east.
   Employers refused the demand, saying the extra hours - for the same basic pay - attracted investment to a depressed region at a time of increased competition from [other,] lower-wage, former communist countries in eastern Europe.
   During the 16 hours of talks that collapsed early on Saturday [the union should probably have insisted on a 7-hour-maximum day, and lots of donuts, to prevent the employers from getting cranky!], employers proposed permitting companies to set weekly schedules of 35 to 40 hours, depending on their financial strength.
   [Suddenly we're talking back up to 40.]
   IG Metall sought a phased-in reduction to 35 hours by 2011.
   The union asserts that productivity has improved sufficiently since German reunification in 1990 to make work rules the same throughout the country.
   [And here's the Journal's version -]
   6/30   German union, under pressure, calls off strike, Roundup via WSJ, A14.
   BERLIN - Union leaders called off a strike for a shorter workweek in the former East Germany [see, they're already recapitalizing this again - it's separate and second-class], bowing to harsh criticism from economists [CEO paws] and government leaders [CEO paws - mighty nearsighted at that!] and signaling a change in the power dynamic between German employers and workers.
   [It took 35 years of introducing women's suffrage in every session of Congress before it passed, in 1920, and then only by one vote in one state (Tenn.). We are a disgrace to intelligent species throughout the universe!]
   After all-night talks lapsed without an agreement, the union, IG Metall, said it would instead pursue separate deals with companies.
   ["Divided we fall." And all because the global labor surplus has drained labor power everywhere, and weakened consumer markets.]
   "The bitter truth is that the strike has failed," IG Metall chief Klaus Zwickel said, conceding that public opinion had turned against the walkouts.
   [And the employers could hold out forever, cuz there are too few consumers left to rush their cars out of the showrooms! What is Deutschland going to do instead? The same recession deepening idiocy that we're doing -]
   German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder [was] in Neuhardenberg to formally announce a well-publicized taxcut and economic-stimulus program....
   [There is no better, stronger, more sustainable, all-round economic-stimulus program in the world today than worksharing a la workweek reduction to activate all the millions of demoralized consumers who are unemployed, on welfare, disabled, homeless or in prison.]
   Germany is in its third year of economic stagnation [same as us, we started it], as unemployment hovers above 10%. Mr. Schroeder's plan to bring forward taxcuts...to 2004 from 2005 would require increased borrowing that could mean violating budget deficit caps that apply to the 12 countries that use the euro.
   The strike aimed to shorten the workweek from 38 to 35 hours, as in western Germany [and the eastern German steel sector], for more than 300,000 workers in the former communist east. Employers wanted companies to set weekly hours of 35 to 40 hours, depending on their finances, while IG Metall sought a phased-in reduction to the 35-hour workweek by 2011 [so, one hour reduction every THREE years?! 2004=37, 2008=36, 2011=35. That's slower than the steel sector, which is doing one hour every TWO years.]
   Employers argue that more hours for roughly the same pay draw investment to a depressed region.
   [Again, they need consumers, not investors.]
   The union says that since German reunification in 1990, productivity has increased enough to justify a standard workweek nationwide.
   The strike damaged Germany's auto industry....
   [B.S. - there wasn't enough demand for product for the strike to damage Germany's auto industry, and now with continued concentration of work, there'll be no additional employee-consumers to make demand any better, despite last month's blip in the U.S. -]
   6/30   Consumers' spending, income rise, by Michael Schroeder [any relation to Gerhard?], WSJ, A6.
   [As colleague Kate points out, you can always count on astronomically increased executive pay to pull up average income and there is ambiguity in the figures -]
   Despite the recent monthly increases, personal income has been hurt by limited growth in new jobs. Personal income grew at [only] a 2.9% annual pace in May, down from 3.1% in April and well below the 3.5% pace at the beginning of the year..\..
   [And the spending figures too are ambiguous -]
   Inflation-adjusted spending for durable goods, including such big-ticket items as cars, fell 0.1% in May..\.. Consumer spending accounts for 2/3 of all economic activity in the U.S. [vs. only 59% in Japan]....
   [Back to Deutschland -]
   6/30   German carmakers to resume production next week, Reuters 06/29/03 07:29 ET via AOLNews.
   HAMBURG/MUNICH...- German carmakers BMW and Volkswagen said on Sunday they were preparing to resume production in factories hit by a strike in eastern Germany that is set to end on Monday. Trade union IG Metall conceded defeat on Saturday in its campaign for shorter hours for engineering workers in the former communist east, saying it would call off strikes that have hurt national car production.... Workers at car and steel plants in the former east have been on strike since early June, demanding for 310,000 engineering employees a reduction in the working week by three hours to the 35 hours standard for their western colleagues.
   6/30   Schroeder says relieved by end to E. German strike, Reuters 06/29/03 09:13 ET via AOLNews.
   NEUHARDENBURG, Germany...- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder welcomed on Sunday a decision by the IG Metall trade union to end strikes that failed to win shorter hours for engineering workers in former east.... After talks ended without a deal on Saturday, IG Metall conceded defeat in its campaign for the 310,000 engineering employees in the former communist east to have their working week cut from 38 hours to the 35 hours standard in the west....
   Dieter Hundt, head of the BDA employers' association, warned IG Metall against trying to force a shorter working week in the east in negotiations with individual firms.
   [This guy's got a lotta nerve. No wonder he's named Hundt, German for 'dog'.]
   "If they attempt to push through this madness via house contracts, then they will further damage the reconstruction of the east and collective wage bargaining," he said.
   [The only madness in the east is the myopia of Hundt and the BDA in keeping hundreds of thousands of potential consumers deactivated in the limbo of unemployment with a jobless rate of 19%, and their complete incomprehension of the technological imperative of workweek reduction to avoid destroying even more of their markets as armies of robots move into the factories.]

8. [Eighty (80) years ago this week we thought we'd gotten rid of the 12-hour day in America, but now, IT'S BAAACK, thanks to our CEOs' destabilizing and insecurifying downsizing instead of technology-intended timesizing -]
   6/30   The shifting nature of shift work, pointer blurb (to B1), WSJ, front page.
   Automation and globalization have radically changed the nature of blue-collar work as low-skilled jobs either disappear or move overseas. That leaves fewer workers to do more complex jobs, and their work-days can be long and lonely.
   [And the indicated article -]
   6/30   A new blue-collar world - A steelworker's lonely life, by Robert Matthews, WSJ, B1.
   COLUMBIA CITY, Ind. - Making steel is a lonely job these days. Here, at the newly built Steel Dynamics Inc. plant, one steelworker spends 12 hours a day in a crane 70 feet above the floor.
   [How'd you like to be working near a crane operated by someone who's been cooped up in it for 10 or 11 hours straight? No wonder they have "industrial accidents" like the one in Revere MA last week ("Operator injured as [300-ton] crane topples," by Nicholas Zamiska, 6/27 Boston Globe {BG}, B2, and followup "Construction worker dies of injuries," 6/28 BG, B2). It's like the "malpractice waiting to happen" of American medicine, where so-called healers have turned their profession into a stay-awake dance marathon (see "Doctors ordered: Work less - Limits to begin on residents' hours," by Anne Barnard, 6/30 BG, front page, which states "Dr. Robert Barbieri [apt name!], chief of obstretrics & gynecology at Brigham & Women's Hospital [Boston] has already moved his trainees...into night shifts that last no longer than 12 hours." Deja vu. This steelworker's 12-hour day brings us right back to 1920, when steelworkers worked 84 hours a week = seven 12-hour days, in what was then thought to be the last vestige of the barbarian 12-hour day in America. Here's the whole story from Ray Wilbur & Arthur Hyde's The Hoover Policies (1938), p.124ff: "In an address on Nov. 19, 1920, [Herbert] Hoover gave his own policies as to hours of work: '...If we would build up character and abilities and standard of living in our people we must have regard to their leisure for citizenship, for recreation, for family life. These considerations together with protection against strain must be the fundamentals of determination of hours of labor.... It is certainty that the 84-hour week of some employment transgresses these fundamentals to a point of inhumanity.' As practical steps to brings these ideas about we may cite an incident soon after he [Herbert Hoover] became [Harding's] Secretary of Commerce. In the winter of 1922 [i.e., Jan. or Feb., not Nov. or Dec.] he started an investigation to determine by what method the 12-hour day, 84-hour week in the steel industry could be reduced to an 8-hour day, 48-hour week.... Judge Gary, the president of the U.S. Steel Corp., and a few other leaders gave a very qualified encouragement. In April, Secy. Hoover recommended to Pres. Harding that he invite the leading steel manufacturers to the White House to discuss the whole question frankly. This dinner was arranged for May 18, 1922. All of the principal steel men were present. President Harding presided [homologously enough!]. He warmly urged some steps should be taken to meet a real social necessity and asked the manufacturers to co-operate. Hoover was called upon by the President to present the subject fully, which he did. He urged its social and humane necessity; that the gain in efficiency would take up much or all of the cost; that the steady mechanization of the industry made it feasible to do it now. A number of manufacturers severely criticized Hoover's figures, the feasibility of the plan and his assertion of its social necessity. A spirited debate ensued, the final result being that Pres. Harding requested Judge Gary to act as the chairman of a committee of nine to study the possibilities further. The situation at the end of the dinner seemed very discouraging. The press were informed that the subject of the dinner was the abolition of the 12-hour day and the shift to an 8-hour basis. At once large public debate ensued. ...On May 27, Dr. [Samuel McCune] Lindsey [of New York] wrote Secy. Hoover: 'The reception which was given by the press...shows how keen and widespread is the interest and public demand that something must be done to get rid of the 12-hour day.... Certainly you and the President must feel gratified at the indications of widespread appreciation and support of your leadership in this matter.' As Hoover's estimates of the cost and the social benefits had been severely challenged by some of the manufacturers, he requested the Federated Engineering Societies (of which he had been president) to study and report upon the question. [Anticipating resistance, Hoover actually made this request about two years earlier around the time of his Nov/1920 address.] This report substantiated Hoover's position as did also certain manufacturers. On Nov. 1 [1922] Hoover drafted a foreword to this report for Pres. Harding's signature which served to give it much public attention. The President's foreword said [in part]: '...It has seemed to me for a long time that the 12-hour day and the type of worker it produces have outlived their usefulness and their part in American life in the interests of good citizenship, of good business, and of economic stability. The old order of the 12-hour day must give way to a better and wiser form of organization of the productive forces of the nation, so that proper family life and citizenship may be enjoyed suitably by all of our people.... Warren G. Harding.' The Committee of the Industry under Judge Gary, however, on June 25, 1923, brought in and published a report which, although not entirely adverse, was very disappointing and among other things asserted that there was not at that time sufficient labor supply to make the change. [Funny how some employers are never satisfied unless the labor supply is in overwhelming and desperate and cheapening surplus.] Secy. Hoover was advised that certain of the lesser manufacturers did not agree and would be glad to cooperate to adopt the 8-hour shift. He then drafted a letter for Pres. Harding expressing disappointment at the result, which was made public. The manufacturers reconsidered and came to the conclusion that they should cooperate to end the matter. [In other words, they were embarrassed into a sane decision. Note the covert charges of unAmerican-ness that went into this embarrassment.] On June 27 they telegraphed Pres. Harding (then en route to Alaska) their conclusions. The President announced the end of the 12-hour day in a speech on the Fourth of July [1923]. Speaking on this incident in an address at Denver on Oct. 25, 1924, the Secretary [Hoover] said [in part]: '...One of the sorest spots in the whole annals of American labor was the 12-hour day, the 84-hour week, in a considerable portion of the steel industry. Labor had fought for 30 years for the 8-hour day in this industry. At the direction of the [Republican!] President I approached the steel manufacturers with the proposition that the 12-hour day should not be continued in American life. Everywhere I met the statement that they could not do away with the 12-hour day because competitors would have an advantage over us. [This is exactly what German steel-industry employers (6/10/2003 #1), auto industry association 'VDA' Pres. Bernd Gottschalk (6/24/2003 #1) and so-called economists (6/27/2003 #2 below) have been saying to justify keeping eastern steelworkers working 3 hrs/wk longer than their western counterparts for the same pay.] It was contended that it would increase the price of steel, that it would wipe out the margin of profit. Nevertheless we got the whole of the steel manufacturers together and induced them to make an accurate investigation as to the method by which the 12-hour day should be abolished. Finally, we secured an agreement with them that they would act together in this matter. And two years ago [more like 1&1/3 years ago] the 8-hour day reigned in the steel industry.'" And it wasn't the end of the world or of profits or normal prices in the US steel industry in the 1920s after all. Back to the WSJ artricle -]
   ...When production reaches full capacity of 1.3m tons [per what time period??], it will employ fewer than 400 people, including office workers, says Keith Busse, CEO of Steel Dynamics. Years ago, such an operation would have required 5-10 times as many workers....
   [Thus today's steelworkers are 5-10 times as productive as "years ago," say the 1920s, but are they getting 5-10 times as much pay - required if they were to continue buying the equivalent of their own output? - or working 5-10 times less so at least there'd be more of them to provide consumer markets for steel products? We don't think so. So much for a number of patent lies that standard economists keep alive -
   • wages vary with productivity (they actually vary primarily with the supply and demand for skills and unskilled labor wages vary with the supply and demand of labor, period)
   • technology creates more jobs than it destroys (only quality-enhancing technology that doesn't multiply productivity does that and it's in the distinct minority)
   • human wants are infinite and so work is infinite, so shorter-hours advocates who prate about worksharing are deluding themselves with the Lump of Labor Fallacy (the alleged infinitude of human wants has no economic significance unless the humans with the infinite wants also have infinite spending power, which they don't because of economist-ignored concentration of income & wealth, and the scoffing about what should be called the Lump of Employment Theory is based on an unspecified timeframe - anything can be claimed true in an indefinite timeframe! - while advocates of worksharing and shorter-hours are dealing with the immediate market term in which employee-consumers are getting downsized instead of timesized.)]
   Today's steel mills [compare today's auto factories] look like air-traffic control centers, with computerized equipment and far fewer workers. For the most part, machines and microchips do the heavy lifting. Making steel today is less like a team effort and more like a relay [dare they say 'rat'?] race, as workers pass the product on to the next until it crosses the finish line.
   Steel Dynamics of Fort Wayne, Ind., one of the newest and most profitable steelmakers [how's it compare profit-wise to timesizing Nucor Steel?], opened this $300m rail and steel-beam minimill last June in a rural industrial park here. At 750,000 sq ft, 2-3 of these would fit inside the traditional integrated plants that stretch for a mile along rivers and lakes in the Midwest....
   [The latest in modernity except for what counts most - working conditions -]
   The days are long and monotonous in the crane cabin as Michael Scott moves the cauldron of steel above the mill floor.... Including overtime, annual pay can range $60-90,000, workers say....
   [Overtime? - on a job that's already got 12-hour days?? And in an economy that has 6.1% official unemployment, uncounted welfare, 5.4 million 'disabled', 600,000 officially estimated homeless, and 2.1 million incarcerated??? The sheer responsibility of the job should preclude this kind of risk-taking -]
   The sheer responsibility of his job - guiding ladles full of super-hot metal weighing as much as 120 tons above his co-workers....
   On busy days, Mr. Scott spends 12 hours straight in the 4x5-ft crane compartment. He could take breaks, but he doesn't want to slow production to descend the 164 stairs to the floor, then to climb back up, so instead he heats his meals in a microwave inside the cab. He has even fashioned a makeshift bathroom. His only company is the radio abuzz with voices of co-workers far below telling him...where to move the crane. ...Today's steelworkers work more closely with equipment than each other.... The pace is quicker, too, providing little time to swap stories and banter.
   ...Down on the mill floor, Randy Bungard [sounds like good advice, cf. CYA] sits in a darkened, slightly elevated watch station where he oversees a couple of computers that run machines to methodically thin and stretch a fat 40-ft steel slab into a 300-ft slab that will be cut to make beams.... His children are grown, so...the 12-hour shifts at the mill don't take him away from his family....
   [How hard did the WSJ have to look to find him? Compare the companion article -]
   6/30   A new blue-collar world - Workers now need more skills but get less job security; 700 different kinds of steel, by Robert Matthews, WSJ, B1.
   ...The world of blue-collar work has changed.... What once took...a dozen workers..\..two weeks...now takes two people only a few hours.
   [And since hours haven't decreased for 63 years, people are now the most surplus and disposable factor of production -]
   Jobs once considered a lifetime commitment are now more temporary, forcing workers to stay adaptable. Many of them move from one factory or plant to another, from day shift to nights to keep up with changing demands.
   [Demands of CEOs who have way way more spending power than they could spend in hundreds of lifetimes and now, way more spending power than they can even invest safely. Ergo, "liquidity-driven rally" and "stumbling recovery" alias universally denied depression.]
   Far fewer belong to unionss and far more take midcareer classes to keep up with the latest in lathes and resins.
   [Fine if they've got time, but with 12-hour shifts, where's the time?]
   Automation and globalization haven't only reshaped jobs but eliminated many.... The [steel?] sector lost about 2 million jobs in the past 2 years alone. Overcapacity, global competition and rising labor costs [must be a pre-emptive employer complaint based on all the unnecessary overtime] make blue-collar work particularly vulnerable to global boom&bust cycles.
   [Oh here we go. Now we're going to blame these "act of God" business cycles.]
   Those cycles have whittled away the promise of security that characterized blue-collar life.
   [The only thing that has "whittled away the promise of security" for all jobs, blue-collar and white-, is CEOs' downsizing in response to waves of worksaving technology instead of timesizing = chopping jobs (and consumers) instead of trimming workhours and keeping everyone employed, even at the cost of a 20th million of income for the CEO as if it made that much difference and was worth spinning his own markets and security downward on a death spiral.]
   Twenty years ago, on the factory-lined rivers of southwestern Pa., unemployment doubled to 18% in one year.
   [And still, employers would cry "labor shortage" and "rising labor costs." 20 years ago = 1983 = the beginning of the 1980s, when CEOs really started making free with the downsizing strategy, that has continued unabated ever since - until now they're wondering where the markets - that they supposed were infinite - are, and where the corporate revenues - that they supposed were growing - are, and where the solidly rising stock prices - that they supposed were inexorable - are.]
   Blast furnaces, some 17 stories tall, went out for good. As they did, parents, some of them blue-collar workers themselves who'd stood in the unemployment line, urged their children to shun factory work.
   [Just as unemployed agricultural parents had done before them when they could nudge their kids toward manufacturing. Presumably steel parents nudged their kids toward the service sector, but now the service sector is automating, WHERE DO THEY GO? We've painted ourselves into a corner where we must share the vanishing work or our industrial system, our whole economy, will cease to function.]
   High-school graduates in working-class neighborhoods began to bypass welding or other trades, to study sauces in culinary school.
   [But now, how many McDonald's do we need per city block?]
   The loss of status for this [steelworker] way of life is so profound that recently in a Midwest survey of 18 possible career choices among students, manufacturing came in dead last.
   [We wouldn't call that "status" - we'd call it "potential" - for a sustainable career. And here comes the doubletalk -]
   Interestingly, though, today's blue-collar jobs are generally safer [how does reporter Robert Matthews figure that, or has he been sitting wide-eyed at the feet of the CEO?], more demanding [for sure!], and better paid [including overtime and even then, not 10-20 times better paid in line with 10-20 times better productivity] than they were even a generation ago [oh you mean back near when one working parent could still just barely support a whole family?], although the pace of wage increases has slowed and benefits are eroding - as they are in the general workplace.
   [No kidding. Retirement benefits, for instance, and don't even mention health insurance.]
   Manufacturing jobs averaged $54,000 in total compensation in 2000, 20% higher than the average of all American workers.
   [Great, if you could get one. And here's a big red herring -]
   What's more, while the percentage of the US workforce in manufacturing has dropped significantly since 1950 [when US population was 150,697,000 per Colliers Encyclopedia (1959) 84a], the actual number of jobs in the sector is the same as it was then - roughly 16 million [US population 280,000,000 - so steelworkers have dropped from 10.6% to 5.7% of the population] - and these workers are going far more than ever before.
   [No kidding. Guess that's technology for you.]
   Manufacturing output soared 47% during the past decade and productivity grew 2-3 times as fast as the overall economy from 1973 to 2000.
   [So how far behind does that leave steelworkers' pay, because despite "economists'" and CEOs. chatter, it's influenced much more by steelworker supply&demand than steelworker productivity. Here's an admission -]
   ...The notion that automation will create, rather than eliminate, production jobs seems counterintuitive. Ever since the spinning jenny and flying shuttles reduced the number of people needed to turn wool into yarn by four-fifths, many have thought that machines would replace labor.
   [You didn't have to "think" that - you just observed it, and waited for narrowly interested CEOs and their apologists to come up with another imaginative denial.]
   And machines have indeed reduced the number of jobs involved in production, with many of the jobs eliminated - but not all [it don't have to be 100% to decimate the consumer base and create an unsustainable, hugely top-heavy (moneywise) economy] - involving repetitive, injury- and accident-prone functions.
   [12 hours straight in a 4x5-ft crane compartment wielding 120-ton ladles of molten metal isn't injury- and accident-prone?? Our reporter is hemorrhaging credibility. One last attempt at justifying Downsizing-Oriented Capitalism, vs. Timesizing Capitalism -]
   At one small factory in Pennsylvania, about 40% of the equipment is automated. But someone has to build those increasingly automated machines, the parts for them and then improve upon them.
   [Oh jolly good! But then each of those tasks gets automated. Then what? Programming the software? Phil Hyde was offered a job as early as 1984 at a company that was developing a program to write programs. The whole "there's always plenty of other human work" rationale, started as early as John Stuart Mill, is losing more and more credibility every year as Downsizing-Oriented Capitalism continues to cannibalize itself. The irony is, all this was foreseen in 1819 when Sismondi, in a retort to David Ricardo, said, "In truth then, there is nothing more to wish for than that the king, remaining alone on the island, by constantly turning a crank, might produce, through automata, all the output of England." (p. 563, fn). So what is this blind insistence on PLENTY of 40-hour jobs in aid of? You guessed it -]
   Nationwide, about 42% of manufacturers say they face a serious shortage of highly skilled [LOW PAID] machinists and craft workers. One [undoubtedly employer-funded] study shows that 10 million new [LOW PAID] skilled workers will be needed by 2020 as many retire and few enter the field.
   [And why would "few enter the field" unless it was low paid (and/or long hours and/or dangerous)?? And all employer forecasts about conditions in 2020 assume an absolutely magically huge consumer base, even though they're weakening it every single workday, and frequent weekends, with downsizing. But the poor-little-richboy CEO whining goes on and on -]
   Some manufacturers are so worried about a looming labor shortage that they're teaming up with universities and think tanks to develop programs to attract talent....
   [Yeah, anything to try to siphon off a few million more taxpayer dollars from our pathetic makework- rather than sharework-oriented government to get that 22nd, or 122nd, or 222nd million in CEO income regardless of a concentration of wealth so gargantuan that it's already noticeably vacuuming the markets away from the productivity it's invested in. Downsizing-Oriented Capitalism is a recipe for a slowly starting, gradually accelerating downward spiral. And there's nothing intra-economically automatic about the upswing of a business "cycle" - it's always some kind of extra-economic event that increases labor scarcity and power and centrifuges the "black hole" of income so that people with time and need actually get the spending power to do something about it. World Wars I and II were two such extra-economic events. And if we're unwilling, or at last too wise, to invoke war on that scale, Bush notwithstanding, we'll have to increase labor scarcity and power the intelligent way for a change and resume or 150-year reduction of the workweek which we suspended in 1941.]