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Timesizing News, Aug. 8-15, 2003
[Commentary] ©2003 Phil Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622, Porter Sq, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080

8/15/2003  primitive timesizing & worktime consciousness in the news = glimmers of strategic hope -

1. Heat deaths soar in France, by Jamey Keaten, AP via Boston Globe, A11.
   PARIS -...Abnormally high temperatures have baked France and other parts of Europe this month, fanning forest fires and devastating livestock..\.. Overburdened funeral homes and morgues struggled to manage an overflow of incoming bodies.... General Funeral Services, France's largest undertaker, said it handled some 3,230 deaths from Aug. 6-12, compared to 2,300 on an average week - a 37% jump..\..
   A morgue in Longjumeau, a suburb south of Paris, rented an air-conditioned tent to house twice as many corpses..\.. Some hospitals requisitioned kitchen refrigerators to hold the dead..\..
   [Mmm, yum! Peut-être une nouvelle spécialité de cuisine française, au moins dans les hôpitals!]
   "It's a national catastrophe the likes of which we've never seen," Patrick Pelloux, head of the association for French emergency hospital physicians, told Europe-1 Radio yesterday.
   [So what do the French, like many Americans, do in a catastrophe? They blame the government -]
   He has repeatedly criticized the government for reacting too slowly.... Family members of victims lashed out at the government. "It's scandalous. The government has done nothing," said Martine Flou, whose 70-year-old mother's body had to be brought to a morgue in Paris from their home 50 miles away because there was no space there.
   [So just exactly WHAT is the government supposed to do? Apparently nothing specific. Just REACT, just DO something, apparently ANYthing, and do it QUICKLY. Run around like chickens with their heads chopped off. Look busy. Look important. It's like the Great Depression when Will Rogers opined that the government could have burned down Washington for all the people cared, as long as they DID SOMEthing. And naturally this fingerpointing extends beyond the government -]
   Some officials said one problem is that the country all but shuts down in August, when many French go on vacation. Hospital services in cities are curtailed and many families leave their elderly relatives at home.
   [No bitterness there. The empty-Paris-for-August-vacation tradition is too agreeable and popular. But as the fingerpointing continues, at least by the foreign media, a touch of bitterness, possibly tinged with envy, creeps in -]
   A law limiting France's workweek to 35 hours left medical centers and retirement homes doubly understaffed.... This year's heat wave is France's worst on record, said Patrick Galois, a forecaster for national weather service Meteo France..\.. About 2,600 heat-related deaths were recorded in India 5 years ago [1998], and roughly 500 people died from heat-related causes in 1995 in Chicago, according to WHO experts....
   [The source for this article was -]
   France reports 3,000 heat-related deaths, by Jamey Keaten, AP 08/14/2003 23:39 EDT via (e.g.,) AOLNews.
   [And AP has a very important paragraph that the Globe left out -
   ...On Wednesday, days after the first complaints about a slow response emerged, the French Prime Minister [Jean-Pierre Raffarin] ordered Paris hospitals to prepare a large number of beds to treat victims and called back healthcare workers from their vacations....
   [Of course, even AP makes this the 2nd-LAST paragraph and it should be 3rd-from-the-TOP after the mention of Raffarin rushing back from an Alpine holiday to deal with the heatwave epidemic - which we omitted cuz it said nothing about how he dealt with it and was therefore pointless political fluff. Bad writing &/or editing on AP's part, making all the French citizen-complainers look stupid cuz without those actual examples, it's not otherwise clear that the government could have done anything. Grrrump. At least anti-35-hours Raffarin did not himself implicate the shorter workweek in either of his anti-epidemic actions, belying foreign-media kvetching about it. Cuz if he had, envious AP would likely have picked it up.]

2. U.S. productivity may be more mirage than miracle, by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa, Reuters 08/14/03 12:01 ET.
   [We've recently had another big article on this topic. (Aside: Must find it. Must hotlink. Muttermumble. Don't even know what category it's in.)]
   NEW YORK...- For many in the Wall Street rat-race, the much-touted U.S. productivity "miracle" looks more like a mirage, and a faint one at that. Productivity, a measure of worker efficiency, has long been the poster-child [he means "parading horse"] of Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan.
   [Oh yeah? News to us.]
   During the late 1990s boom, the central banker often hailed the improvements [in productivity?] as the foundation for a "new economy" that could sustain soaring growth rates.
   [Pretty naive if true. How could productivity by itself, regardless of marketability, provide the foundation for anything, especially with so few CEOs reacting to its gains by trimming hours for all and maintaining or growing markets, and so many CEOs reacting to it by chopping jobs - and markets? "If we build it, it will sell"? Greenspan's been watching too many movies (e.g., Field of Dreams' "if you build it [ie: baseball field in the middle of nowhere] they will come [ie: top players and full stands of spectators]"). He apparently let the film erase his knowledge that the Great Depression discredited Say's "Law" = markets automatically clear = all you have to do is produce stuff cuz the sales and marketing will take care of themselves. What arrant nonsense, and yet this assumption is shot through all of today's back-from-the-grave "supply-side economics." Just ask struggling artists if sales and marketing take care of themselves. For that matter, just ask the tens of thousands of people in the corporate sales and marketing departments across the land - if those activities took care of themselves, there'd be no need for their departments and no jobs for them. For that matter, just ask the hundreds of thousands of people in business for themselves, say in consulting, if marketing and sales take care of themselves. Hell, if it did, we'd all give the finger to arrogant CEOs and go off on our own! The other naive assumption currently peddled as God's Truth is that wages vary with productivity. This puts CEOs in a bit of a bind, cuz they want to claim high productivity to impress potential stock purchasers, but they don't want to impress employees with how little pay they're getting and incite them to unrest. Oh well, not much fear of labor unrest in view of the global labor surplus CEOs have fostered - by introducing technology without compensating workweek reductions for the last 63 years. So the productivity figures nationally tend to be inflated, at least enough to try to beat Europe and Japan.]
   But analysts have real problems with the way this new paradigm is measured, suspecting it is both overstated and overblown. "America's productivity saga has real become the most abused concept in today's macro debate," argues Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley.
   [Hah! good old Steve Roach! - he's become a good guy in the last 5 years - he used to roam the world preaching downsizing, but then his sister or some close relative took a rough hit and he "did the flip," finally realizing how multi-dimensionally destructive downsizing is. And thereafter he became one of Wall Street's biggest internal reality checks. OK, finally a sort-of definition, but not really better than the vague one above -]
   Productivity is a measure of output per worker [geez, Pedro doesn't even say "per hour"!] and is simple enough to gauge in an area like manufacturing. If a company makes cars, the more cars its workes produce in a given period of time [such as??], the more productive they are.
   The trouble arises, economists note, when the same calculus is transferred to the services sector, which employs around 80% of the country's workforce [whoa, really that high already?? source imperative!!] but whose output is not nearly as easy to quantify.
   [Doesn't seem to bother the many many companies employing consultants on the basis of "billable time"! Doesn't seem to bother the many companies in the news for their bloated CEO pay - or are we simplistically attributing the whole of the corporate output to the CEO? Why the sudden wimp-out, unless there's a hidden agenda to downplay the contributions of all corporate employees outside the executive suite in order to inflate oops enhance the contribution of top execs?]
   Just last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS, which we should probably rename, the Bureau of Incumbent-Pol Whitewashing] reported a staggering 5.7% jump in productivity during the 2d quarter. But exactly how much output the service sector produced in that period is any number-cruncher's guess.
   For instance, how does one measure the productivity of a secretary? Is it the number of letters she can type per day or how many meetings she can arrange? What about a flight attendant or a waiter? There are no easy answers, nor does the government have a single standard that works across industries.
   [Yes there is an easy answer in a market economy, and that is labor price or wage. Which kinda means that productivity really doesn't matter a damn by itself. It's all a matter of supply and demand, of production and consumption, of productivity and marketability or more to the point, salability. And what determines supply and demand more than supply of product or service? Why, supply of labor or skill hours of course. And CEOs have foolishly been running the economy on a gross and grotesque surplus of labor and skill hours, thus cheapening labor - and delayedly, but cumulatively, diminishing the consumer base - and by default, ballooning their own incomes - but that doesn't help consumption, does it, because they're already consuming/spending all they wish. Al it "helps" is something that hardly needs held, investment. And investment money gets so concentrated that it actually suctions the markets away from its own investments and the economy gets dangerously 'top heavy'. After a certain point, it begins to topple of its own unguyed and unguided weight, like an inverted pyramid, because a pyramid scheme it's become.
   "Do we really have a clue how to measure white-collar productivity in the ever-amorphous services sector? The short answer is no - not even close," explained Roach in a research note.
   ["Explained"?? "Apologized" would be clearer. We measure what counts (NOT productivity in isolation!) by wage, and what counts is the job opening-job seeker imbalance, dba the employer-employee power gradient, conditioned entirely by the supply and demand for job hours on one hand, generally kept extremely scarce, and the supply and demand for labor hours on the other hand, generally kept extremely abundant.]
   35-HOUR WORK WEEK? MAYBE IN EUROPE
   One of the most obvious flaws in the government's measure of productivity is the estimate for total hours worked. Gross underestimates [which inflate the final productivity figure] are particularly striking in the financial services industry. Economists and traders in New York chuckle wryly at the government's figures, which depict the investor community working an average of just over 35 hours per week. "In Germany they might. Here, it's more like 50 plus," said Jeoff Hall, chief North American economist at Thomson IFR.
   Which is not to say that there have been no productivity gains at all. Technological advancements, computers in particular, have brought very real benefits to U.S. producers and consumers alike.
   [Oh yeah? Those "real benefits" are "more mirage than miracle, and a faint one at that." Our working hours are longer, not shorter. Our pay is lower, not higher, since a single parent can generally no longer support a family. Our job security is less, not more. And for producers, markets are weaker, not stronger. So where, exactly, are the "very real benefits to U.S. producers and consumers alike"?! By responding to technological advancements by downsizing instead of timesizing, U.S. producers (and producers globally) have sabotaged any real benefits from those advancements and turned them to dust for everyone, including themselves, whose astronomically concentrated income can no longer find sustainable investment targets. And Pedro admits as much -]
   But even here [in the 'very real benefits' area], such strides have been most tangible in the tech-savvy computer industry itself.
   [Where they are not 'tangible' at all. Most of the computer industry is now software, and you can't even drop software on the floor and get a bang. Even hardware is finally going for ever lighter color laptops, and the power of most computers today, like most cars today, is way beyond the needs of the average user. So add these to the list of areas where qualitative technology has advanced to its point of diminishing returns (already on the list: high fidelity music and DVD audio format - see yesterday, 8/14/2003 #2 - boy, today's examples are much more obvious than yesterday's - how come we can never come up with them when we're getting interviewed?!). And the problem with any limit to qualitative technology is that it also limits the only area of technology that really does "create more jobs than it destroys." Quantitative technology is a prime trigger of their self-cannibalizing downsizing due to CEOs' short-sighted penchant for downsizing the workforce-cum-consumerbase and government's cluelessness in the whole area of worktime economics - not surprising since this is virtually the only website that speaks of it. That only leaves infinite qualitative prospects in the medical area, and that whole 'area' has become an 'arena' of stress under the current American healthcare chaos, oops, 'system' = unlikely to get funding at nearly it's exponential potential - or nearly fast enough to deliver voluntary mortality (/high-quality immortality) to most of us alive today.]
   The average techno-peasant, meanwhile, is left to struggle with unwieldy programs, lengthy [and increasingly expensive!] helpdesk calls and a mountain of spam [from the desperate downsized all over the world!].
   PRODUCTIVE AND OVERWORKED
   Now that the economy is overcoming recession [dream on!] and trudging through a choppy recovery [yeah, jobs&markets 'chop-py'], the downside of productivity has become painfully obvious to America's 9 million unemployed [and any employers who still need markets]: Highly productive firms require fewer workers to get the job done.
   [No, they require just as many workers - if they'd like to retain any customers - but fewer workhours. That means they MUST cut hours per person, or enter permanent recession aka depression. But today's chimpanzees are still gumming the problems at the following DUH levels -]
   "You've got a lot of layoffs in the U.S. economy and two jobs combined into one [for those still employed]," said Ethan Harris, senior economist at Lehman Brothers. "From the company's point of view that's a big increase in productivity [and a big decrease in markets].
   [Funny how they never connect the dots.]
   "From the workers' point of view, it's a big increase in hours worked."
   [Funny how they always spin this as an employee problem. That means sales will continue to get worse and worse for employers until they wake up - it's primarily their problem, because they're the only ones that can do something about it, by timesizing, not downsizing.]
   Herein lies another major shortcoming in the data. They [presumably the datums] fail to distinguish between good productivity, which stimulates a real economic expansion [ie: hires people and funds consumer markets], and bad productivity, achieved through jobcuts and the hiring of more part-time [or overseas] workers.
   'Progress' [our quotes] has other pitfalls too, such as the extra work that employees are often expected to get done away from the office because of things like e-mail, cellular phones and mobile Internet access.
   [And employees don't have a prayer of drawing a line here when they're the surplus, over-accessible commodity instead of employers.]
   "Here I am commuting back and forth from Manhattan with my blackberry, and papers that my staff is working on, and my newspaper and everything else and I'm busy churning away [essentially without limits]," said [Mr.] Harris.... "But my guess is that, since I never put in a time card at my firm, probably my boss reports me as some nominal number of hours - 40 or 35."
   [In case Harris hasn't noticed it, unlimited working hours is one of the basic characteristics of slavery. No pay is the better known, but the less important.]

1. Lufthansa 2Q loss due to SARS, economy, by David McHugh, AP 08/13/03 16:32 EDT via AOLNews.
   FRANKFURT, Germany - Cost cuts helped Lufthansa hold down its Q2 loss.... Staffing costs shrank 3.3% compared to a year ago, partly from a reduction in work hours, Lufthansa said....

2. [How CEOs Induce Economic Depression 101 - the UneedMOREtech scam exposed - first, Software Tree sells technology on the promise of shorter working hours and more family time -]
   Take the frustration out of Java/database programming - Software Tree announces JDX(TM) 4.1 OR-Mapper, PRNewswire-FirstCall 08/13/2003 11:30 EDT via AOLNews.
   SAN JOSE, Calif. -...Why struggle with data integration programming efforts requiring long working hours and weekends away from your family? Get the fun back into Java/J2EE programming with JDX....
   [Then Autodesk sells technology on the promise of abstract time savings - where you could merely work the same long hours but rack up even more productivity that people like you are getting less time and less money to buy -]
   Study finds AutoCAD 2004 boosts average user productivity by up to 35% - UCal/Berkeley Design Practice Group examined the productivity enhancements users can expect when using AutoCAD 2004, Business Wire 08/13/2003 08:02 Eastern via AOLNews.
   SAN RAFAEL, Calif.-...AutoCAD 2004 is Autodesk's 2D drafting, detailing and introductory 3D design tool for faster design creation and easier file sharing..\.. Autodesk Inc, the world's leading design-software and digital-content company, today announced that a recent independent research study and user survey found that key features in AutoCAD(R) 2004 software can save the average user in a production environment between 3.3 and 4.5 hours per week per task, a time savings of up to 14 hours per week or 35% of a 40-hour workweek....
   [Why do we get the distinct impression that the 40-hour workweek is a set-in-concrete part of the woodwork here, and the employees using AutoCAD 2004 are not going to have shorter working hours or more family time? They're just going to be able to (barely) justify their existence with more tasks and productivity and maybe 35% of them are going to be laid off. Here's an earlier entry from Scimagix Inc -]
   Scimagix launches ROI calculator; Tool determines that companies can save millions of dollars yearly using Scimagix, Business Wire 07/31/2003 08:02! Eastern via AOLNews.
   SAN MATEO, Calif...- Scimagix(TM) Inc, the pioneer of enterprise image informatics solutions for pharmaceutical and biotech R&D, today announced the availability of the Scimagix ROI (return on investment) Calculator [which] is free and can be obtained by going to www.scimagix.com [and] allows pharma and biotech companies to effortlessly determine the potential savings from using Scimagix's Scientific Image Management System (SIMS(R))...allow[ing] scientists to easily manage and leverage the large quantities of image data that they generate to make better and faster decisions in their research....
   For example: A lab...found that 20 researchers spent an average of 1 hour per week searching for archived image data [a task which would presumably be almost completely taken over by SIMS]. At an average cost of $150 per hour, the ROI Calculator determined that the cost per year, over a 50 working week year, associated with 20 scientists searching for images, totaled $150,000....
   [So if 20 researchers saved 1 hr/wk, 1 researcher doing it all would save 20 hrs/wk, and 2 researchers doing twice as much would save 40 hrs/wk, so one 40-hour position could be eliminated. This is called technological displacement, but it's not technology's fault (= direct luddism) - it's the fault of CEOs' kneejerk downsizing (chopping jobs for a 'few') instead of timesizing (trimming hours for all) response to technology (= indirect luddism). The only kind of technology that really does create more jobs than it destroys is not quantity- but quality-enhancing technology, and we ask the key question about it on our general goodnews page today (8/14/2003 #2) in relation to such technological overkill as DVD-audio format; to wit, is this really to enhance quality or is it just technology for the sake of technology and change for the sake of change; in effect, private-sector makework?. It is all this busywork that is ramming us against our planetary ecological limits, as Anders Hayden points out in "Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet" (Zed Books: NYC, 1999) and it is all this busywork, private-sector or public-sector, pork or patronage, that our ecological limits will eventually put an end to, gradually and gently with worksharing systems such as Timesizing, or suddenly and roughly with sporadic, mounting cataclysms.]

1. Kia Motors Q2 net profit edges up on exports, by Samuel Len, Reuters 08/12/2003 06:00 ET via AOLNews.
   SEOUL...- South Korea's second-largest auto maker, Kia Motors Corp, reported on Tuesday that second-quarter net profit rose 3.4% as hefty provisions for warranties offset rising exports of pricier cars. Kia's net profit gain was paltry by comparison with a gain of 86% in quarterly profits at affiliate Hyundai Motor Co....
   Sales could gain more momentum in Q4 on cuts in tax, but ongoing labor woes weighed on performance [from investor/speculator viewpoint], said Song Young-sun, an analyst at Korea Investment and Securities.... Management is in talks with Kia's union following partial strikes to press for a rise of 11.1% in wages and a shorter workweek. Unionised workers at Hyundai recently won a wage hike of 8.6% or 98,000 won a month, besides bonus and incentive payments..\..
   [Another case of suicidal dilution, with high pay demands, of the labor movement's strategic goal of cutting labor surplus by cutting hours. What's left of the worldwide labor movement needs to drop all other issues and just change the entire world culture from 'live to work' long workweeks to 'work just to live' short workweeks and a labor-empowering perceived workforce scarcity. Then payraise requests will be easily met, especially in the context of the much stronger consumer markets that new culture will have.]
   "...Kia is hoping to make up for weak local sales by boosting exports," Song said..\..
   [Oh yeah? To where?]
   ...The three big U.S. car firms [are] driving a fierce price war on their home turf....

2. VW Mexico workers seek 13.6% wage hike, Reuters 08/12/2003 14:35 ET via AOLNews.
   MEXICO CITY...- Unionized workers at Volkswagen's Mexico plant are seeking a 13.6% pay raise in contract talks with the German automaker that began on Tuesday, the union said. The talks come four days after the workers agreed to cut their workweek to 4 days from 5 to avoid job losses.
   [Now let's get this straight. Sales are down so much that VW was looking at an 11% workforce cut eliminating 2000 jobs. Instead, they agreed to save the jobs by doing a 20% workweek cut. Now the employees have the nerve to make immediate, high, market-flouting wage demands? This is a prime example of the suicidal tendencies of roughly half the labor movement. They just don't get it. VW would be completely justified in moving the whole plant to China at this point. You know, it strikes us that both labor and management have a choice of two things to focus on, one of which is lame and the other potent, and they've both focused on the wrong one. Labor winds up with nothing if it makes only wage gains - because they flout market forces and induce robotization and downsizing - while if it makes only shorter-hours gains, they reframe the market, cut labor surplus, increase labor bargaining power, and deliver higher wages and benefits as a side effect. Similarly, management winds up with nothing if it focuses purely on productivity regardless of marketability - because that often involves downsizing their workforce-cum-consumerbase, while if it focuses only on markets and effective demand, it winds up with a balance of marketability and productivity, and not a lot of depressing excess capacity.]
   The 9,800-strong union said it would strike on Aug. 18 if no deal on a new contract was reached, but union leader Jose Rodriguez said he hoped a walkout could be avoided. "Our salary demands are high, but they are subject to negotiation...."
   ["Negotiation"? Hell-o-o. These geniuses don't have any leverage. They've just been granted a stay of execution for 11% of them in a "negotiation" and they want to fly in the face of market forces, make outrageous demands and immediately enter another negotiation?! Some unions are labor's own worst enemy. Even if VW "timed" the "threat" of 2000 layoffs to coincide with the end of a labor contract, its sales drop is real, and so is the general shift of Mexican jobs to Asia. And with timesizing instead of downsizing it's on track toward a more even macroeconomic employer-employee power balance. Making "high salary demands" four days after that agreement, instead of, say, next year, if ever (better to ask for even shorter hours next year!) just teaches watching CEOs the world over that shorter hours is a no op and doesn't mean a damn thing to labor, so why even start? Just follow the prevailing fad, however suicidal, and proceed immediately to downsizing and sucking the jobs to a cheaper, more realistically servile labor force elsewhere, e.g., Asia.]
   The pay demands are well above those made by workers at other automakers in Mexico, which range from 3 to 7%.... The talks [ie: the high wage demands] come at a difficult time for VW Mexico. Like other Mexico-based automakers such as DaimlerChrysler, the company is suffering from weak demand for exports in the face of a weak U.S. economy. VW Mexico's car production fell 11.2% in the first 7 months of the year compared with the same period a year earlier.
   [Aha, maybe that's where they got the proposed 11% workforce cut of 2000 jobs.]
   VW Mexico, which exports 80% of its vehicles produced in Puebla, in June said it would cut production by 23% because of the slow demand.
   [Aha, that's where it got the 20% workweek cut of 8 hours/person.]
   It also said it planned 2,000 jobcuts. But workers avoided layoffs by agreeing last Friday [see 8/05/2003 #1] to reduce hours and salaries until demand picks up again.
   [Which would seem to preclude immediately turning around and making high salary demands. These workers and/or their union are out of their minds.]
   The Puebla plant, which producers the New Beetle and the Jetta, will shut down production from Friday to Sunday.
   "We've just come out of some difficult negotiations, but I think we can come to another good agreement," said union leader Rodriguez.
   [This guy even admits that the negotiations they've just come out of were "difficult" and he immediately insists on MORE. He must be insane. Like the newspaper unions in NYC in the 50s - they demanded so much while newspaper circulation was declining that they succeeded only in hastening the decrease of NYC newspapers from 7-8 to 2-3, with thousands of related jobcuts and loss of union membership. Why are some unions so suicidal?]
   Workers at the Puebla plant went on strike in 2000 and 2001, but VW avoided a walkout last year as staff agreed to a wage increase of 5.5% and a benefit increase of 1.5%..\..
   [VW opened a plant in Mexico because it thought labor relations would be easy. Clearly they are not. Watch for VW to gradually, "sadly," close this plant and wish all these dear employees a nice life. They don't have the common sense of a gila monster.]
   Labor relations at the Puebla plant, 2 hours [south]east of Mexico City, are seen as a barometer of union negotiations across Mexico....
   [Well, that will change fast or Mexican jobs will be flying to Asia even faster - than they already are.]

3. Illinois casinos get approval to cut hours, Reuters 08/12/2003 18:19 ET via AOLNews.
   CHICAGO...- Four Illinois riverboat casinos received approval from regulators on Tuesday to open later and close earlier as the gambling industry began to make changes, including jobcuts, to deal with a stiff tax hike.
   Harrah's Entertainment Inc's Joliet casino, Penn National Gaming Inc's Hollywood Casino and Argosy Gaming Co's Empress Casino and Alton Belle were approved to open from [only] 10 am to 4 am in a vote by the Illinois Gaming Board. Most of the casinos had operated from 8:30 am to 6:30 am, regulators said, adding that Boyd Gaming Corp's Par-A-Dice casino had also begun the process of asking for reduced hours.
   [This is strictly irrelevant to timesizing, because it's hours per job, not hours per person (just as, in the next income-sizing program after timesizing has done all it can, it's total income per person that is relevant, not merely pay per job). Wonder if this change has any implications for hours per person.]
   The reductions come as the industry is coming to terms with a recent tax hike. Now 70% of revenue over $250m goes to the state, compared with a previous top bracket of 50%.
   [This kind of graduated tax, in fact, ANY tax, should be pulled off "sales" and put back on personal income. As Milton Friedman points out, you tend to get less of whatever you tax. We don't want less business - less business is the problem, we more more business. We want less wasted trillions deactivated in the top income brackets - that's the thing to tax. Look at the series of downward ripple effects from taxing business -]
   Casinos, which had warned that they would make changes to offset some of the effect of the hike, are also beginning to charge admission to their riverboats and cutting staff, table games and amenities such as breakfast buffets.
   [Ergo, less shopping by staff and their dependents, less demand for makers of table games and croupiers, and less business for food services. Brilliant. And all because state legislators don't have the brains and the guts to switch taxes off sales and business to graduated personal income, which is lost to the cause of raising consumer spending anyway.]

1. Rexnord Corp. reports first quarter results, Business Wire 08/11/2003 18:34 Eastern via AOLNews.
   MILWAUKEE...- Rexnord Corp., a leading manufacturer of highly engineered mechanical power transmission components, [yester]day reported its summary results for the first quarter of its fiscal year 2004.... A net loss of $2.5m was reported in the quarter compared to net income of $5.5m in last year's first quarter....
   Given the weaker economic conditions, the Company accelerated its efforts to reduce its operating costs. These cost control measures include lower material costs achieved through improved purchasing techniques and component outsourcing, lower overtime costs, strict cost controls on discretionary spending, shorter work weeks at specific locations, and headcount reductions....
   [So, timesizing to avoid some downsizing.]

2. [and then we have a pull in the entirely opposite direction - and from Europe, too -]
   SAS sees brighter second half, full yr loss, by Anna Peltola, Reuters 08/11/2003 11:51 ET via AOLNews.
   STOCKHOLM...- Scandinavian airline group SAS promised a brighter second half on Monday as cost cuts begin to make an impact, boosting its shares despite its forecast that it would be in the red for Q2.... SAS has squeezed costs especially at its key Scandinavian Airlines unit, aiming to slash 6,000 jobs in the latest two of its three cost-cutting rounds since 9/11/01 and a weak global economy sent the airline industry into a free fall. The two [cost-cutting] programmes, now dubbed "Turnaround 2005," also include more efficient aircraft use and longer working hours....
   [And more concentrated employment means less consumption and a smaller consumer market, another step in the fatal wasting disease of fixed-workweek capitalism, the Externalization of Markets. "Let someone else employ and remunerate the people we wish to purchase our services."]

3. Whoever said August was a dull month? op ed by George Melloan, WSJ, A13.
   ...By all rights, August should be a quiet month. The U.S. Congress is on holiday and Europe is, for the most part, shut down. Most of the French commit the bulk of their annual 38 days of holidays to August....
   [including vacation and holidays, the whole implication being that the French are decadent. But suck-up WSJ op ed writers apply a double standard when it comes to their darling Dubya (followup) -]
   The faux foreign policy leadership, op ed by Albert Hunt, 8/14/2003 WSJ, A13.
   ...I don't begrudge George W. Bush's 35-day vacation at his Texas ranch....
   [and that does not include holidays. Recall "Oh I don't begrudge Bill Gates' $55-100 billion," as if conservatives' failure to begrudge astronomical income concentration will stop it from suctioning the markets away from its own investments. Here's another gem from this op ed -]
   The Don Rumsfeld Field of Dreams Foreign Policy - 'lead' [our quotes] and they will follow, or if they don't, who cares - isn't working. Around the globe, the Bush foreign policy is described as "arrogant" [and] complaints abound about "treating us with contempt"....

1. [Please patronize our path-breaking timesizers -]
   8/09 VW Mexico cuts work week to save 2,000 jobs, by Pablo Garibian, Reuters 08/08/03 13:39 EDT via AOLNews.
   MEXICO CITY...- Unionized workers at Volkswagen's Mexico plant, hit by a drop in export demand, have agreed to cut their workweek [20%] to four days from five to avoid 2,000 layoffs, Volkswagen Mexico said on Friday. The company said its 9,800 unionized workers accepted the plan after negotiations between union leaders and the plant's management.
   The company in June said it planned to cut 2,000 assembly-line workers due to slowing demand in export markets, the destination of more than 80% of the vehicles produced at its plant in the central Mexican city of Puebla. Union leaders said that rather than lose jobs, they would prefer to reduce their members' hours and salaries until demand picks up again.
   The plant, which produces the New Beetle and the Jetta, will close from Friday to Sunday. According to the plan, workers with lower seniority will see their wages cut by more than 20%, while fewer working days for more senior employees will lead to wage losses of less than 20%, a VW spokesman said....
   Total production of vehicles this year is forecast at 285,900, down [34,100 or 11%] from an original target of 320,000, as the economy struggles to rebound in the United States, Mexico's main trading partner.
   Labor relations at the Puebla plant are seen as a barometer of union negotiations [throughout] Mexico....
   [Great, maybe the Mexicans will 'get smart and get timesizing,' trump France, Germany and Japan, and lead the world into the next generation of economic design. Here's the AP version -]
   8/09 Layoffs prevented at Mexican VW plant, AP 08/08/03 11:23 EDT via AOLNews.
   PUEBLA, Mexico - German automaker Volkswagen and union leaders on Friday announced an accord to avoid layoffs of 2,000 workers at its Mexican manufacturing plant.... Union leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Salazar said 56% of the union's members approved the accord..\.. Both sides confirmed that the plant's 9,800 unionized workers agreed late Thursday night to reduce their workweek to 4 days from 5, essentially cutting production by 20% at the plant, located about 65 miles southeast of Mexico City. Workers with less seniority will temporarily receive a smaller salary and will not be compensated for the extra day off each week. The remaining workers will receive an unspecified percentage of what they would have earned on the fifth day.... Thursday's labor agreement will allow the plant to add hours or even return to a 5-day workweek at any time, a clause that could come in handy when the Puebla facility begins exclusive production of the Jetta/Bora model in 2005..\..
   [Kind of a long wait. But a 4-day/wk job is a helluva lot better than no job, and in some ways better than a 5-day/wk job.]
   The Mexican government has agreed to set up a series of training grants to help compensate the VW workers for their reduced income, VW said....
   [Similar to Fred Best's book, "Reducing Workweeks to Prevent Unemployment [& Under-Consumption!] - The economic and social impacts of unemployment insurance-supported work sharing" (Temple U: Philadelphia, 1988), and similar to the Robien Law in France in 1997 where the government offered 7-year taxbreaks to companies who would cut the workweek instead of cutting the workforce.]
   VW's Mexico plant, the sole producer of the New Beetle and one of the biggest employers in the Mexican auto industry, has cut about 2,500 jobs since 2000.
   In June, the company said its Mexico facility would reduce production by 23% in August due to lower demand for the New Beetle and Jetta models in export markets - a move that threatened the 2,000 jobs later saved by Thursday's accord. On July 30, the plant stopped producing the old Beetle, but the 300 employees working on the "bug" assembly line were reassigned to other areas.
   Production at the plant was down 16% during the first 6 months of 2003, compared with the same period last year, according to data from Mexican automobile association AMIA. Close to 80% of the vehicles VW assembles in Puebla are for export. The company shipped 121,731 vehicles from Mexico between January and June, or 11% below the same period in 2002....

2. 8/09 Kia Motors union sets 1-day strike, warns of more, Reuters 08/08/03 03:58 ET via AOLNews.
   SEOUL...- Unionised workers at Kia Motors Corp., South Korea's 2nd-largest auto maker, [will] go on strike on Saturday to press for higher wages. The 23,500-strong union [will] hold another 1-day strike on Aug. 16 if the company d[oes] not accept demands by Aug.14 for an 11.1% pay rise and their working week reduced to five days from six. "We will enter a struggle to realise all of our demands for 2003 wages, as well as a 5-day workweek," the union said in a statement on Friday. "No one will come to work on Aug.9." [Plus] Kia's union [will] hold partial strikes for 2-4 hours daily beginning on Monday..\..
   Kia is an affiliate of Hyundai Motor Co, the country's largest auto maker, whose union earlier this week won an 8.6% wage hike or 98,000 won a month, as well as bonuses and incentive payments [and a 5-day workweek!]....

3. 8/09 RPT - Pressure grows for change as Singapore turns 38, by Richard Hubbard, Reuters 08/08/03 21:05 ET via AOLNews.
   Singapore celebrates its 38th birthday on Saturday more in need of a makeover than at any time since its 1965 separation [from] neighboring Malaysia. Three years of sluggish economic growth has convinced even die-hards in the ruling People's Action Party....
   [Or Inaction Party?]
   But while a government-backed Remaking Singapore Committee has submitted more than 100 proposals to inject more "vitality into the social, cultural and political life of the country," little more than cosmetic changes have been announced so far.
   [Sounds like a place that needs Timesizing! France's social, cultural and political life sure got a boost when they went from 39 to 35 hours a week, and so did their economy, since their unemployment rate went down 1% for every hour they cut the workweek. See 6/20/2001 #1. Listen to the pathetic ideas they've come up with so far -]
   In July, the government did announce some social changes which included loosening rules against bar-top dancing, introducing 24-hour liquor licenses, employing homosexual people in top government jobs [huh?] and the freedom to go bungee jumping. [Rad!]
   But few observers saw these as concrete steps toward reform. ...The proposals submitted by the group to the prime minister last month failed to capture the imagination of many who had been hoping for political change.
   [And yet buried in that report was the germ of one key concept on the mainline of progress -]
   The report focused on such things as changing the way schools are ranked, ...dropping quotas on women at the local university..\..and introducing a formal 5-day working week for government employees and many in the private sector who still work a half-day on Saturday..\..
   [Free time is the basis of all other freedoms. Without it, they have no opening.]
   In a country famous for its high degree of control over the media and political debate, many ordinary Singaporeans had high hopes the committee might tackle such subjects as Singapore's famours "Out of Bounds" markers, [which] mark ill-defined...topics deemed sensitive...such as race, religion and politics, which are severely restricted in public discussions..\..
   [So what can Singaporeans talk about?]
   ...the Five C's - career, condominium, club, credit cards, and car.
   [Phew!]
   During the boom times in the late 1980s and most of the 1990s, the Five Cs were symbols of the good life which fitted into the government's promise of a first-world standard of living....
   [Great. Just as the first-world's biggest economy, the U.S., is downsizing itself into the third world as fast as it can.]

4. 8/09 Dollar flat as foreigners' purchases offset selling by bank, by Mutsuo Fukushima, Kyodo 08/08/03 04:38 EDT via AOLNews.
   ...In Tokyo...dealers called attention to the fact that the dollar gave up more than a full yen in New York although the Labor Dept. reported U.S. workers' productivity soared to an annual pace of 5,7% in the 2nd quarter, up from the 2.1% in the first 3 months of the year. They said market players have begun to have second thoughts about the recently prevalent view that dollar buying is a good idea because a U.S. economic rebound is at hand.
   "The market has developed anxieties about the U.S. economy after examining recent unstable developments in the U.S. labaor market," said Ryohei Muramatsu, manager of the Asian foreign exchange department at Commerzbank. "The perception in the market is that the reason for the productivity data increase is...increased layoffs," he said. A separate U.S. federal government report on Aug.1 showed that U.S. employers cut 44,000 jobs from their payrolls in July.
   Junya Tanase, global markets officer at JP Morgan Chase Bank, said, "Since the productivity statistics are computed by dividing U.S. workers' output by their total working hours, the productivity rise means that industrious people [or rather, still-employed people and robots] worked harder, while employers cut combined working hours [by cutting jobs]."
   [America's self-downsizing continues. The timesizing alternative looks better and better.]

5. 8/10 Clash of generations in workplace - GenXers, boomers seen having different life goals, values, career expectations, by Alan Earls, Boston Globe, G1, flagged by colleague Kate.
   ...The workplace encompasses those who have experienced downsizing as a painful shock and those who accept it as a fact of life. Older workers may still cling to the possibility of lifetime employment [how old is he talkin' here??]. Younger workers tend to be largely dismissive of corporate promises, wary of commitments, and determined [or forced!] to forge their own long-term security [if any!].
   One of many business consultants who see major differences between the babyboomers and the younger workers of Generation X is Dianne Durkin, founder and president of Loyalty Factor LLC, a management training and coaching company in Portsmouth NH.... Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964 [kinda late, isn't it?], still buy into the system, even though they were raised on rock'n'roll and rebellion. GenXers, born between 1965 and the late 1970s, are more interested in their own autonomy, irritating some boomers who see them as disloyal and work-averse.
   ..\..According to Durkin, because boomers were pushed toward higher education and toward out-achieving their parents, they are optimistic and team-oriented. ...They love personal gratification and consumption - the lattes they order at Starbucks, adventure vacations, powerful SUVs and (for some) pricey organic food. The "bourgeois bohemians" - "bobos" as writer David Brooks called them - symbolize the passions and follies of the boomer generation..\.. "Boomers grew up in an era of opportunity with their values shaped by the landing on the moon, Woodstock, the civil rights movement, and Vietnam [protests!]," said Durkin. At work, Durkin said, [boomers] tend to be very driven and can be "workaholic." She half-jokingly credits them with inventing the 60-hour workweek and adds that boomers view work as a form of self-fulfilment: They live to work....
   By contrast, Durkin said, GenXers work [only] to live.
   [If only it were true - but aren't these the kids that slept under their desks during the dot-com bubble?]
   Their values were shaped by the aftermath of Watergate, the Challenger disaster, terrorism, and the rise of the personal computer. They have a shorter attention span than other generations and they are accustomed to instant gratification, learned from the immediacy of the Internet but which they have come to expect in other aspects of their lives.
   Unlike boomers, Durkin said, Xers value autonomy [vs. team orientation], dislike supervision, and are determined to get a better balance of work life and home life.
   [Again, if only it were true, but aren't these the kids that invented the phrase, "Get a life!" - cuz so few of them had one?]
   Durkin and others said GenXers are not inclined to practice political correctness and activism. Instead they focus on what's practical and achievable. What's more, Xers aren't afraid to rock the boat....
   [Contradication alert. If they aren't afraid to rock the boat, why aren't they inclined to practice activism. This whole bundle of sweeping generalizations is trying our patience and it's time to cut to the chase -]
   Judy Casey, director of the New England Work-Family Assoc. and...the Ctr for Work & Family at Boston College, sees some differences between the generations but warns that the evidence is almost all anecdotal.... Furthermore, Casey said old assumptions about the life cycle won't work any more. "People are starting families at all different ages now and starting second and third careers at different periods in their lives," she said. And, she admitted, even small differences in when people entered the job market - relative, say, to recessions or expansions - could significantly alter their relationship to work. What's more, personal experiences probably weigh at least as heavily on behavior as generational experiences.
   Wilfred Calmas, a Boston-based business consultant and coach, said the striking similarities among individuals trump the superficial differences between the generations. "In 99% of the cases, career failures are due to some kind of force within the psyche of the individual," he said....

1. Is Monday the new Friday? by James Servin, NYT, D1.
   [Hope for Americans after all?]
   ...For years, New Yorkers have been trying to stretch their summer weekends by sneaking out to their second homes earlier and earlier on Friday. By 1 pm most Fridays, much of Manhattan resembles a ghost town, the crowds having shifted to the Hamptons or the more fashionable parts of Connecticut and upstate New York. In these places, Fridays have become virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the weekend, complete with fully booked tables at hot restaurants, long lines at the movie theaters, and stress-provoking traffic jams.
   That's why Fridays have begun to lose their appeal for some weekend commuters, with increasing numbers opting to stay at their desks on Friday afternoons while the rest of the office is racing to catch the 1:55 express out of Hunters-point. For them, Monday is becoming the new Friday, a day when the crowds have ebbed and you once again feel as if you're stealing time away from the rat race. "It's far more relaxing to take Monday off than Friday," said [Andre] Balazs, \whom Monday finds\ relaxing by the water at Sunset Beach, the trendy boutique hotel that [he] owns on Shelter Island.... "Friday's always fraught with the residue of tension from the week, so even if you're out in the country on a Friday, there's an energy that's very different from that which sort of descends on the countryside around noon on Sunday."
   [Well, if it's just a substitution of one day-off for another, that's not hope, that's just a shell-game. But apparently for some it is an additional day-off, not just a substitution -]
   Being able to spend Sunday night at their summer homes, rather than in a cramped train compartment or on a crowded highway, is what most people cherish about trading an early Friday getaway for a late Monday return. "That extra night is just key," \said\ publicist Harriet Weintraub [who] used to race back from her summer home in Water Mill to Manhattan on Sunday nights so that she could be at her desk first thing Monday morning [but who] now takes the 10 am train on Monday, arriving at work sometime after noon.... "You really feel like you had a full weekend."
   [But again, for some it's just a substitute for vacation -]
   ..\..On Monday morning, [Benjamin] Doller, a Sotheby's senior VP, is probably on a tennis court near his rental house in East Hampton NY, fine-tuning his backhand. [He] said he was trying to take a series of half days on Mondays for the rest of the summer, rather than an extended vacation. "That way you don't come back to a thousand emails," he said. And it's easier to book a tennis lesson on Monday than on Sat. or Sun....
   The interior designer Stephen Shadley, who takes the occasional Monday at his house in the Catskills when he can, said: "...Taking Monday off..., going to bed Sunday night and not worrying about the week before you..\..is almost better than taking Friday off.... And then you [only] have a 4-day workweek to look forward to."
   Some might decry [or applaud!] this weekend creep into Monday as a further lessening of the American work ethic [or work aholism]. But Mario Buatta, the Manhattan decorator, argued that taking Mondays off actually makes him more productive on Fridays, which he now spends at the office. "I get more work done on Fridays, strangely enough," he said. "Let them sit [in traffic] and knock themselves out."
   ..\..Jeff Klein...owner of the City Club Hotel in New York [said] "The further I get into the summer, the later my Mondays seem to start."...

2. Maggie's Law underscores importance of corporate fatigue management, PRNewswire 08/07/2003 08:34 ET via AOLNews.
   [No indication throughout this article why it's called Maggie's Law.]
   Maggie's Law, the recently signed New Jersey statute which turns drowsy driving into a criminal offense, could significantly increase the legal risks employers face from extended-hours operations. Under the law, a sleep-deprived driver who causes an accident, after being awake for more than 24 hours, can be convicted of vehicular homicide. The law raises the specter of corporate liability in cases of drowsy employees who work long hours, high amounts of overtime, double-shifts, or even 24-hour on-call periods at their employer's request.
   Maggie's Law is intended to address the dangers of drowsy driving. Several scientific studies have demonstrated that people who have been awake for 24 hours are impaired to the same level as someone with a blood-alcohol level of .10%, which is recognized as legally drunk in all states.
   The 24m Americans who work in extended-hours jobs outside the hours of 7 am to 7 pm will be particularly affected by Maggie's Law. Many extended-hours employees routinely stay awake for 24 hours on their first nightshift of the workweek. Similarly, medical professionals and other emergency-services personnel are often required to remain on duty for 24-hour shifts. In emergency situations, utility linemen and technical-support personnel work up to 48 hours without rest. These employees are confronted daily with the challenge of drowsy driving.
   "For extended-hours employers in New Jersey and surrounding states, Maggie's Law increases the risk of corporate liability should an employee cause a fatal drowsy-driving accident," states Dr. Martin Moore-Ede, Chairman and CEO of Circadian Technologies Inc. "We are seeing a steep increase in driver-fatigue accident legislation. In fact, the US Dept. of Transportation identifies fatiguie as the number one safety problem in transportation operations, with a cost in excess of $12B a year." According to Dr. Moore-Ede, "Employers must consider options for mitigating this task, such as educating employees on the danger of drowsy driving and controlling long work hours, and developing policies that minimize this potential new legal liability."
   Maggie's Law represents an important step in recognizing the dangers of fatigue in the workplace. With up to 10 other states considering similar measures, corporations must act soon to reduce the inherent challenges associated with extended-hours operations....
   Contact: David Mitchell 781-676-6905, dmitchell@circadian.com
   Source: *Circadian Technologies Inc., Lexington, Mass....

3. Taco Bell reaches settlement in employee-overtime dispute, Dow Jones via WSJ, A6.
   Taco Bell, a division of Yum Brands Inc., reached a $1.5m settlement with about 1,000 former employees who had sued claiming overtime and mealbreak violations at restaurants in Oregon. The employees will be paid a portion of the settlement based on their length of employment at the fast-food chain.... The lawsuit, filed in 1997 [QUICK work!], was certified as a class-action suit in 1999, with 13,000 former employees from about 45 Oregon Taco Bell stores participating.... Just under 1,000 employees submitted a claim in Multnomah County Circuit Court, making them eligible for the settlement....

4. German June output fall sparks recession fears, by Clifford Coonan, Reuters 08/07/03 08:22 ET via AOLNews.
   BERLIN -...The Economy & Labour Ministry said manufacturing volumes in industry were down 0.9% after union IG Metall's campaign for a cut in working hours for the former communist east's 310,000 engineering workers to 35, the standard in the west, from 38. The stoppages were called off after the union failed to win the shorter hours [except for eastern steelworkers]....