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Timesizing News, Oct.25-31, 2003
[Commentary] ©2003 Phil Hyde, Timesizing.com, Box 622, Porter Sq, Cambridge MA 02140 USA 617-623-8080

10/31/2003  primitive timesizing & worktime consciousness in the news = glimmers of strategic hope - all are 10/30 via GoogleNews & searched-collected-prescreened by Alan Applebaum (AA) of Brookline MA USA (except #1, which is direct from 10/31 WSJ hardcopy), and excerpts & comments are by Phil Hyde (PH) unless otherwise initialled -

  1. Heaven is two empty squares on your calendar, ¼-page ad for Bed & Breakfast Package at Four Seasons, WSJ, W17.
    [photo shows couple in PJs over breakfast in penthouse overlooking city]
    It's out there, waiting for you to find it. The time to relax and reconnect....

  2. Opel, Telekom staff at reduced work and pay - Less business means less to do for everybody, by Heidi Sylvester, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
    After staff of Deutsche Lufthansa recently returned to their normal working schedule, two German companies this week announced plans for short shift work at reduced pay in a bid to reduce labor costs and prevent redundancies amid a sustained business lull [plus a third that's considering it].
    1. As part of its effort to reduce its 56Beuro ($65.3B) debt burden piled up during the telecommunications boom, Deutsche Telekom, one of Germany's largest employers, plans to introduce a 10% wage cut for around 100,000 of its 175,000 domestic employees in next year's wage talks. The ex-monopolist wants to cut the workweek to 34 hours from 38 hours and reduce pay proportionately. The wage cuts and other measures, including a cut in trainee jobs and trainee wages, are part of a plan dubbed “Job Pact Telekom,“ which should translate into annual savings in the triple-digit million euros, Heinz Klinghammer, Telekom's personnel director, said.
    2. With demand for its new Vectra model lower than expected, beleaguered carmaker Adam Opel, the German subsidiary of General Motors, also announced a plan to introduce a 30-hour workweek by the end of 2004. Rival carmaker Volkswagen had first introduced a four-day workweek in 1994, at the time a revolutionary company-level agreement to save jobs. Facing increased pressure from its U.S. parent company, and with no real hope for a substantial market improvement, Opel said it now had no choice but to shorten working hours or lay off even more employees. The company accumulated losses of EUR1.5 billion between 1999 and 2002 and idled 2,500 workers in 2002 and 2003.
    3. Utility Energie Baden-Württemberg (EnBW) also recently announced that it was considering a reduction of working hours. Chairman Utz Claassen has voiced interest in a four-day workweek, which would cost EnBW employees one day's pay and save the company up to E240m. Although even a shorter workweek would not prevent job cuts at EnBW, Claassen argued that more workers would have to be laid off if the company did not get everybody to work less.
    [And here's another version of the story by an opinionated columnist who evidently still doesn't "get" the full implications of the Age of Robotics and is still dreaming of more consumer market demand emerging magically out of downsized workforces -]
    More work, not less, by Anke Bryson, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
    In a ground-breaking move, the German construction industry has this week agreed on a general opening clause in its collective bargaining agreement which will allow companies in the sector to conclude wage agreements with their workforce[s] that are suited to their particular situation and needs, without having to cite an emergency situation.
    [This columnist is trying to sound so confident, but is so confused that s/he cites opposing trends, first longer hours development and then shorter-hours, as reasons for the growing unilateral power of industry relative to labor -]
    Below the surface of the officially intact collective bargaining system, workers are now clocking anything from 30 to 40 hours a week. For fear of losing their job, employees are accepting working conditions that fall short of what their union representatives negotiated; and, for fear of no longer being taken seriously by their members, unionists are increasingly going along with the gradual dismantling of the collective bargaining system.
    The wage cartel [probably meant "consensus"] of unions and employers has long interfered with the interplay of demand and supply on the labor market and is regularly cited by economists as the main obstacle to job creation in Germany.
    [PH: The main obstacle to job creation in Germany and around the world is the introduction of worksaving technology, but market-bucking wage demands can be a secondary factor. Labor would be a lot smarter to pull the market its way by focusing on workweek cuts until perceived labor shortage makes wage demands a lot likelier of success. AA: Required short workweeks could only impede job creation if per-employee overhead was a deterrent. Perhaps that is where attention should be directed. PH: Shorter workweeks can never impede job creation - but per-employee overhead can impede shorter workweeks, and so attention should definitely be directed to reducing or offsetting per-employee overhead, for example in the U.S., by detaching health insurance from employment and handling it in the public sector as in Canada.]
    Once supply and demand are reinstalled as regulating factors, German companies may no longer find it necessary to cut their employees' working hours, a purely defensive measure aimed at preventing layoffs during a business downturn.
    [AA: Aren't hours cuts a reasonable response to falling demand? PH: Absolutely. AA: And what sense does it make to say that if German companies are no longer forced to accept short workweeks, they will no longer demand them? PH: No no, s/he's saying once supply&demand is reinstalled as the wage determinant instead of market-bucking union wage demands, German companies will be able to pay such low wages they'll be able to maintain headcount through downturns without layoffs and hire more easily after the downturn. The weakness in this view is the facile assumption of an automatic recovery, even though lowered wage levels will mean less spending money in the pockets of consumers, who after all, are none other than the employees of these companies, and their dependents.]
    For what Germany really needs is flexibility on the upside [of the workweek]: German employees currently work less than most of their international peers. Longer working hours at unchanged pay would create real cost advantages for German businesses and tell the world that Germany is taking action to improve its attractiveness as a place to do business - and to produce.
    [AA: Compare the editorial from New Zealand below (#4 today) - it seems critical to the debate whether one believes that "there is more to life than profitability and returns to shareholders." PH: Or without reaching out to philosophy or morality, whether one believes that there is more of a chance for sustainable profitability from one's own resurgent domestic consumer markets fueled via one's own more-numerous employees' wages (and via one's own higher employee wages once shorter hours have induced the absorption of the labor surplus into the than from further fields in the world that may look greener but in fact are all struggling and looking for salvation from some outside deus ex machina).]

  3. WEF says Finland beats U.S. as most competitive nation - In Asia, Taiwan and Singapore take top positions with 5th and 6th placements, Bloomberg News.
    [(A) Definition of "competitiveness"??? (B) Back at the $121B level (in 2002?), Finland, now at $164B, was the 31st-largest world economy between Venezuela ($125B) and Greece ($117B) in terms of the seriously flawed 'GDP' measure set up by the U.S. to favor the U.S. (Datasource: The Economist Pocket World in Figures 2004 Edition, p.24.)]
    Finland, which has more saunas than cars, outpaced the U.S. as the world's most competitive economy for the third year [omitted in WSJ's tiny squib, 10/30/2003 #2], reflecting the Nordic country's use of technology and its public administration, the World Economic Forum [WEF] said in its annual rankings.
    [AA: Where is Finland's average workweek vs. the US? - perhaps average workweek is not a significant factor in competitiveness. PH: Finland's average workweek is 40, same as the US, per chart in 10/24/2003 #2. Incoming labor-saving technology is indeed constantly making the average workweek (and worktime in general) less and less of a significant factor in productivity and competitiveness. Notice we're talking about human workweek and worktime here, as distinct from technological or robotic week, which can easily be literally '24/7' (= all 168 hrs/wk) and covered by numerous overlapping human workweeks or 'shifts'.]
    Finland's 140B-euro (US$164B) economy is the best in terms of technological sophistication, the report said.
    [This contradicts today's Wall Street Journal, currently a warm cockroach-nest for American jingos, which naively claims that America is the most "modern" nation, presumably meaning "technologically sophisticated" - see "Spiritual capital," WSJ, W17, which states, "America...is at once the world's freest, most modern and most prosperous nation and one of its most religious."]
    The country, home to Nokia Oyj, the world's largest mobile-phone maker, offers the most Internet access in schools and has the third-largest number of Internet hosts. The U.S. holds a "commanding position in technology, but the weakness of its public institutions didn't take it to the top," the WEF's chief economist, Augusto Lopez-Claros, said in a telephone interview in Geneva. "The inefficiency of public spending means it had a poor showing."
    [AA: What is meant by "inefficiency of public spending"? Pork-barrel projects? Too much defense spending? Too much welfare? PH: Hardly too much welfare now that it's capped, though maybe too much disability (the new US uncapped 'welfare') and incarceration. Tops by far would be your "defense" spending, obviously, with items like the $87.5B just voted for the administration's unprovoked war in the Mideast.]
    The strength of government policies is weighing on this year's results, the WEF said in the report, which evaluates the potential for sustained economic growth. The U.S.'s public finances ranked 50th among the 102 countries surveyed, Lopez-Claros said.
    [Touché.]
    The report also found that companies in Finland, where snow covers the land for up to 7 months of the year in some parts, are the most ethical [touché encore - Ethical R NOT U.S.] and that the country's judiciary is the most independent.
    Other industrial economies
    Japan lifted its position on the back of technological innovation, moving to 11th place from 16th, the report said. Sweden and Denmark stayed in 3rd and 4th place.
    Taiwan and Singapore overtook Switzerland, which fell from 5th to 7th position, the WEF said.... Switzerland, Europe's eighth-largest economy and a non-European Union member, fell in the ranking after it slipped into its longest recession in more than a decade, eroding corporate profit and pushing unemployment to a six-year high..\..
    [So far in "competitiveness" juxtaposed with (avg? fulltime?) wkly working hours, from 10/24/2003 #2 -
    1 Finland, 40
    2 US, 40 (probably high on list only because of its GDP size) 3 Sweden, 39 (a non-euro EU member with officially shortened worktime)
    4 Denmark, 37 (a non-euro EU member with officially shortened worktime)
    5 Taiwan, ?
    6 Singapore, ?
    7 Switzerland, 40.5
    We're not getting much sense of "longer hours mean greater competitiveness" from this, and we hunch that, given the whole of both charts, we'd see longer hours toward the bottom and shorter hours toward the top. This, of course, would call into question the whole push by some French and German and New Zealandese business interests to relengthen working hours, and maybe some readers can locate the full charts on the web for us and send us (timesizing@aol.com) the info for inclusion here with a research credit for them.]
    Germany, the U.K., France and Italy - Europe's four biggest economies - all failed to crack the top-10 list of the most competitive places in the world, according to the organization that sponsors the annual conference on the world economy in Davos, Switzerland.
    Germany ranked 13th and the U.K. 15th, between New Zealand [14th?] and Canada [16th?].
    [8-12 ??
    13 Germany, 35.7
    14 New Zealand, ?
    15 UK, 37.2 (a non-euro EU member but with uncontrolled immigration & without officially shortened worktime)
    16 Canada, ?]
    "Germany and France show slight overall improvement driven by better public institutions and technology, despite macroeconomic difficulties, particularly on the budget side," the report said. Doing business in France, the 26th most competitive economy, is hampered by "restrictive labor regulations," the WEF found.
    [AA: Are French labor laws appreciably more restrictive than those in other countries other than the US? PH: They have been spun as such but many CEOs don't like any restrictions on downsizing, despite its cumulative effects on consumer markets. The 35-hour workweek actually allowed France to flex up some of its restrictions.]
    Last week, in a move to boost the competitiveness of local companies, French Finance Minister Francis Mer suggested changing a law that fixes the working week at 35 hours to allow junior and middle managers to work more over the year.
    Italy, under Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has a "fairly low ranking" because of the quality of its public institutions, Lopez-Claros said. "When we look at such things as the independence of the judiciary, when we look at the efficiency with which the government uses its public resources, when we look at the diversion of public funds for non-public funds [should be "for non-public uses"], when we look at aspects of corruption in the tax system, the scores that Italy receives are not very high," he said....
    Asia rankings
    [much promise, little data delivery]     In Asia, Taiwan benefited from an "excellent performance in technology" while Singapore was helped by its "sound macroeconomic environment and quality of public institutions," the report found. In contrast, China fell to 44th from 38th because its judiciary lacks independence and there is widespread corruption in the pubic sector, it said.
    Russia, whose prosecutors Saturday arrested Mikhail Khodorkovsky, chief executive of Russia's biggest oil producer AO Yukos Oil Co., on fraud charges, lost four ranks to place 70 because of "high inflation, inefficiencies in the banking system and low scores in a board range of institutional factors," the report found.
    The World Economic Forum, funded by more than 1,000 corporations including ABB Ltd., Siemens AG and Merrill Lynch & Co., has published competitiveness reports since 1979. The documents combine economic data and a survey of about 7,700 chief executives across the globe sharing their views on the countries' business environment.
    [No surveys of employees? = one-sided and undermined by lack of automatic Timesizing-style balance or even planned socialist-style coordination between supply side and demand side; all in all, a short-sighted, unsustainability-teaching exercise. And of course, ever the assumption that each considered-in-isolation economy is going to get a vital boost from other economies' consumer demand - ever the deus-ex-machina.]
    The WEF changed its methodology this year, adding "efficiency of public spending" to the list of criteria, Lopez-Claros said. Based on that, the WEF recalculated its 2002 ranking and came to the conclusion that Finland - and not the U.S. as initially stated - was already leading last year.

  4. Kuwait urged to cut red tape, reform, Business Day.
    KUWAIT CITY - OPEC member Kuwait, which recently opened up its economy to foreign investments, must cut agonising red tape and approve reforms to lure overseas investors, economists say....
    Kuwait, which depends for 90% of its national income on oil, has faced fundamental structural distortions in the economy, mainly because most activities are concentrated in the hands of the inefficient public sector. About 250,000 Kuwaitis, representing 92% of the national workforce, are employed by the government. Kuwaitis normally shun the private sector because of lengthy working hours and low pay....
    [AA: Note that Kuwait is not an attractive investment target despite long working hours and low pay. So perhaps these factors are not as critical to the investment climate as some would think. Perhaps more talent could be attracted to the private sector with shorter hours and higher pay.]

  5. Time for more annual leave, EDITORIAL, Hawkes Bay Today.
    NEW ZEALAND - The Labour Party has been slow to act on increasing workers' holiday entitlement.
    [N.Z. 'annual leave' or 'holiday' equals U.S. 'vacation']
    One of Helen Clark's team's first actions on being elected [Helen Clark being leader of the NZ Labour Party?] was to push through changes to the Employment Contracts Act, slightly tilting the playing field back in favour of the workers, so she is not reluctant to stand up to Big Business when she thinks it is right. However, Labour has dragged the chain [US: 'taken its time,' 'dragged its ass,' 'delayed'] over longer holidays, now saying it will be a post-2005 policy.
    Some see it as a potential election bribe - vote Labour and we will give you longer holidays - and others that the realists in the party's ranks realise the idea is not so bright after all.
    ["Realists" in the 18th century perhaps, before we were surrounded by labour-saving technology.]
    The Business Roundtable, as would be expected, is against longer holidays, saying it would equate to a 2% pay sacrifice for everyone.
    [Funny how much some people talk about freedom and how little of it they grant to others.]
    There is also the view that it would be a further example of the overbearing hand of government meddling in something that is not its concern.
    [Government has a role in "governing," or defining the gameboard (the market) and the playing pieces (the money), or levelling the playing field, or preventing the self-destruction of, the private sector. That's the only reason it exists. And since 'he who governs least governs best,' it also has the role of discovering the minimum necessary constraint. In our lifetimes, the private sector is in the process of destroying itself by introducing automated labor-saving production without automatically spreading the vanishing human work so as to maintain its markets for said production. This requires no government jobs programs, makework, enterprise zones, block grants, patronage, pork, tariffs, subsidies, taxbreaks or any of the other bloated inefficiencies of current governments. All it requires is implementing and enforcing automatic unemployment-offsetting workweek adjustment so that the private sector cleans up its own mess in terms of disemployed consumers and stops its silly swings from bubble ('boom') to bust.]
    An example of too much government influence on the labour market can be found in France, where the government is now re-thinking the 35-hour week introduced five years ago as a way of reducing unemployment. The law has resulted in some staff getting an additional three weeks off in addition to five weeks existing holiday, plus a further two weeks to compensate for overtime worked - 10 weeks in total. Needless to say, some experts are pointing to the law change as a major factor in the slowing of the French economy.
    [In fact, primitive though the design and implementation of shorter worktime was in France, unemployment dropped one percentage point for every hour cut from the workweek as it was being implemented, from 12.6% unemployment at the 39-hour workweek level in 1997 to 8.6% unemployment at the 35-hour workweek level in mid-2001. France was one of the last big EU nations to succumb to the US-led recession in 2001. "Some experts" are merely blaming something unfamiliar and prejudicial to their control for absolutely everthing they can think of.]
    However, there is more to life than profitability and returns to shareholders, important though they are to a nation's prosperity. The 35-hour week may be excessively short, but Britain and Australia were not brought to their knees when they adopted four weeks paid leave, so it is unlikely to happen in New Zealand.
    The flipside, however, is that the United States has very frugal holiday entitlements and links are often made between its economic success and a labour market free from government interference.
    [The United States is an economic success only by its own carefully selective indices. It has the second highest incarceration rate among the large nations (after Russia), the longest annual working hours in the world, is second to Finland in competitiveness (see story below - and probably holds that high a place only because the European judges are not trying to attract too much of its fortunately mainly self-absorbed attention) and a major homeless, forced part-time, forced premature or perpetuated retirement problem. In short, the US economic 'success' is mainly just its bigness and its bluster.]
    If four weeks becomes the benchmark, companies will have to take on additional staff, or cut production, to cover for holidaying staff, which is bound to hurt some operations, especially smaller firms.
    [So buffer it for smaller firms and let the market in the form of employee turnover discipline them.]
    However, taking that thinking to its logical conclussion, there would be no holidays at all, or sick leave, bereavement leave or weekends off either, if maximum productivity were the only factor to be considered.
    [True.]
    What is required is a sensible amount of leave that is right for New Zealand's economy and labour force - a balance between dedication and recreation. Times are also changing, and with many workers - and most bosses - already receiving four weeks of holiday, it is time for the government to move.
    They should forget the electoral cycle and their concern for their image with the Business Roundtable, and do what is right for the workers on the bottom rung of the employment ladder. The time for legislation bringing in a minimum of four weeks annual leave is overdue.
    [It would seem that a long vacation would be right for New Zealanders, because if they want to go anywhere else in the world for vacation, they are far from everywhere and a longer sojourn abroad would make the expense more worthwhile.]

10/30/2003  primitive timesizing & worktime consciousness in the news = glimmers of strategic hope - all are 10/29 via GoogleNews & searched-collected-prescreened by Alan Applebaum of Brookline MA USA, and all excerpts & comments are by Phil Hyde unless otherwise noted -
  1. IT pros: cash or lifestyle?, by Vivienne Fisher, iTnews.
    AUSTRALIA - IT professionals are increasingly looking at flexible working conditions - rather than just money - when deciding on jobs, according to a recent survey. 71% of respondents to a poll conducted by recruitment firm Candle Australia said that they would take a pay cut for more flexible working arrangements or reduced hours.
    Emma Stonham, marketing manager at Candle Australia, told iTnews that respondents were IT professionals. ...Stonham said, "People really appreciate having time." She said it had been seeing this trend for a while in government, and it was now being picked up by the private sector. In comparison, there had been a decrease in perks such as cars, bonuses and gym memberships, according to Stonham.
    [Good. Perks are meaningless sops. Shorter hours are genuinely economy-balancing.]
    "We are finding that there is no real difference between executives and support staff, and between people with children and no children," she said. "Increasingly people want to make improvements to their quality of life - whether this means having more time to go to the gym, or spending it with the family."...

  2. Union action hits schools, prisons, by Susie O'Brien, Victoria Herald Sun.
    VICTORIA State, Australia - Victoria's tax collectors, prison guards and child protection workers will be among the 25,000 public servants taking industrial action next week. Selective work bans, starting next Thursday, will hit key State Government services including schools, prisons, courts and the tax office. From midnight on Saturday, state workers covered by the Community and Public Sector Union can take protected action.
    The union's $60 million industrial wish list involves a demand for more money for less work. The public servants are seeking to reduce their working week from 38 to 35 hours.
    [This is their power issue since is creates a scarcity of their working hours and harnesses market forces in raising their pay.]
    They also want either a 6% pay increase a year, a $52-a-week pay increase, or salary increases linked to those of Members of Parliament - whichever is greater....
    [Cute idea, but don't let secondary pay demands jeopardize the power issue - shorter worktime. Pay demands may start a battle against market forces - which will always win in the end - and shorter hours for same pay is already a wage increase.]

  3. Raffarin reticent on talk of cut in French holidays, by Robert Graham, Financial Times.
    PARIS - Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the French premier, was coy yesterday about reports that he had taken a highly political decision to cut one public holiday from the 2004 calendar to generate funds to help the aged.
    [Raffarin may be smartening up on worktime issues now that Chirac has done so and is distancing from him. Converting a holiday into forced charity was a pretty wacky concept to begin with.]
    Questioned by journalists, he refused to confirm what other members of his government have said in private - that the government has opted to delete the traditional Monday after Pentecost in June from the country's 11 annual official holidays. The delay in a formal announcement was attributed to unfinished detail of how the government intended to raise some E1.5bn ($1.75bn, £1bn) from the measures destined to help the aged and handicapped. Helping the aged after the scandal of the large number of pensioners' deaths caused during the August heat wave is the prime motive. Nevertheless, by cutting a public holiday, this centre-right government aims to send a political signal about the declining work ethic in France after the introduction of the 35 hour week. Those on a 35 hour week have acquired up to 12 days extra away from work a year.
    [In a age of constantly spreading and intensifying automation and robotics, the entire global economy needs to reassess its work ethic, since that usually means the Puritan work ethic of "work hard to get ahead," never mind "work smart to get ahead," and in the "work hard" department, there is no contest between humans and robots. The problem comes when robotization is met with staff cuts instead of hours cuts, because robots can't buy the stuff they produce while staff can - and do - if they're still gainfully employed.]
    Mr Raffarin has been under pressure to roll back the shorter working week, initiated five years ago by the previous Socialist-led administration, because of its negative effect on businesses and the investment climate.
    [Ha, investment in France has been doing fine. See "FRANCE LURES INVESTORS," subhead within "Analysis - Layoff outcry masks better French business climate" on 4/07/2001 #1, possibly because, with a shorter nationwide workweek, France is in a position to downsize more freely than Germany without destroying its domestic consumer base or increasing its taxes for supporting the unemployed. It would work even better if the workweek was not merely refrozen at the new arbitrary 35-hour level but was free to continue adjusting downward to absorb the last 9% of French unemployed. Domestic markets would rise at least 10% considering the confident consumers - and their dependents - which that strategy would create.]
    However, such a radical reversal of a policy already well-implanted has been ruled out by President Jacques Chirac as too provocative to the unions. Instead, the government has been gradually seeking to soften the impact of the 35-hour week legislation, notably by a substantial increase in the legal limit on overtime....
    [Workweek-resizing legislation without a good overtime design is ineffectual. That's why we deal with it first in the Timesizing program, first at the corporate, per-job level and then at the individual, per-person level.]

  4. Beaverton News, letters to the editor, The Oregonian.
  5. Health workers reject pay cuts, by ROD LINK, Terrace Standard.
    BRITISH COLUMBIA Province, Canada - Hospital workers here [in "Terrace," BC?] and in a majority of hospitals and health care facilities across the north have rejected a third attempt to cut their wages and benefits.
    [It's still going on in Alaska - see our last story today, below.]
    And that could open the way for the Northern Health Authority to contract out more than 2,000 jobs in the attempt to cut its spending – and deficit – by up to $7 million.
    The latest rejection, which came last week, did not even reach a formal balloting stage. Instead, 16 of 20 locals of the Hospital Employees’ Union (HEU) across the north decided they would not even hold a vote on an amended contract cutting their wages and benefits, says union official Cathy Jessome. The amended contract would have lasted until the end of next March, resulting in the loss of an average $3.25 an hour, four fewer vacation days and tacking on an extra one and a half hours to the standard 36-hour work week....

  6. Career advice, Jack Welch style, by David Menzies, Financial Post.
    TORONTO, Ont. - Craving motivation, I am one of 5,000 spectators [alias suckers] sitting in the south building of Toronto's Metro Convention Centre to take in The Power Within, a high-octane motivational boot camp for professionals, the headlining act being none other than former General Electric chief executive Jack Welch.
    Billed as a one-day event that will "revive our senses and make us laugh out loud," the gala is supposed to "challenge who we are" and "restore our sense of wonder and potential." At least, this is what the official program promises. As the copy notes, a "once-in-a-lifetime assembly of achievers" who are adroitly adept in demonstrating "the brilliance of the human spirit, the joy of passion and the power within for change and success" will energize us. All for a mere $209 (plus GST [Canada's extortionate 'goods&services sales tax'] ).
    It's 8:45 a.m. and the final stragglers are snagging the few remaining seats available. Billy Idol's Dancing with Myself booms from the speakers, only to end prematurely....
    [To make a long story short, this whole thing turns out to be an exercise in "playing with myself," but there is one speaker for work/life balance, after (ominously) 13 minutes of a five-member drum corps, a Nicholas Boothman, guru of "How to Connect in Business in 90 Seconds or Less," who tries to get everyone in the audience to face off and utter the word "cauliflower" angrily-happily-sadly-hornily and concludes by noting, "Opportunity only knocks with people who are positive."]
    If this is so why are so many filthy rich people such cast-iron jerks? Alas, everyone is seemingly too busy reciting "cauliflower" to challenge Mr. Boothman on this point.
    Next up is Cheryl Richardson, a master certified coach and the first president of the International Coach Federation. Ms. Richardson is not a swimming or volleyball coach, but rather, she makes a fine living coaching people in the game of life.
    She undoubtedly shocks some of the workaholics in attendance by noting that it is a "myth" that working long hours at a frantic pace will make an employee "a productive person." Indeed, part of her "new rules for 21st-century business" include working reasonable hours (a 60- to 70-hour work week, she notes, is not a career - "it's insanity.")
    [At least this reporter realizes that shorter hours is the future, not the past.]
    She also advises everyone to take a lunch hour every day and to never take on more work than is reasonable and to always schedule "breathing room." Other pointers: Eliminate distracting technology by only checking e-mail twice a day and turning the ringer off on the telephone.
    [The catch?]
    Ms. Richardson, alas, fails to offer a list of employers that will abide by her 21st-century rules.
    After a short break, Loretta LaRoche comes to the stage with an arrow through her head to deliver her standup act, "Life is Short - Wear Your Party Pants."...
    [She's evidently at odds with the one we prefer that goes, "Live life to the fullest - this is not a dress rehearsal."]
    ...People begin to file out of the south building of the Metro Convention Centre just 15 minutes into Mr. Welch's hour-long segment. The grand finale has turned into little more than a fireside chat, and without a steady diet of trendy catchphrases and words to live by, it all makes for lunchbag letdown.Still, after an hour of casual conversation, Mr. Welch receives polite applause. The question is: $209 and eight hours later ... are we motivated yet?
    [Nope, just certified suckers.]

  7. A 40-hour work week, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.
    ALASKA - The Murkowski administration and the Alaska State Employees Association, the state's largest employee union, began contract negotiations Monday, and little has been revealed about the goals of either side. Little is known, too, about the bargaining plans of a broader group of unions, whose representatives will meet together next month to plan strategy for bargaining with the administration.
    What is known, however, is that new contracts must reflect the austerity of the state's finances. And the unions, who will likely seek wage increases as part of a three-year contract, must recognize they need to give a little. An easy place to start is by agreeing to a 40-hour work week instead of adhering to one of 37.5 hours. The practical effects are limited, but the unions would be sending a good message to Alaskans who are seeing their state's budget cut and working 40 hours or more a week themselves. It's true that a majority of the state's work force puts in more than 37.5 hours a week.
    But some indeed remain on the shorter schedule, which came into being several decades ago when unions agreed to help out when cash was short.
    [In other words, unions took a paycut and a corresponding hours cut several decades ago and now this clown wants them to take another one, by working their old 40-hour workweek for their new 37.5-hour salary. Nice guy. "Doing good with other people's money." And all this "crying poor" in our major OIL state which pays every resident every year $2,000.00 just for living in Alaska. Instead of beating up their state employees who have already made a contribution - presumably before the state's oil bonanza - how about simply cutting the two-grand handout? Let everybody contribute, including this guy who's so keen on getting somebody ELSE to sacrifice.]
    Most full-timers in the private sector would love to have a 37.5-hour week.
    [Well, keeping a shorter workweek in state government will conduce to that desirable result much more quickly than state employees going back to their old workweek, despite "misery loves company."]
    The issue could come up again in the Legislature when it reconvenes in January. The Senate earlier this year approved a resolution, in a mostly party-line vote, that asks Gov. Frank Murkowski to negotiate a 40-hour work week at no additional cost to the state treasury. The resolution, which now sits in the House Labor and Commerce Committee, notes that a 40-hour week is standard in most Alaska industries and elsewhere in the nation.
    [Fine, but getting paid for a 40-hour week is also standard in most Alaska industries and elsewhere in the nation, and we've already established that state employees are only getting paid for a 37.5-hour week.]
    But, in a sign of how this seemingly common-sense and harmless issue has become so inflammatory, consider how such a change is interpreted by the Senate and by the unions: Is it much to ask?
    [Yes, because they already made a sacrifice before. It's time everyone sacrificed together, starting at the top.]
    The state could benefit by having more of its work accomplished if employees on a 37.5-hour week add 2.5 hours to their schedule. And perhaps, in the course of doing that, the state might find it can do without a vacant position or two.
    [Why should state employees become accomplices in their own economic assassination? Where's the incentive?]
    Alaskans who use government services might benefit by having work completed a bit faster than it already is. Or the outcome of a 40-hour week might be as simple as having people available for phone calls when they would otherwise be away.
    Unions would gain in an important way, too. Although they will likely argue that a return to the 40-hour week should be accompanied by a restoration of the pay lost when they agreed to the shorter week long ago, they would be showing the rest of Alaska that they realize the state now faces difficult budget choices, including the possibility of an income or sales tax on residents.
    [Big gain. You first, pal.]
    The 40-hour work week stirs passion on both sides. But come back it should.
    [Sure, for those who want to go back to living in 1940, when the 40-hour workweek, already obsoleted by mechanization, was finally implemented in the U.S.]

10/29/2003  primitive timesizing & worktime consciousness in the news = glimmers of strategic hope - all are 10/28 via GoogleNews & searched-collected-prescreened by Alan Applebaum of Brookline MA USA (except #1 {1st article}, which is direct from 10/28 WSJ hardcopy), and all excerpts & comments are by Phil Hyde unless otherwise noted -
  1. Deutsche Telekom AG, WSJ, C15.
    ...will seek a 10% paycut for more than half of its German staff, a move that could save the company as much as E500m ($583.4m) annually.... Adopting a tough line [?? - layoffs would be a "tough line"] ahead of the start of wage talks with unions next month, Heinz Klinkhammer, DT's personnel chief [will] demand that 100,000 employees - mainly at the T-Com fixed-line unit - work at least 10% fewer hours, effectively taking a paycut of the same percentage [and all keep their jobs].
    [Better than a 10% downsizing!]
    ..\..But a powerful union rejected the proposal, raising questions about the plan's viability.
    [Some unions are their own worst enemy.]
    ...Europe's largest telecom operator must cut costs to free cash to reduce a debt burden of more than E50B that makes it one of the region's most indebted companies. Though many analysts consider the size of the company's workforce and its E13.5B in annual wage costs its biggest problems, Germany's rigid labor laws and strong unions make it difficult for DT to lay off employees.
    [So how about cutting the huge costs of some executive salaries and perks? Here's the longer AP version -]
    Deutsche Telekom to cut hours, wages, AP.
    HAMBURG, Germany - Phone giant Deutsche Telekom AG announced plans to cut hours and wages for 100,000 German employees, about 40% of its work force, as part of efforts to reduce a huge debt. The employees, mainly at the T-Com fixed-line unit, will be asked to work at least 10% fewer hours, effectively taking a pay cut of the same amount, board member Heinz Klinkhammer said Monday night. Wage talks with labor unions are scheduled for next month.
    The plan would bring savings in the "three-figure millions'' of dollars, Klinkhammer said.
    German-based Deutsche Telekom, Europe's biggest telephone company, is cutting costs in a campaign to chip away at a 56 billion DM ($66 billion) debt piled up during the telecom boom. The Bonn-based company has 251,000 employees.
    Deutsche Telekom already is trying to eliminate 55,000 jobs through 2005, partly by shunting staff into a personnel agency called Vivento and retraining them for new jobs.
    Klinkhammer's plan to reduce weekly working hours to 34 from 38 drew a frosty initial response from the Ver.di service workers' union. Franz Treml, Ver.di's representative on the Telekom supervisory board, said Tuesday the plan is "totally out of the question.''
    Klinkhammer said Deutsche Telekom also aims to lower the number of trainees who join the company full time. Telekom currently offers a one-year contract to all trainees, but in future will take only the best 10%. Deutsche Telekom shares rose 2.4% to close at 13.50DM ($16) in trading on the Frankfurt exchange.

  2. Socialist mayoral candidate works to get message out from obscurity, by Leonard Fleming, Philadelphia Inquirer.
    PHILADELPHIA, Pa. - As the Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor, John R. Staggs has been shut out of political debates, shunned in media coverage, and seen as a mere interruption in the battle between Mayor Street and Sam Katz. But at Olney High School last week, reporters briefly turned some attention to Staggs, if only because Katz was in a nearby classroom talking to senior [highschooler]s.
    In the political world of fat-cat donors, entrenched political parties, and big-time advertising, voters have probably never heard of Staggs, \a\ meat packer [and union activist] from Germantown who ran for City Council in 1995...who has polled in the 1% range and has very little chance of winning. But he wants voters to have another choice. Staggs and running mate Hilda Cuzco, the party's nominee for City Council at large, are two of the four candidates on the Nov. 4 city ballot who are not from the major parties.
    And some of Staggs' ideas, such as providing more jobs by shortening the workweek to 30 hours without pay cuts, also are outside the mainstream.
    [But there were inside the mainstream for over 150 years (1776-1940), over twice as long as they've been outside the mainstream.]
    ...Responding to a question about the mayor's Operation Safe Streets, a police program to interrupt the street-level drug trade, Staggs said he thought it was a big way to give police officers overtime. Police brutality is the problem in the city, he said.
    Edward Reddick, 17, nodded as Staggs spoke about police abuse. "He caught my attention because he was saying it with passion," he said."John Staggs... seems like a people person because he's a worker, like my mother. That's someone I can relate to better than someone out to build the economy."
    John Bataille, also 17, was not as impressed and shook his head in apparent amusement at times.
    [Opponents of automatic unemployment-offsetting workweek adjustment have to resort to ridicule and rhetoric - they apparently lack reason - and certainly the ability to "think outside the box" - even though this was "inside the box" thinking up to the 1940s, going back at least as far as Sismondi in 1819.]
    He said he thought Staggs' idea to trim the workweek so that businesses would be forced to hire more workers was not sound. "That wouldn't work. The companies would run out of business," he said.
    [A strange objection. In fact, hiring more of the un(der)employed would provide more business, not less. It's the gradual disemployment of people by the combination of a frozen workweek, more labor-saving technology, and downsizing instead of timesizing, that has been making companies run out of business.]
    ...Staggs, who has never supported a Democrat or a Republican for office, said he would have had a better chance if the financial playing field were more even. He is competing against major parties that have raised more than $20 million for their candidates. "You have to have money to get out your voice," he said.
    [Meaning Americans' delusions of democracy need to be replaced by the realization of plutocracy.]

  3. Irish office workers are content: report, by Matthew Clark, electricnews.net.
    Office workers in Ireland are a happy lot, though more money would make them even happier, new research has revealed.
    Although Amarach's research indicates that most of these people are happy in their jobs, it also shows, not surprisingly, that more money would be welcomed. In fact, two-thirds of respondents said that they would prefer more money and the same working hours to a drop in time spent at work and less cash.
    [Unfortunately, the same working hours in the context of more labor-saving technology means more layoffs, more labor surplus and less cash, while paradoxically, a drop in time spent at work and less cash in the short run means fewer layoffs, less labor surplus and more cash in the longer run.]
    Amarach managing director Gerard O'Neill, who was on hand to launch the report, described this finding as surprising given the current debate in Ireland about work-life balance.
    Other interesting work-life balance issues that the survey reported upon were the lack of up-take for many so-called working options. For example, although 68% of companies offer flexible hours, only 25% of employees take them up on the offering. Meanwhile, only 13% of office staff engage in part-time work, despite the fact that 61% of firms make it available. Job sharing and term time working showed similar [low] take-up levels, as did teleworking, which is offered by 26% of firm but only used by 4% of office workers.
    The Microsoft sponsored report, which was launched on the same day that Microsoft's Office 2003 was launched in Ireland, dealt extensively with technology in the office and it consequences on Irish workers. Indeed, 90% of respondents said that PC[s] have made them more productive and 95% described themselves as being competent on a PC....

  4. P. Diddy feels the heat over sweatshop charge, by Michelle Garcia and Michael Powell, Washington Post October 29 2003, C03.
    NEW YORK, Oct. 28 - Hip-hop mogul Sean "P. Diddy" Combs built his fortune with swagger and business savvy. But Tuesday he walked into the Hilton Hotel to answer accusations that his latest venture, the clothing line known as Sean John, relied on Honduran women paid pennies to stitch T-shirts that retail for $40 in SoHo boutiques....
    When he created a garment line with the slogan "It's not just a label, it's a lifestyle," 19-year-old Lydda Eli Gonzales may not have been what he had in mind. But there she was Tuesday, a small-boned Honduran woman standing in front of the Fifth Avenue building that will house Sean John next spring, accusing the owners of the factory where she worked of imposing mandatory unpaid [ie: slave-level] overtime, instituting pregnancy tests for new employees and serving the women water that contained fecal matter.
    "We are totally slaves," said Gonzales, who worked in the factory in Choloma for 13 months. "We live inhumane lives."... Gonzales came to the United States with the help of the National Labor Committee, the independent labor group that exposed the use of child labor at plants that produced Kathie Lee Gifford's fashion line..\..
    Activists say Honduran workers receive 15 cents for the production of each Sean John long-sleeve shirt, which retails for about $40. "It was a surprise to see how expensive it was when we receive so little to make it," said Gonzales. Activists said workers receive $33.15 to $50.18 for a 51-hour workweek, or 65 to 98 cents an hour, higher than Honduras's prevailing minimum wage of 55 cents an hour but less than what families need to survive....
    Combs did not dodge responsibility. "This is very important to me, the way my brand is perceived and the way we treat people." ..\.."I grew up in a family of working people," Combs, 33, told a ravening crowd of paparazzi and reporters. "I know what it's like to struggle day after day in a job to put food on the table. "I want to make sure that any merchandise that has my name on it is made by workers who are treated well."...

  5. Shoprite confident ahead of talks with union, by Mokgadi Pela, businessreport.co.za.
    JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Although seemingly upbeat about today's make-or-break meeting, the Shoprite group and the SA Commercial Catering and Allied Workers' Union (Saccawu), whose members have been on strike for seven days, preferred to play their cards close to their chests.
    Callie Burger, the company's human resources director, said: "We are confident that the resolution to the strike will be achieved."
    Mduduzi Mbongwe, Saccawu's deputy general secretary, said: "We are going into the meeting with an open mind, and knowing that if management brings a reasonable offer to the table a breakthrough may be found."
    The meeting was proposed by management in a letter to the union. Union demands include the reinstatement of hourly pay rates for various employees, a guaranteed minimum of 27 working hours each week for part-time workers and 40 hours for former flexi-timers.
    [Here you have a sample of the 40-hour workweek not as a maximum, but as a minimum, explicitly!]
    The union says the hourly rate is R4.50 while management says it is R7.
    Saccawu is also demanding the scrapping of all "illegal and oppressive clauses", such as compulsory testing for HIV, from employment contracts.
    It also wanted the group to abolish credit checks, forced purchasing of uniforms and name badges, and compulsory membership of the retirement fund.

  6. India's call centers face struggle to keep staff as economy revives, by Ashok Bhattacharjee, Dow Jones via WSJ, A17.
    NEW DELHI - India's call centers are finding it harder to retain workers, and some in the industry fear it will get tougher to attract the country's English-speaking college graduates amid a strengthening economy.
    [And why on earth should a college graduate work for a louzy call center? - especially when -]
    This is primarily because the jobs involve long hours staring at computer screens and offer few career prospects....

10/28/2003  primitive timesizing & worktime consciousness in the news = glimmers of strategic hope - all are 10/27 via GoogleNews & searched-collected-prescreened by Alan Applebaum of Brookline MA USA (except #3, which is direct from 10/28 WSJ hardcopy), and all excerpts & comments are by Phil Hyde unless otherwise noted -
  1. Kuhn & Wittenborn wins ethics award, Kansas City Business Journal.
    MISSOURI - Kansas City's Kuhn & Wittenborn Advertising is the most ethical small business in America, according to the Society of Financial Service Professionals. The 24,000-member society, based in Bryn Mawr, Pa., announced the winners last week for its 2003 American Small Business Ethics Award.... Established in 1994, the American Business Ethics Award recognizes companies that show ethical business behavior in everyday scenarios and in responses to specific crises or events..\.. Whitey Kuhn, a founding partner of Kuhn & Wittenborn...and his company were honored Monday [10/27] at the SFSP's annual Financial Service Forum in Honolulu..\..
    Kuhn said on Friday that the society seemed particularly impressed with a program the advertising agency used to keep its workers employed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Through the Missouri Dept. of Labor & Industrial Relations' Shared Work compensation program, many Kuhn & Wittenborn employees agreed to cut back on work hours so the company wouldn't have to lay off more employees. Kuhn said all but two of the agency's 40 employees now are back to work full time.
    [17 other states have such worksharing programs. The full list is on 2/09/2003 #1.]
    "It was kind of surprising to us in that we always thought that being ethical and treating people with respect was kind of intuitive in reaching our goals of being successful," Kuhn said. "At a time when so many companies are being scrutinized for [un]ethical practices, it makes it kind of special."...
    According to an Oct. 22 press release from the Society of Financial Professionals, Kuhn & Wittenborn was selected from among more than 40 nationwide nominees for the small business award..\.. Nashville-based Beaman Automotive Group was the mid-sized company winner..\.. Hewlett-Packard Co. of Palo Alto, Calif., won in the large company category.... Past big company winners include Bell Atlantic Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Starbucks Coffee Co....

  2. Indian American quits Bush admin, IANS/Times of India.
    WASHINGTON: Ashley Tellis, one of the highest ranking Indian Americans in the Bush administration, has abruptly left his post and joined a US think tank.... Mumbai-born Tellis, considered one of America's foremost strategic experts, left the National Security Council (NSC) where he worked for just two months as special assistant to the president and director of strategic planning and Southwest Asia..\.. He is now senior associate with the Global Policy Programme of the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace....
    He cited health reasons for leaving the NSC, where he was inducted on the recommendation of former ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill. "I had health problems and nothing else when I quit NSC. I actually enjoyed working with the NSC people, but then I had to take care of my health," Tellis told IANS. He agreed that the NSC job was a 'taxing one' with long hours, 'almost a 24-hour job, you may call it', and he could not have done justice to what he had been doing at NSC if he had to devote more attention to his health problem, which he said includes a strict exercise regimen and regular medication over the next couple of years....
    Tellis was appointed to the NSC position on August 18, three days after the White House announced that Blackwill would serve at the NSC as coordinator for strategic planning under National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Blackwill had handpicked Tellis to serve as his senior adviser when he was posted in New Delhi.
    At Carnegie, Tellis said, he would be primarily into research. "Carnegie has left it fairly open for doing my own research. Now after two years in Delhi, I am going to devote time and energy to start work on India and its missile defence system."... At Carnegie he joins Michael Swaine, Joseph Cirincione, Rose Gottemoeller, and George Perkovich to "further build our understanding of global security issues, with particular emphasis on China and South Asia", according to Carnegie sources..\..
    Tellis...took his masters and doctorate degrees in political science from the University of Chicago. Prior to that he studied in Mumbai where he received his bachelor's and master's degrees in economics..\.. Before joining government service Tellis was a senior policy analyst at the Rand Corporation and professor of policy analysis at the Rand Graduate School.... He has authored two books: India's Emerging Nuclear Posture (RAND, 2001) and Interpreting China's Grand Strategy: Past, Present, and Future (with Michael Swaine, RAND, 2000)....

  3. [and in general, what's happening in America? -]
    More managers allow workers to multitask as job and home blur, by Carol Hymowitz, WSJ, B1.
    [Basically, America is becoming a big blur.]
    ...The 10-hour work day now typical at many companies increasingly means "having to" [our quotes] blend professional and personal tasks....
    [America's first 10-hour day strike was by Philadelphia carpenters in 1791 (212 years ago!), incensed at their employers' "flexibility" of paying a flat daily wage for the long summer shift and switching to a piecework rate for the short winter days - "heads I win, tails you lose" - (except I'm also stifling my own best markets and advertisers). In "blurring" back to a 10-hour day, Americans are going back to the six-day 60-hour workweeks that their ancestors had sacrificially achieved by around 1900, or the seven-day 70-hour workweeks they'd generally achieved by 1840 - back 100 or 160 years. Blurring means less accountability - and responsibility. Blurring means unseparating State and Market at a time when we need to clearly separate them. Blurring means going back on the vital distinctions of the past, like the separation of Church and State. Advances in science and technology are not based on blurs, but on finer distinctions. "The advance of science is not helped by taking a fuzzy position." A computer's insides are not a blur but carefully distinguished parts. Any economy that fosters blurring under the spin of "flexibility" or "freedom" or "the future" or "reality" or anything else is an economy losing innovation and moving backward. As the USA, in area after area, begins moving in that direction, it will experience more and more internal turbulence and be less and less of a concern to any other economies, no matter how many additional tragic accidents, like the Bush administration, occur.]
    Between meetings and memo writing, employees and their bosses log onto the Internet to pay bills, manage their 401k accounts, shop for birthday gifts and plan vacations. While attending their children's school events, they use their BlackBerries [alias PDAs (personal digital assistants) or palmtops] to answer colleagues' questions, proof letters and make appointments with clients.
    [In short, the model Americans held up in the business media are becoming a race of constantly distracted, indeed constantly self-distracting people. No wonder they've become sleep-deprived and error-prone and litigious, as indicated by the rate of malpractice suits for example. No wonder Buddhism and Daoism appeal to Americans. With strobe TV and strobe music, no wonder their vision and hearing are deterioriating. No wonder their "entertainment" has become an accelerating series of explosions and killings. Near-sighted American CEOs, business schools and economists couldn't be destroying America better if they were doing it on purpose.]
    For managers, this overlap between work and life presents several new challenges. Many recognize that since they now expect employees [and themselves - except at the top]] to be accessible 24/7 on e-mail and cellphone, they also must give them the freedom [spin alert] to handle personal chores during regular[??] office hours. But should they also set limits? What overlap is productive? [What producitivity is marketable? - never asked.] How should managers handle employees who abuse the new flexibility [spin alert]?...
    [How are employees responding, prior to the extreme stages of pilferage and workplace sabotage? They're vanishing? Where? "There" -]
    "There" bets online gamers spend for real, 10/27/2003 Boston Gobe, C1.
    [Back to "More managers allow workers to multitask as job and home blur" -]
    Luke Visconti, partner and co-founder of DiversityInc, a New Brunswick NJ publisher and consultant on diversity issues...forbade one employee to long onto an online game at the office. The employee "became so engrossed in the game for a while that even though he didn't play it a lot during work hours, he was distracted, and then he'd stay very late late at night to finish his work," says Mr. Visconti. [So what - doesn't he want him to work 24/7?]
    "I had to explain that even though he finished his assignments, he was disconnected from the flow of everyone else's work."
    [How quaint. A workplace that's still perceives a "flow" to everyone's work and demands "connection" to it.]
    Some managers establish guidelines through their own example.
    [No kidding.]
    Terru Wachalter, director of global operations at Euro RSCG Life, an advertising and marketing company, arrives at her NY office at 7 am to pay her creditcard bills online and do other personal chores. By 8:30 am, she focuses exclusively on work. She rarely takes a break for lunch so she can leave by about 6 pm and have time in the evening for her husband and 13-year-old son. "This works for me," says Ms. Wachalter.
    [Pathetic. 8:30 to 6 with no break even on just a five-day week is 9½x5= a 47½-hour workweek, America's average workweek a full 77 years ago in 1926, with apparently all the "worksaving" machinery and technology since then wasted. This is what Americans call "freedom"???]
    ..\..Ms. Wachalter...has helped other employees create different schedules, such as working from home a few days a week.
    More companies are offering equipment and services to help keep employees at work longer with fewer interruptions. They include ATMs, health and beauty aids, photo-developing stores, dry cleaning services and fitness centers....
    [And since more employees are on salary, companies presume a blank check on their lives. "Efficiency" or "productivity" with no time accountability? Dream on. "Here, have some handcream. Now, you're here till midnight."]
    Google also offers dry-cleaning services, washers and dryers for those who want to their laundry during work....
    ["Co-o-ol!" Duh.]

  4. Prison union leaders OK deal - 4 state unions now have pacts on concessions, by Chris Andrews, Lansing State Journal.
    The Michigan Corrections Organization [MCO] has agreed to concessions with the state, union officials said Monday.   Gov. Jennifer Granholm now has deals with four of six unions as well as Civil Service Commission-approved reductions for nonunionized workers....
    David Fink, director of the Office of the State Employer, said this agreement with the 9,600-member Michigan Corrections Organization will save the state $36 million.... "We're encouraging our members to ratify," MCO Exec. Dir. Fred Parks said. "It was much better than what the state was going to do to us otherwise."
    As with the other worker groups, the MCO leadership has accepted a plan that centers around a deferred pay plan called banked leave time.... Under banked leave time, employees continue to work 40-hour weeks but will be paid for 38. They bank the other two hours and can take extra time off or be compensated with contributions into their 401(k)s when they leave state service..\..
    Unlike the other deals, corrections officers won't have to take unpaid furlough hours. Instead, officers will forgo 6 minutes of daily overtime [pay] for briefings at the start of their shifts. They will receive compensatory time off....
    Absent the concessions, the state was moving to shift corrections officers to a 37.5-hour workweek with a half-hour unpaid lunch. They now get a paid lunch but have custodial responsibilities....
    The state still hopes for concessions from the 2,700 workers represented by American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees Council 25.... Council 25's Special Assistant to the President Ed McNeil said members believe that legislators should make greater concessions before coming to state workers for givebacks. They haven't forgotten the combined 40% raises that lawmakers received in 2001 and 2002, he said. State representatives have taken cuts in health benefits comparable to a 3% pay cut. Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema said he is cutting his expense allowance to create the equivalence of a 3% pay cut and is encouraging other members to follow suit....

  5. NEW JERSEY - 29th District - Senate race, Newark Star Ledger (NJ).
    ...ABBY TILSNER
    Party: Independent
    Slogan: Socialist Workers Party
    Hometown: Newark...
    Education: University of Minnesota, 3 years
    Occupation: Sewing machine operator
    Qualifications: Member of UNITE; antiwar activist; fighter for women's rights; worker and trade unionist.
    TOP ISSUES & PROPOSALS:
    1. Jobs for all: "Working people should not bear the burden of the capitalist crisis. I call for a massive public works program and a shorter work week to spread the available work around. Increase the minimum wage, and build cost-of-living protection into all contracts and benefits. I defend affirmative action and back women's right and access to abortion. Debt relief for working farmers and an end to foreclosures. Cancel the Third World debt."
    2. No to Washington's occupations and wars: "I demand: bring the troops home from the Balkans, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo; release detainees! End all U.S. aid to Israel; defend the Palestinian right to self-determination....

  6. Why are we all cracking up?, by Bonnie Estridge, Evening Standard via This is London (UK).
    LONDON - Stress at work has reached crisis point with 13.4 million days lost a year, according to new figures from the Health and Safety Executive. This means the problem has doubled in eight years. Only last week, stress was blamed for the heart scare suffered by Tony Blair. So, is it all down to long hours and horrendous public transport - and what is the answer?
    Here, we examine the causes of stress and reveal which professions are most at risk. We also show how the law is changing and explain how organisations can protect their workers. First, we talk to two workers who reached breaking point and found ways to help themselves ...
    Martin Jones, 37, is managing director of MJ Media, a media planning and space-buying company. He is single and lives in Kensington. He says: 'I'm basically responsible for spending £10 million of other people's money annually. I advise clients such as TV, publishing and computer games companies where to advertise and then plan their campaigns, making the decisions and buying advertising space for them. I negotiate deals for ads to appear in the right place at the right time and for the best deal available.
    Everything is done to a very tight deadline. I attend meeting after meeting, which leaves me precious little time in the office to do vital paperwork. So I invariably end up working evenings and weekends catching up, trying to juggle a diary full of appointments.
    At the beginning of the year, I took up smoking again purely because of the pressures. I was a victim of "exploding head syndrome" - trying to do several things at once and not having time to concentrate on any one job properly, frequently leading to that horrible feeling that my head was about to blow.
    My annual medicals every year seemed fine, but I cannot believe that this "pressure cooker" feeling is not rapidly rising blood pressure. I wouldn't have liked mine tested during such an episode.
    I also had sleeping problems because I couldn't switch off. I'd either go to bed too late and not be able to get to sleep for hours, or be so tired that I'd fall asleep early on the sofa. I'd then wake up at midnight with problems crowding my brain, staying awake for the rest of the night trying to solve them. I was all too aware that, as a boss, being stressed in front of your staff is bad news, because you transfer that stress to them, creating a negative atmosphere.
    It's all very well having a successful business and, of course, a certain amount of pressure is challenging and therefore beneficial - but when it starts getting on top of you then you have to find a way to take control.
    Before I started my business, I had taken a course in self-hypnosis. It worked, and I was completely relaxed the whole time. But when I started my own company I was so absorbed that just when I should have been sharpening my hypnosis skills to combat stress, I managed to lose them....
    So, this summer I decided to get my head sorted out once and for all by relearning self-hypnosis, and I also aimed to quit smoking at the same time. I had been recommended to see hypnotherapist Georgia Foster at The Wren Clinic in Notting Hill. Within two sessions I had given up cigarettes...- I'm sleeping well now, I'm calmer and don't let pressure get to me....'
    Loraine Boyd is a 28-year-old events organiser and professional singer living in Camden. She says: 'I've been singing since my late teens, but somehow along the way I took on the job of organising private and corporate events which, along with recording sessions as a backing vocalist, means my life is a never-ending round of rushing here, there and everywhere.
    As a child, I suffered from eczema badly and quite recently it came back again. My doctor told me it was due to stress and, once triggered off again, it wouldn't clear up unless I learned to relax. Because of this, I was well aware that my immune system was weaker than it should be - probably the reason the eczema had returned - because I always felt so tense and hassled.
    I felt like screaming most of the time. Sometimes, I didn't even want to get out of bed and only dragged myself out of the house because I didn't want anyone else to get the job I was up for.
    To add to these pressures, my fiance, Derek, lives in Glasgow. When I managed to get a weekend off, I'd end up rushing to King's Cross only to sit on a hideously crowded train thinking I was relaxing. In the event, I'd be tensed up, worrying how long it was going to take to get to Glasgow, whether the train was going to arrive on time, and then start worrying about how long it might take to get back to London. I hadn't even got as far as Scotland and I was panicking about how tired I'd feel for work on the Monday morning.
    I know I'm a hyperactive person who needs to be on the go all the time, but I couldn't see the wood for the trees. So how was I going to learn to relax if I couldn't find the time?
    In May, I went to a business meeting at a women-only health club. It was such a beautiful, calm environment. Just going into the building made me feel tranquil and I wanted to join immediately. I asked what classes they would recommend for de-stressing - and they suggested Pilates, reflexology and LaStone therapy.... I joined the club there and then, got out my diary and made appointments for everything I liked the sound of. It took some discipline, making time for relaxing rather than work, but I made a promise to myself that I would see it through.
    Since joining the health club, the Phillimore in Kensington, I've managed to re-organise my life to a reasonable extent, taking late-afternoon or evening sessions several times a week - and it's worked. I look forward to my "me only" time. Sometimes I'll get up early and go for a swim before work, doing a good 40 lengths if I can. I find swimming very therapeutic. All this relaxing activity has made me far calmer. I still rush around, but I don't feel like a headless chicken any more.

  7. Payroll & HR column: What revolution?, by Barry Wade, HR Gateway (UK).
    UNITED KINGDOM - ...‘It is astonishing that HR professionals often appear to lack basic monitoring information about the take-up of flexible work initiatives and other benefits that would allow their effectiveness to be evaluated properly...,’ said IRS [Industrial Relations Services] Employment Review managing editor, Mark Crail. Of course, there are other areas to blame for work-life balance initiatives not going as well as expected.
    The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) believes the problem lies with managers. An easy target admittedly, but it is more the training and support that organisations give managers rather than the managers themselves. A lack of quality and quantity in training for managers was a major problem, as was the ‘long hours culture’ in which managers were forced to operate, claims the JRF report.... While the likes of Ruth Lea from the Institute of Directors (IoD) claims ‘…there is no long hours culture in the UK’, most other people would beg to differ..\..
    A report by DDI [acronym unexplained] suggests that middle managers, especially, were living on a work-life balance ‘fault line’ with a third working over 45 hours a week. Half said they worked longer hours now than when they were in a non-managerial role, while three-quarters (75%) felt they had to go to work even when ill to keep up with the workload.
    For the Work Foundation, however, it is the managers who are blocking progress. It suggests that a third of managers are resisting implementing work-life balance policies. But, when Mercer HR decided to ask managers their views of the problem, 52% of managers said their organisation was to blame – this compared to 45% of employees.
    There is no[??] doubt that work-life balance is slowly improving.... But changing the status quo does not happen overnight; the wheels of business grind slowly. Although small and medium-sized enterprises understand the benefits of work-life balance for example, over two-thirds [67%] claim that this is a workplace issue that they still need to address, according to Investors in People (IIP), while Reed pitches the figure at 53%....

  8. Ward labours the point for long weekend, Press Release: New Zealand Green Party.
    NEW ZEALAND - Green MP Mike Ward has endorsed the Government's planned work-life balance 'engagement process', and urged New Zealanders to have a good think about their quality of life on Labour Day, 65 years after New Zealand introduced the 40-hour week. Mr Ward said New Zealand culture has been transformed by two decades of employment reforms as people have been forced to work far too hard to notice that their quality of life has been weakened by the encroachment of work into time better spent for recreation.
    "The Government's attempts to redress the work-life imbalance has to be of great benefit for all New Zealanders, even if it just inspires us to think and talk about our quality of life," said Mr Ward."Simply juggling the hours won't do the trick though, there must be a serious attempt to reduce the hours people spend working and increase the hours people can spend living.
    "This weekend marks 65 years since the 40-hour week was introduced but New Zealanders seem to have lost sight of what Labour Day is supposed to honour. It seems absurd that in an age of mass-production, computerisation and a flood of labour-saving devices, that we spend more time in paid employment than ever before. Mum and Dad are working far too long in jobs to accumulate an ever-widening array of possessions that they hardly get the time to enjoy," he said.
    Mr Ward swapped an overworked teaching career 26 years ago for a life "seriously devoted to fun, making beautiful stuff and pursuing adventures. Choosing time, leisure and interesting experiences ahead of possessions may not be the only way to avoid stress, depression and burnout but at least you get to spend some time for yourself, instead of working for someone else.
    "I acknowledge the pressures faced by low-income families to make ends meet, but by increasing the minimum wage and by making flexible working hours more available in the workplace, New Zealand can work towards a family-friendly and sustainable solution.... We all need to campaign for a more interesting and sustainable range of lifestyles so our children and grandchildren can find the time to really enjoy...living in this lovely country. When we foster a culture that appreciates people for their quality of life rather than their quantity of possessions, we may get wind of the fact we've been working far too hard to notice what has happened to the quality of life in New Zealand for ourselves and our families," said Mr Ward.

10/25-27/2003  primitive timesizing & worktime consciousness in the news = glimmers of strategic hope - all are 10/24-26 via GoogleNews & searched-collected-prescreened by Alan Applebaum of Brookline MA USA (except #1, 2 & 3, which are direct from 10/27, 26 & 25 NYT, BG & NYT hardcopy), and all excerpts & comments are by Phil Hyde unless otherwise noted -
  1. 10/27   Wage increases giving economy unexpected lift - Gains in most pay levels - Commerce Dept. report to show quickest pace of [GDP] growth since '99," by David Leonhardt & Edmund Andrews, NYT, front page.
    [Oh, we're all so happy happy in Bush La La-la Land. Haaap-py happy happy.... because Rupert "Media Is Me" Murdoch's frontpage tells us so. Let's all sing a little song to show how happy we are, to the tune of "Jesus Loves Me" with multiple eighth-notes instead of quarter-notes where needed by the lyrics:
    The economy is healthy, this I know
    For Rupert Murdoch's media tell me so.
    If I suffer in silence, starve and die,
    The religious right says I'll go Home on High.
     The accompanying chart (on A15) says wages are rising faster than inflation and imprecisely shows median hourly wages for all workers 18 to 64, in 2002 dollars, seasonally adjusted, rising from about $12.10 in 1998 to about $13.80 in approx. early-Oct/2003. It then says "but hours worked are falling" and imprecisely shows average weekly hours for private [sector?] workers, seasonally adjusted, sinking from about 34.5 in 1998 to about 33.6 in approx. early-Oct/2003. However...]
    ...The wage gains have not been enough to overcome the economy's problems, however. Many families still have less income than they did a year ago because companies have reduced their workers' hours, and healthcare costs have risen rapidly....
    [Lesson: We either get control of this worktime-shrinking process in a Timesizing way that maintains our consumer base, or it will keep happening out-of-control and keep gutting our consumer base and America's future. Here are Bob Herbert's comments, way back inside on the op ed page -]
    There's a catch: jobs - 'Signs' of recovery, but not for struggling families, op ed by Bob Herbert {bobherb(at)nytimes.com}, NYT, A23.
    ...The administration can spin its "recovery" any way it wants. But working families can't pay their bills with data about the GDP.
    [Unlike Bush and his friends who, though dumb as stumps, get wafted through Yale cuz their daddies are rich, most Americans actually need employment to support themselves....]
    They need the income from steady employment.
    [And whatever may be happening currently to make GDP growth "show the quickest pace since '99" (and with this crusading administration, who knows what the number crunchers in Bush's Commerce Dept. are doing for The Cause), sustainable GDP growth needs the consumer demand from most Americans' steady income.]
    And when it comes to employment, the Bush administration has compiled the worst record since the Great Depression. The jobs picture is far more harrowing than...usually presented by the media. Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, has taken a look at the hours being worked by families, rather than individuals.... The declines he found were "of a magnitude that's historically been commensurate with double-digit unemployment rates," he said.
    [Meaning that mainstream economists, anxious to justify their head-in-the-sand sneering at workweek trimmers alias work sharers&spreaders, have succeeded in "doctoring" the unemployment rate over the last 10-15 years to register only about half the problem.] According to government stats, there are nearly 4.5m people working part-time because they have been unable to find full-time work. In many cases, as the outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas noted in a recent report, the part-time worker is "earning far less money than his or her background and experience warrant - i.e., a computer programmer working at a coffee shop."...

  2. 10/26   Tough times for the skeleton crew - Understaffing leaves many more employees overworked to the bone, by Joan Axelrod-Contrada, Boston Globe, G1.
    ["Skeleton crew"? "To the bone"? - they should have saved this article for Hallowe'en!]
    As Halloween approaches, many offices find themselves with skeleton staffs. The economic slowdown and related hiring freezes and layoffs have pared staffing to the bone at organizations in Massachusetts and the nation.
    How bad is the problem?   46% of senior executives at public companies say their company is understaffed [and whose fault is that?!], according to a poll by Christian & Timbers, an executive search firm based in Cleveland [apparently coat-tailing on Challenger Gray & Christmas of Chicago]....
    Life isn't easy for membes of these lean and mean workforces. One employee is apt to be doing the work of two or three.   40% of employees surveyed by the Discovery Group, a Sharon MA-based consulting firm, say that their workload is unreasonable.... Many feel caught in a no-win situation: either overworked or unemployed.
    [Looks like the development Ben Hunnicutt foresaw in his 1988 subtitle is exploding all around us - "Work Without End - Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work."]
    ...Often, the stress manifests itself in health problems such as backaches, headaches, high blood pressure, and anxiety. According to the Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, healthcare expenditures are nealy 50% greater for workers who report high levels of stress.
    [Take Back Your Time Day on Friday happened not a moment too soon - see below, stories #5 & 6 and 10/24/2003 #1 & 2. Bet the French Prime Minister (Raffarin) who is currently blaming France's 35-hour workweek for everything he can think of hasn't given it credit it for all the savings it provides on stress-related healthcare expenditures. Of course, such expenditures in our economy go straight into boosting the GDP "growth" figures that our mainstream economists congratulate themselves for.]
    ...Larry Elle, director of Success Assocs. of Brookline MA...advises employees in understaffed organizations to find time for themselves.
    [Easy to say.]
    "People cut corners with their personal lives," he said. "They cut out their morning exercise program because they're working longer hours. That's not a good idea."...
    Karen Higgins, an intensive care nurse at Boston Medical Center and president of the Mass. Nurses Association, has been in the profession for 28 years. "The last 5 to 8 years have been horrific," she said. "There used to be some wiggle room in the staffing in case a patient got really sick or needed to be moved into the ICU. Now there's no wiggle room."...
    [No wiggle room? What happened to all that "flexibility" CEOs keep saying they need? No wiggle room? Rigor mortis sets in. "Rigor-mortis Economics"? Or more alliteratively, "Coffin Capitalism"? All the more urgent the need for Automatic Fluctuating-Workweek Economics and Timesizing Capitalism.]
    "Whether it's widgets or schools, understaffing doesn't do anyone any good," said..\..union organizer Joe Twarog...field rep for the Mass. Federation of Teachers. "You just get a lousier product or unhappy workers. People can only do so much."
    Employees in understaffed organizations are clearly unhappy. They feel overwhelmed by excessive demands and angry at management for imposing them.
    [Scott Adams has had some wonderful Dilbert cartoon strips on this topic lately. Colleague Kate says the Wally character with his don't-give-a-damn, do-as-little-as-possible attitude is looking more and more like a mental-survival strategy, and is probably spreading to more and more employees subjected to the current grabbing and fraud of American CEOs. Now that Mother Teresa has been canonized, maybe it's time for "St. Wally." We wouldn't be surprized to hear that employee pilferage and workplace sabotage are up.]
    "It's a spooky and scary work environment out there," said Elle....
    [Ergo, Bush Jr's "Halloween Economics" to join the pantheon after Reagan's "Voodoo Economics"? For the open-minded, a little economic design quickly reverse pessimism.]

  3. 10/25   Strike against proposal to raise retirement age paralyzes Italy, by Frank Bruni, NYT, A9.
    [Another economy faced with increasingly gated-off plutocrats, tries to relengthen worklife without a shorter-workweek offset.]
    ROME...- Planes idled on runways, trains stopped moving and much of Italy slipped into a state of temporary paralysis on Friday, the result of a nationwide strike to protest a proposed increase in the retirement age.... Many Italians now retire with full benefits from the state before they turn 60. If they are 57 or younger, they can retire after paying into the state pension system for 37 years. If they are over 57, they can retire after 35 years of contributions..\..
    Late last month, PM Silvio Berlusconi [called] Italy's pension system \not\ sustainable [and] proposed increasing [those] periods to 40 years for men under 65 and women under 60 [hmm, institutionalized pro-feminist sexism], a requirement that would take effect in 2008.... Mr. Berlusconi's first stint as Prime Minister ended in 1994 after just 7 months, in part because of disenchantment over his desire to meddle with the state pension system.
    [Geez mabeez, some wealthy gangsters just never learn.]
    ..\..Hundreds of thousands of workers heeded the call of the country's three largest labor unions and stayed away from work, and many took part in loud demonstrations.... "I think we should look in general at the life of a human being, which cannot be considered only in terms of work," said Amico Antonucci...in the crowd at Piazza Navona....
    [True, but the life of a human being should not have to wait and be all saved up until s/he is 60-65 and can retire. We already have so much labor-saving technology, we can and must "retire" on a weekly and yearly basis, with shorter, overlapping shifts and workweek and longer weekends, and with shorter, overlapping workyears and longer vacations. The market-demanded employment is just not there to keep everyone who needs to support themselves (so taxpayers don't have to support them!) spinning their wheels for the whole of a pre-technology, forever-frozen, arbitrary, 1940-era, 40-hour workweek! And if we seriously want to extend human life, the concept of retirement = rendering all persons useless, for all years of life after some arbitrary age, is ridiculous. We humans must get started on converting all our age-tied worktime controls into automatically fluctuating workweek controls coupled with age-independent, ad-hoc, temporary disability-rehab systems, and unleash the research on spare-parts technology, bio-engineering and cryonics. As long as we keep thinking in terms of retirement, we will need death. If we want to push back death, we must transform our thinking about old age. The "old horse out to pasture" model is obsolete now that virtually every handicap has a technological offset to the extent that people such as Stephen Hawking can program computers merely by moving their eyes.]

  4. 10/27   Saving time also saves money, AP via Houston Chronicle (TX) Oct 26 2003.
    NEW YORK - A lot of Americans are working more and enjoying it less. Many are stressed out with longer working hours and fewer vacation days. Americans averaged 1,878 hours on the job in 2000, up more than 10% from the 1,703 hours they logged two decades earlier, according to data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. Every extra hour in the office is an hour not spent with family and friends or exercising or taking on a volunteer project.
    As a result, many are seeking help from professional organizers and time managers to try to rebalance their lives. "What we can do is look objectively at a person's situation to help them see how they're spending their time,"said Barry Izsak, president of the National Association of Professional Organizers. The key is learning to set priorities, said Izsak, who owns Arranging It All in Austin.
    "A lot of people think that working longer means getting more done," he said. "In fact, they're often taking the inefficiency they already have and spreading it over a longer period of time." His advice: Valerie Nossal, a time management expert with MeadWestvaco Consumer and Office Products, based in Stamford, Conn., said..."Many of us could work 24 hours straight and still not get through everything we have to do," Nossal said. "We have to teach ourselves to say, 'At six, I have to go home because I want to spend time with my family.' "
    There can be a cost for working fewer hours: less pay. But Nossal argues there's a cost to inefficiency. If you spend your time doing things that aren't important, you don't get the big, important project done, she said. If you're disorganized at home, you may not pay credit card bills on time - which means late fees and a damaged credit rating.
    [Ô cieux! Quelle catastrophe!]

  5. 10/27   Baby boomers still struggle to balance work, family, by Eileen Powell, AP Oct 26 2003 12 AM.
    NEW YORK - Some baby boomers, who have struggled for years to try to balance work loads and family responsibilities, are advocating a new solution: working less.
    Americans traditionally have sought to get better organized by buying day planners and personal digital assistants, or by hiring time management consultants. But there's a boomer-led movement now toward cutting work hours - even if it means collecting a reduced salary - to free more time for family, friends and volunteer activities.
    John de Graaf...a Seattle freelance television producer and writer, is among the organizers of Take Back Your Time day on Friday. He calls it "a national conscious-raising event" that will include teach-ins and other events around the country to discuss ways to balance work and life. (Events are posted at *www.TimeDay.org.)
    "The date comes nine weeks before the end of the year, and that symbolizes the fact that we Americans now work an average of nine full weeks more each year than do our peers in Western Europe."
    Americans may be richer, de Graaf acknowledges, "but they're overworked, overscheduled and overwhelmed - in short, just stressed out."
    There are some baby boomers who have made big changes in their lives to try to create more balance.
    Don Silver, 54, gave up his law practice in Los Angeles four years ago to become an author and freelance financial writer.
    He and his wife, Susan, a...management consultant, now work from home so they can concentrate on projects they enjoy, set their own hours and home-school their son Charlie.
    "I thought we would take a big hit in income, but I was willing to take that chance," Silver said. "It may have been that I lucked out, getting dot-com work in 1999 and 2000 when I was starting out. Now I'm able to work in many venues - online, hard copy, creating computer manuals, 'evergreen' content for financial sites."
    After writing seven personal finance books, he recent wrote his first fiction book, "Cookin' the Book$."
    Silver says that even people who work at home can get overwhelmed by it "unless you put up barriers."
    He encourages others to try to understand that life is about choices. In "The Generation Y Money Book," for example, "I tried to make it clear that you're trading your life energy for money. ... So it's important, regardless of your age, to ask basic questions: 'Are you killing yourself doing this?' "Are you enjoying this?' 'What's the trade-off?"'
    For Diane Wood...getting more time to spend with her teenage daughters meant cutting her work hours and earning less.
    She moved earlier this year from a management position at a national environmental group that required long hours and a lot of travel to her current job as executive director of the Center for a New American Dream in Takoma Park, Md.
    The center operates Monday through Thursday and pays its employees for a 32-hour work week. They may earn less, but they have Fridays off for walks in the woods or baking cookies with their children, Wood said.
    "I made a conscious decision for a balanced life," Wood said.
    Others apparently are interested in the same thing. Traffic doubled this summer at the center's Web site at *NewDream.org, which offers tips on lowering consumption and finding nonmaterial joys in life, Wood said.
    "I think more and more people are stressed, especially boomers," she said. "I worry that they're so stressed they're not pausing at all - and you have to pause if you want to redefine who you want to be."
    Elizabeth Rhodes...stopped practicing law in 1995 and became a librarian at the University of Baltimore law library. The move has reduced stress in her life and given her more time to read and write poetry, she said.
    "I'm convinced that what I've done is to arrange my life to be as pleasant as I can make it," she said. "I have a congenial work environment, I'm working more things into my job that I like and I'm working at a place where, if I want to take a class, say in writing poetry, I just have to walk across the street."
    She also takes advantage of the library's generous vacation policy, she said, "compared to practicing law, where there was hardly ever a down day, it's incredible."
    Still, she said, the effort to get more balance in her life was an ongoing process. "It's always a conscious decision," she said. "It's about focusing."
    Benjamin Hunnicutt, a professor of leisure studies at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, agrees that many Americans are "time hungry." But he's not convinced most people will change their habits anytime soon. "Work is the central value of our culture, and that's especially true for boomers," Hunnicutt said. "Work has become something like a modern religion, a way we establish our identity and find meaning and purpose." And while some countries, including France and Germany, have chosen to work less and play more, "Americans have chosen luxuries rather than leisure."
    Still Hunnicutt supports Take Back Your Time day activities "if only to raise the notion that there are trade-offs."

  6. 10/25   Take back some time today, www.thestate.com [South Carolina State gov't] Oct 24 2003.
    Americans are the workaholics of the world. We work more hours each day and more days each year than workers of any other industrialized nation.
    But today, we’re encouraged to snatch back a bit. Today is the first Take Back Your Time Day, a national event modeled after Earth Day, designed by the Simplicity Forum and aimed at encouraging us to reconsider what the heck we’re doing with our lives.
    This day, nine weeks before year’s end, was chosen because Americans annually average nine more weeks of work than western European workers.
    That’s 350 hours more at the computer terminal, on the phone, behind the cash register or on the assembly line. That’s 350 hours when you didn’t read a book to your child, walk your dog in the park, talk with friends, cook a good meal, watch a movie, knit a scarf, build a doll house, play tag football, stroll the beach, watch a sunset ... Need I go on?
    Over a lifetime, we end up with 10 years fewer with our family and friends, our hobbies, our pleasures, our solitude.
    “The main point this year is to inform people how overwork hurts all of us,” says Judy Turnipseed. A member of the national Simplicity Forum, Turnipseed is office manager of Turnipseed and Associates in Columbia. She describes the forum as an alliance of leaders of diverse disciplines “working together toward a more satisfying, simple, sustainable lifestyle.”
    Turnipseed and her husband, attorney Tom Turnipseed, joined the S.C. Green Party in a discussion of Take Back Your Time Day at the University of South Carolina on Thursday. The Turnipseeds will lead a service on the topic at 11 a.m. Nov. 2 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 2701 Heyward St., Columbia.
    The goal is to start small, as Earth Day did, educating people and hoping for growth over the years, resulting in social, cultural and political change, Judy Turnipseed says.
    “We’re not anti-work,” she said. “We are looking for a more balanced American life. Overwork threatens our health, hurts our marriages and families, leaves some of us with no time to vote, contributes to the destruction of the environment.
    “But everything about our culture encourages overwork, over-commitment and over-consumption.”
    Despite our appliance-filled homes and technologically spiffy workplaces, we work more than medieval peasants. That’s a favorite fact of documentary filmmaker John de Graaf, national coordinator of the event.
    De Graaf, who spoke on Take Back Your Time Day during a June visit to USC, noted then, “We got the technology, but we didn’t get the time.”
    A few more depressing facts offered in the official handbook of expert commentary on the topic: Who really wants to live this way? Despite wages that don’t keep up with inflation and a “jobless recovery” that leaves us down 1 million jobs, Americans continue to tell pollsters we work too much, want more time with family, would trade pay for time off. It’s a hard life and, given current research on stress-related illnesses, it’s a short life.
    But we die with more stuff!
    As our work hours increased, so did our consumption. Our consumer spending has doubled over the last 30 years.
    Our productivity increased, too, 80% in the past 30 years. That could have resulted in 20-hour work weeks instead of granite countertops and negative-ion refrigerators.
    We could be learning a second language, catching up on sleep, volunteering at the neighborhood elementary school, hiking the Appalachian trail, folding paper airplanes with our children, analyzing why waves arrive on the diagonal at our favorite beach.
    As comedian Lily Tomlin observed, “The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.”
    The question then, as de Graaf poses it, is rather simple: Do you want the goods or the good life? You might want to take back a little time today — simply leave on time this evening — and consider that.

  7. 10/27   Work overload a worry amid skills shortages, by Mathew Dearnaley, New Zealand News.
    New Zealand - a great place to live and work. At least, that's the Government's Labour Weekend promise as it seeks volunteers to champion a better "work-life" balance in society.
    As the public enjoy a holiday created originally to honour the ideal of a 40-hour working week, the Government has announced a new consultation round in a year-long policy-making programme.
    It is preparing to contact community groups to find "champions of work-life balance" who will also help to feed in accounts of how ordinary New Zealanders cope with increasing work demands.
    Announcing the exercise, Labour Minister Margaret Wilson challenged employers to find creative ways of striking a better balance, as a strategy to attract staff and overcome skills shortages.
    That is a development of her address to the Council of Trade Unions conference last week in which she said the work-life equation was behind various Government moves to lift working conditions.
    These included the new occupational health and safety legislation, and paid parental leave, conditions which the minister said would help New Zealand to compete for talent in a globalised labour market.
    CTU secretary Carol Beaumont said the strategy had to include fundamentals of decent working conditions rather than free gym memberships or coffee machines.
    It should be as much about low-paid workers having to hold several part-time jobs to make ends meet as about executives under pressure to work unpaid extra hours.
    Finance union secretary Andrew Casidy said his members suffered stress from all directions, ranging from bank robberies to long hours as a result of job cuts.
    Almost every concern they had related to a lack of "work-life" balance and he urged other unions to follow his organisation's lead in using the issue as a way to rally members.
    Business NZ sees the Government's initiative as another inroad by "Nanny State".
    But Ms Wilson says that all governments play some sort of role in influencing the reconciliation of work and life.
    Cabinet background papers describe the issue as important for New Zealand's economic as well as social future because of our shrinking working-aged population.



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For more details, see our laypersons' guide Timesizing, Not Downsizing, 'flung' into print as a campaign piece during the 1998 race for Joe Kennedy's empty Congressional seat. The handbook is available online from *Amazon.com.

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