2/27/2009  bits and pieces of the timesizing solution in the news, reinvented thousands of times every day in every recession by mid- and small-size companies (and some large, as here, Microsoft UK), organizations and governments despite being *dismissed out-of-hand by many economists and business schools - with excerpting and [commenting] by Phil Hyde (PH) unless otherwise initialed -

1. ECHN To Lay Off 50, Cut Other Expenses, Hartford Courant - United States
   Eastern Connecticut Health Network said Thursday it will lay off 50 employees in across-the-board cuts.
   ECHN said it will also freeze merit increases and 401(a) contributions until the end of the year, reduce the work week for full-time employees from 40 hours to 37.5 hours, and reduce the hours of part-time workers in an effort to avoid further layoffs, said Dennis McConville, senior vice president for planning and marketing.
   ECHN serves 340,000 residents in 19 towns in eastern Connecticut.

2. Microsoft temps get shorter hours - Cost cuts hit contractors, By Gavin Clarke, Register - London,England,UK
   Details are emerging of how Microsoft plans to trim its costs while axing as few full-time staff as possible during the ongoing worldwide recession.
   On current projects, Microsoft is cutting payments to staffing agencies by ten per cent, and it won't raise the rate for temps who return following a mandatory, 100-day break, the AP has reported.
   The company will also reduce the amount of overtime plus the total number of hours worked by temps and contractors.
   The reduction is smaller than expected. In January, chief financial officer Chris Liddel told Wall Street the company would cut "contractor cost" by 15 per cent.
   Last month, Microsoft said it would cut 5,000 staff during the next 18 months, with 1,400 gone immediately. Comments to the MiniMicrosoft blog made it clear that many Microsoft groups had been promised by managers that full-time staff would not feel the cuts.
   That put the focus on contractors and on areas not considered "core" to Microsoft and not home to large numbers of employees - such as the ACES game studio with just 150 staff.
   

   
   

• Shorter hours at Atlantic Zeiser, Security Document World (press release), securitydocumentworld.com - Cardiff,UK
  Atlantic Zeiser will introduce shorter hours for about 40% of its workforce at its plant in Emmingen, Germany, from 1 March.
  The firm, which manufactures machinery and systems for the international security printing and cards industries, says the cyclical investment goods business has suffered a severe decline in demand since last autumn.
  The firm is an Orell Füssli group company. Orell Füssli is an international and trading group focusing on the core business of banknote and security printing, industrial systems used in the personalisation of security documents and branded products, and book retailing. Orell Füssli generates sales of CHF370 million with 1,100 employees at locations in 10 countries.
  

  
  

• Economic crisis complicates California's goals on climate, by Felicity Barringer, NYT, A12.
  COLTON, Calif. - ...For more than a century, Colton's kilns and crushing machines have been churning out cement for the streets and buildings of Los Angeles.
  But the [CalPortland cement] company says the plant's future is now uncertain. The recession has sent cement prices plunging, lowered profits and forced CalPortland's drivers to cut back on hours...

• Wynn Resorts [Ltd.] swings to loss, by Kathy Shwiff, WSJ, B5.
  ...Wynn is suffering from the downturn in Las Vegas, where gambling revenue on the Strip fell 22% in Q4 as travelers make fewer and shorter trips. Earier this month, Wynn said it would reduce pay and cut work weeks at its Wynn Las Vegas hotel to save money...

• Feb 25 Highlights Of Low Points In US Economy, by Linda Young, AHN Media - USA
  ...Health-care provider Norman Regional Hospital announced it will cut 70 jobs and implement cuts in workweek hours in an effort to stay open...
  

  
  

• Long hours link to dementia risk, BBC News - UK
  Long working hours may raise the risk of mental decline and possibly dementia, research suggests.
  The Finnish-led study was based on analysis of 2,214 middle-aged British civil servants.
  It found that those working more than 55 hours a week had poorer mental skills than those who worked a standard working week.
  The American Journal of Epidemiology study found hard workers had problems with short-term memory and word recall.
  Lead researcher Dr Marianna Virtanen, from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, said: "The disadvantages of overtime work should be taken seriously."
  It is not known why working long hours might have an adverse effect on the brain.
  [Now there's a dumb statement.]
  However, the researchers say key factors could include increased sleeping problems, depression, an unhealthy lifestyle and a raised risk of cardiovascular disease, possibly linked to stress.
  The civil servants who took part in the study took five different tests of their mental function, once between 1997 and 1999, and again between 2002 and 2004.
  Those doing the most overtime recorded lower scores in two of the five tests, assessing reasoning and vocabulary.
  Cumulative effect
  The effects were cumulative, the longer the working week was the worse the test results were.
  Employees with long working hours also had shorter sleeping hours, reported more symptoms of depression and used more alcohol than those with normal working hours.
  Professor Mika Kivimäki, who also worked on the study, said "We will go on with this study question in the future.
  "It is particularly important to examine whether the effects are long-lasting and whether long working hours predict more serious conditions such as dementia."
  Professor Cary Cooper, an expert in workplace stress at the University of Lancaster, said it had been long established that consistently working long hours was bad for general health, and now this study suggested it was also bad for mental functioning.
  He said: "This should say to employers that insisting people work long hours is actually not good for your business, and that there is a business case for making sure people have a good work-life balance.
  "But my worry is that in a recession people will actually work longer hours. There will be a culture of "presenteeism" - people will go to work even if they are ill because they want to show commitment, and make sure they are not the next to be made redundant."
  Harriet Millward, deputy chief executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, said: "This study should give pause for thought to workaholics.
  "We already know that dementia risk can be reduced by maintaining a balanced diet, regular social interactions and exercising both our bodies and minds. Perhaps work-life balance should be accounted for too."

2/23/2009  primitive timesizing in the news, reinvented thousands of times every day in every recession by mid- and small-size companies, organizations and governments despite being *dismissed out-of-hand by many economists and business schools - with excerpting and [commenting] by Phil Hyde (PH) unless otherwise initialed -

• Hanging on - Pay cuts, shorter work weeks allow people to keep their jobs, benefits,
  By Patrick Rupinski, Dateline Alabama - Birmingham,AL,USA via TuscaloosaNews.com
  Faced with a worsening economy, Randall-Reilly Publishing Co. slashed its payroll at the beginning of the year.
  But it did not lay off any of its 418 employees.
  Instead it reduced their [hours,] salaries and [gross] wages.
  [But not their hourly rates!]
  “What we are trying to do is preserve as many jobs as we can,” said Michael Reilly, president and CEO of the Tuscaloosa-based publisher of trade journals.
  To accomplish that, Randall-Reilly cut its top management’s salaries by 8 percent, its other salaried workers’ pay by 5 percent and its hourly workers’ wages by two hours [5%] a week, giving them a 38-hour work week, he said.
  Similar moves are occurring throughout the country.
  In Tuscaloosa [also], The Westervelt Co., a timber and land management company, reduced its salaried employees’ pay on Feb. 1.
  Robby Johnson, Westervelt’s marketing director, said the average reduction in salary was 6.7 percent, with higher-paid employees taking a bigger cut.
  [Sort of like a graduated income tax.]
  “It was a blended percentage so it affected everybody, but it was fair to everyone,” he said.
  “There was an overall sense of relief,” Johnson said. “People know they have a job. They have retained all their benefits.”
  At the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, a reduced work force returned in January to a 32-hour, four-day work week, reflecting the decreased orders for the plant’s vehicles. Those returning workers, however, have retained their fringe benefits, Mercedes has said.
  And last week, Stillman College told its employees that it was temporarily reducing their pay. Its highest-paid workers will see a 7 percent cut, according to officials at the private college.
  Among examples from around the country:
  General Motors, which is cutting jobs, said it would cut the pay of its remaining salaried workers by up to 10 percent beginning in May.
  FedEx in December said it was cutting the pay of 36,000 salaried workers by 5 percent.
  Illinois-based office products supplier Acco Brands Corp. said it will impose a 47 percent pay cut for six weeks starting this week, one of the most drastic cuts yet reported that did not involve layoffs.
  As recently as a couple of years ago, such moves would have been unthinkable and would have caused an exodus of workers.
  But today, instead of quitting, many workers breathe a sigh of relief, knowing they still have a job and maybe some fringe benefits like health insurance.
  “The response was 99 percent positive,” Reilly said. “The associates understood that it was done because of the economic downturn. It is temporary, but we have no set deadline for when it will be lifted. We have to wait to see when our business gets turned around.”
  Management experts agree cutting pay rather than laying off workers makes sense for both employers facing drastically reduced revenues and their employees, who may be fearful of losing their jobs.
  “If employees are reading the newspaper, I think they have to be happy if this happens to them,” said James Cashman, a University of Alabama professor of management. “While it forces workers to tighten their belts, they still have their benefits and their jobs. Those who have jobs have to be extremely happy that their employer did not take the hatchet out to cut jobs.”
  Trevor Bain, a UA professor emeritus in management, said employers make an investment in training and recruiting their workers. That investment is lost in layoffs.
  “Firms do not want to lose good people,” he said. “They want to hold on to them, so the business will cut workers’ hours, reduce their salaries or tell them to take an unpaid vacation — anything to keep the connection with the company going.”
  That’s something that Randall-Reilly looked at before it announced its pay cuts.
  One of the publisher’s biggest assets is its highly skilled and trained work force, Reilly said.
  “This economy will turn around and when this recession is over, we will need our assets in place,” he said.
  [And even if it doesn't turn around for a long, long time, companies will be a lot more competitive with their highly skilled
  There are no estimates on how many Alabama workers have had their [hours and] pay cut during the recession. The Alabama Department of Industrial Relations’ monthly labor survey of state manufacturers shows the average weekly earnings of $621.20 in December, down from $638.72 a year earlier. Some of the reduction came from reduced overtime, which is tracked, but the survey does not ask surveyed employers if they have cut workers’ pay, said department spokeswoman Tara Hutchison.
  But the practice of cutting [hours and] pay is growing in the United States.
  Bain, who also is a labor mediator/arbitrator, said Japanese and European businesses have used [hours and] pay reductions for years during economic hard times.
  “They will cut the hours of everyone and spread the misery around,” he said.
  [And not only does 'misery love company,' but misery shared is misery eased, as pointed out by Sonja Lyubomirsky pointed out in her op ed, "Why we're still happy," in 12/27/09's N.Y.Times.]
  “For the United States, it is a little bit of a new story. American firms long have had a tradition of cutting labor costs first [through layoffs]. You have seen that with the airlines, because cutting labor costs is a very quick way to save money because you don’t have the payroll to deal with.”
  [Not really a new story since it happens in tens of thousands of mid- and small-sized companies in every recession - and some big ones too - but it's a story that has been ignored, because people seem to have a hard time focusing on the time dimension, even though 'timesizing instead of downsizing' can be expanded into a sustainable, growth-independent full-employment program and even a whole new type of economics that is much more ecofriendly than current compulsive growGrowGROW!]
  Historically, the United States had a larger number of available workers [ie: a labor surplus, except during war] so it was easier to find new workers when business picked up, he said.
  But with the recession more than a year old and expected to last through this year, if not longer, UA’s Cashman said he expects more employers will be forced to reduce [hours and] payrolls. He said he thinks it would be better to do that by cutting pay rather than jobs.
  The reduction in pay has a price beyond the direct effect on workers’ income. With less to spend, those workers may put off buying a new car or a new sofa or taking a major vacation, adding to the economic doldrums.
  [But a reduction in jobs has a much more drastic effect.]
  Both Cashman and Bain said workers who have had their pay cut should not expect employers to immediately make up the lost pay when the economy recovers.
  “Once [hours and gross] wages are cut, they will come back very slowly,” Bain said. “You will not see wages being brought back up until there is an extended market recovery.”
  [Note that another benefit of cutting hours is that hourly wages are NOT cut - your hourly rate remains the same, though your overall income shrinks due to fewer hours. But again, fewer hours is better than no hours at all for both the individual and the economy overall - quite a contrast to the self-fueling downspin that layoffs deliver.]
  When better times return, pay increases will be driven more by the competition for skilled workers than by an effort to make up for reduced pay and nonraises during the recession, he said.
  Reach Patrick Rupinski at 205-722-0213 or patrick.rupinski@tuscaloosanews.com

2/22/2009  primitive timesizing in the news, reinvented thousands of times every day in every recession by mid- and small-size companies, organizations and governments despite being *dismissed out-of-hand by many economists and business schools - with excerpting and [commenting] by Phil Hyde (PH) unless otherwise initialed -

• Tough sell, By Rodney Manley - rmanley@macon.com, Macon Telegraph - Macon,GA,USA
  When gas prices spiked last summer, driving up delivery and food costs, vending companies might have thought they had seen the worst of it.
  “It was like a one-two punch,” said Barry Franklin, owner of Oconee Vendors in Milledgeville. “The gas prices started coming down, but the food prices have not stopped going up.”
  The recession, however, has dealt an even bigger blow to the industry. Vendors count on beverage and snack machines in offices and factories, so layoffs and plant closings have cut into revenue.
  “Vending very much depends on people working, and unemployment has started to soar,” said Ben Ginsberg, publisher and editor of Vending and OCS magazine in Atlanta. “With not as many people at work, there are not as many people to use the equipment, and not as many people buying product.”
  To stay in business, many vendors are changing the way they do business. Some are restructuring routes, stocking machines less frequently, “doing anything they can to save on the expenses of doing business,” said Ginsberg.
  Middle Georgia Vendors in Macon cut back to a four-day workweek when gas prices climbed to $4 a gallon. The company stuck with the model, which has helped during lean times, said Ronnie Hinson, the company’s owner and president.
  Oconee Vending had to cut workers, eliminating two jobs.
  “We haven’t lost a factory,” Franklin said. “What has hurt us is when they’ve cut back on (employees’) time. ... We completely changed our business strategy, from smothering people with service to cutting back wherever we can.”
  A ‘TOUGH, TOUGH SCENE’
  Full-scale vending – providing beverages, coffee, snacks and other food items in the automated machines – is a $25 billion a year industry, Ginsberg said. After several tough years, vending companies finally were poised for a strong showing, even with the spike in fuel prices.
  Then came the last quarter of 2008, when the economy tanked.
  “The vending industry mirrors the trends pretty closely with the activity that goes on with the economy, particularly the manufacturing industry,” said Brian Allen of National Automatic Merchandising Association in Chicago. “Our industry has been struggling for years to keep up with the cost of new equipment and the cost of product and everything else.”
  Ginsberg described the industry nationwide as a “tough, tough scene.”
  “If a vendor’s matching last year, he’s pretty happy, and I don’t think many are,” he said. “It’s been as tough as I’ve seen in a long number of years.”
  Franklin said one adjustment he’s made has been to eliminate locations that were “borderline profitable.” Still, route restructuring and shorter workweeks can only help so much when customers are holding on to their loose change.
  “They have less money to spend,” said Franklin, “and prices continue to go up.”
  The industry has not seen many bankruptcies, Ginsberg said, but more owners are selling their businesses, using equipment and established routes as selling points.
  “Some small operators figure they’ve had enough and don’t want to fight the battle anymore.”
  DIVERSIFYING PAYS OFF
  Middle Georgia Vendors’ Hinson estimates his vending sales are down about 10 percent. He believes sales could be worse if not for the company’s clientele. Middle Georgia Vendors serves some factories, but a good number of its almost 500 clients are schools and nursing homes. The company also serves several hospitals, including the Coliseum hospitals in Macon and Peach County Hospital in Fort Valley.
  “The best locations in vending are the ones that do not close,” Hinson said, “the ones open 24 hours.”
  While vending sales are down, overall sales are up because of decisions to diversify. The company now works some concessions at youth league games, and it built an expansion of its cash-and-carry wholesale business when gas prices rose last year.
  Hinson, who puts the Christian fish symbol on company vehicles, said some people questioned the wisdom of the move, which he called a “step out on faith.”
  “If you’re not going forward, you’re going backward. At the same time, we want to take care of what we have.
  “You have to try to find new and innovative ideas,” Hinson said. “People are going to eat. People are going to drink soft drinks.”
  One move that many vendors are making is taking on “office coffee service” – a multi-billion dollar business and the “OCS” in the title of Ginsberg’s magazine.
  “That part of the business seems to have held up reasonably well,” he said.
  Once believed to be recession proof, the vending industry has fallen on hard times before, and Ginsberg said he’s optimistic for another turnaround.
  “The industry in my time has been through several recessions,” he said, “but there hasn’t been anything like this that’s spread all across the universe. It depends on putting people to work.”
  To contact writer Rodney Manley, call 744-4623.
  

  
  

• Elyria to close fire station, cut services, lay off workers to cover budget shortfall, by Tom Feran, The Plain Dealer - cleveland.com - Cleveland,OH,USA
  Elyria, Ohio -- Money problems will force this city of 55,000 people to close a fire station, lay off some workers, shorten the workweek for others and end summer recreation programs.
  Those cuts and more -- along with a possible increase in the city's payroll tax -- are needed to cover a projected shortfall of $3 million, or 10 percent of the city's annual spending. Mayor William Grace said a still-undetermined number of layoff notices will go out Friday.
  "Every department is going to be affected dramatically," Grace said.
  Elyria is just the latest Northeast Ohio community to encounter severe financial problems. Last fall, Garfield Heights slipped into fiscal emergency, a declaration that forces a state oversight committee to take control of the city's finances. At the end of 2008, North Olmsted furloughed 15 workers, including five firefighters and five police officers.
  Grace said Elyria's budget woes arose last fall, when tax revenues tailed off. Year-end collections were 4 percent below 2007.
  "We'll get through it, and the sooner we take our actions, the less severe they'll be," he said.
  He thinks a municipal income tax increase -- from 1.75 percent to 2 percent -- will probably go to voters in November.
  The biggest cut -- about $900,000 -- will hit the Fire Department, which also gets the biggest single share of the city's $30 million general fund. In addition to closing one of three fire stations, the city will reduce minimum shift levels from 14 firefighters to 11.
  A proposed $700,000 reduction for the Police Department will force the layoff of civilian support staff and corrections officers.
  The Parks Department, facing a cut of $500,000, will lose all part-timers and half its full-time staff and will end summer recreation programs.
  Grace said another $500,000 would come in general government cuts that would include a shortened workweek and 10 percent wage reductions for workers in other departments.
  Holiday fireworks, hanging flower baskets, holiday lighting and municipal support for the Apple Festival and Elyria High School Band Appreciation Concert also will end, saving about $100,000.
  The city is working with nonprofit groups that use municipal facilities to continue recreation programs "as much as possible," Grace said, but an increase in revenue will be needed to prevent further cuts.
  To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: tferan@plaind.com, 216-999-6251

• Staff agree on four-day work week, BY RACHEL WILLIAMS BUSINESS REPORTER, Tasmania Examiner - Launceston,Tasmania,Australia
  ACL BEARING Co. workers at Rocherlea will next week reduce their hours by one day a week after an almost unanimous show of support to keep the company afloat.
  Company chairman Ivan James yesterday announced that 267 out of a total of 274 employees applied for unpaid leave for the next 18 weeks.
  Mr James said it was a show of good teamwork that so many people had agreed to the company's solution to deal with a 30 per cent downturn in sales.
  The embattled company's sister operation in Brisbane, ACL Gasket Company, will also reduce to a four- day week after 48 of the 54 employees applied for unpaid leave until the end of June.
  Mr James said the situation was being reviewed daily but there was no long-term forecast to predict if the work hour reduction would need to be extended further.
  "We are hopeful that the worst of the downturn will be through by that time," Mr James said.
  Stand down provisions under the Metal, Engineering and Associated Industries Award would be implemented for those workers who did not volunteer for the reduced working hours. Mr James said the award stated that the employer has the right to deduct payment for any day an employee could not be usefully employed because of any strike, breakdown of machinery or any stoppage of work by any cause for which the employer could not reasonably be held responsible.
  Mr James said ACL was experiencing an unprecedented reduction in orders from car companies including Ford, Holden and Toyota.
  "After considering the impact of these reductions across the business, after consulting with the single bargaining units at each site on this issue, and after informing all employees of the situation, the company has no option but to reduce its operations to a 32-hour week from February 23 to June 26," he said.
  "We regret that this action is necessary but it is driven by the clear company objective to maintain jobs in these difficult times.
  "This action is not unique to ACL - the global car industry is under great stress at all levels and many suppliers have adopted a four-day week or some similar arrangement."
  Combined with the company's managers taking a 16 per cent pay cut, the four-day week will save ACL almost $250,000 a month.

2/20/2009  primitive timesizing in the news, reinvented thousands of times every day in every recession by mid- and small-size companies, organizations and governments despite being *dismissed out-of-hand by many economists and business schools - with excerpting and [commenting] by Phil Hyde (PH) unless otherwise initialed -

1. Japan turns to 'work-sharing' to avoid layoffs, by Yuri Kageyama, AP via AOL News Australia via aol.com.au/news; and 7/21 The Hindu via HinduOnNet.com; and as "Japan: Recession Spurs 'Work-Sharing' To Avoid Layoffs" via 2/20 huffingtonpost.com and as "Firms warming to work-sharing - New tack means fewer hours, less pay, but U.S.-style mass layoffs are avoided' via JapanTimes.co.jp
   HIRAKATA, Osaka Pref., Japan - Yasuo Igarashi spends a lot of time these days on the jungle gym with his daughter, after his employer joined the growing ranks of Japanese companies adopting "work-sharing" to ride out the global slump.
   Common in parts of Europe, work-sharing means slashing employees' pay and hours instead of firing people outright. Two or three people might share what previously was one person's job.
   The idea is that employees are required to share the pain of coping with hard times while everyone gets to keep their jobs - even if they're paid less.
   Work-sharing is the latest buzzword in Japan Inc. Proponents say it's a good way to avoid American-style layoffs in a society that has long fostered lifetime employment. Toyota Motor Corp., Mazda Motor Corp., Toshiba Corp. and Fujitsu Inc., have all taken up some kind of work-sharing. Nissan Motor Co. and others are considering it.
   Although critics say it's merely a fancy way to disguise wage cuts, the practice is winning powerful supporters here, including Fujio Mitarai, the head of the major business lobby Keidanren.
   The government is now considering earmarking public money for companies that take up work-sharing to curb surging joblessness as the world's second-largest economy slides into what authorities are calling Japan's worst recession since World War II.
   Companies big and small are expecting losses or drastically dwindling profits. Thousands of job cuts have been announced in recent weeks.
   At ASKK Ltd., a precision machinery maker in Hirakata, central Japan, with 50 employees, that counts Panasonic Corp., Sharp Corp. and Toyota affiliates among its clients, no one has lost their job.
   But Igarashi, a 30-year-old employee there, says his monthly pay has dropped by about 60,000 yen ($640) from the 270,000 yen ($2,900) he earned before work-sharing kicked in earlier this year.
   Like many Japanese, Igarashi used to work six days a week and racked up a couple of hours overtime every day. Now he works only four days a week.
   "It can't be helped," he said with a smile and a shrug as he toiled by his whirring machine. "I try to find things to do that don't cost money."
   Igarashi has cut back on buying new clothes, and his wife looks for discount coupons for groceries. On the upside, he spends more time with his family, including going to the playground with his 3-year-old daughter.
   A handful of Japanese companies experimented with work-sharing during a slowdown a decade ago, but this time more are adopting the practice than ever before as a way to survive the far more serious recession.
   Work-sharing is catching on here for cultural, legal and practical reasons.
   Many Japanese companies maintain the tradition of lifetime employment so work-sharing is a way to avoid firing regular workers. So far, most of the layoffs have involved contract workers, whose use became legal in recent years to skirt the regulations protecting full-time, salaried workers.
   Labor laws
   Labor laws tend to defend lifetime employment, usually requiring companies to provide hefty severance packages or risk facing lawsuits. If a company is in bankruptcy or losing money, it becomes easier legally to lay off workers.
   At the same time, work-sharing allows companies to keep trained workers - and bring them back up to full-time quickly, once a recovery comes.
   Work-sharing is routine in nations such as Germany and Switzerland, where the government provides unemployment benefits to make up for the income fall from lost hours, said Jenny Hunt, economics professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
   She said the practice is unlikely to be popular in the U.S., where companies prefer to "concentrate the misery in a few people," and simply reduce workers.
   [- and markets. Here's Japan's chance to catch up to Number One. But over a third of the U.S. states (18 as of 7/7/2009) do have government work-sharing programs with pressure on the rest to get'em...quick. Do any Japanese cities or prefectures have worksharing support? Email us at  ecdesignr@yahoo.ca  their webpage URLs and we'll put them on our list and give you a 'tip of the hat" and a hotlink if you've got a website, as long as you ain't the American Nazi Party.]
   "The income loss is spread over more people, and fewer people suffer the depression associated with unemployment," Hunt said. "The economic advantage is that firms retain their workers who are experienced on the job."
   Work-sharing is taking various forms in Japan, and some companies aren't even calling it that.
   At Tourism Essentials Tokyo, a job-referral company, two flight attendants sent to an airline were asked to share one job, and one person's pay, to avoid one of them getting fired.
   At Fujitsu's computer chip unit, the shifts at the 24-hour-running plants were increased from two shifts of 12 hours each to three 8-hour shifts so each worker had their hours and pay reduced by a third.
   At auto plants across Japan, including Suzuki Motor Corp. and Mazda, assembly lines are grinding to a halt on some days, resulting in a type of work-sharing. Toyota Motor Corp. has announced it will carry out work-sharing at its U.S. plants but has not expanded that to Japan.
   A recent survey by the Yomiuri newspaper found about half of its respondents, a nationwide sample of 1,077 people, support the idea of work-sharing, although they also expressed fears about lower pay.
   [South Korea  South Korea  South Korea  South Korea  South Korea  South Korea  ]
   Work-sharing is also finding acceptance in nearby South Korea.
   A group of labor, management, civic groups and the government to tackle the financial crisis is preparing to soon announce measures that will include work-sharing as a key element, said Kim Soo-gon, a Ministry of Labor official.
   The government plans subsidies for companies that maintain employment by sending workers on paid vacations and training programs, he said.
   Work-sharing has created some problems, says Sadao Nagakura, an executive at ASKK, the precision equipment maker.
   Accustomed to working long hours, some employees found that cutting back undermined their morale.
   [Get a life of your own, you wimps!]
   Another obstacle was that wives of male employees complained that they didn't want their spouses at home, he said.
   [Stake out turf!]
   Side jobs are allowed, he said, and at least one worker has already starting working at a convenience store on Saturdays to supplement his income.
   [But 'moonlighters' will eventually have to be included on a shadow time accounting basis, as provided for in Phase Three of the Timesizing program.]
   Nagakura, who has made a point of ending his work day at 3 p.m. lately, sees work-sharing as the best way to cope with a drop in orders that has erased about two-thirds of ASKK's profit over the last year.
   "There's no work for them to do even if they show up," he said. "I tell them to go on walks with their wives, holding hands."
   But Nagakura also sees the downturn as an economic opportunity to get ahead. He expects most rivals to go bankrupt in the next year or two before a recovery comes while his company rides out the recession in good shape.
   "We are going to survive, and we are going to win," he said.
   Associated Press Writer ShinWoo Kang in Seoul contributed to this report.

2. [Whoa - Krugman asking The Big Question?! -]
   Who'll stop the pain? - Worries about a prolonged slump, op ed by Paul Krugman, NYT, A23.
   ...What's supposed to end this slump? No doubt 'this, too, shall pass' - but how, and when?
   ...The Obama administration is trying to mitigate the slump, not end it. The stimulus bill, on the administration's own estimates, will limit the rise in unemployment [ed: not by much] but fall far short of restoring full employment [ed: we haven't seen full employment since 1944]...
   What, then, will actually end the slump?
   Well, the Great Depression did eventually come to an end, but that was thanks to an enormous war...
   [It was already ending intelligently thanks to a nationwide innovation, the setting of a nationwide maximum workweek and the lowering of that workweek by two hours a year for two years. Unemployment, which peaked at 24.9% in 1933, troughed at 14.3% in 1937 and jumped back up to 19.0% in 1938. All the makework of the first New Deal couldn't even cut it by half (12.5%), so FDR went for the most downplayed but effective part of the second New Deal: systematic setting and reduction of worktime per person per week. Unemployment went down 2% for every 2 hours cut from the workweek - 1938: 19.0%, 1939: 17.2%, 1940: 14.6%, and 1941: 9.9% helped by Lend Lease in March and Pearl Harbor in December. The enormous war merely did what timesizing was doing faster, more dangerously and more wastefully, and distracted everyone from a policy that was working but has been spun as a failure - with no evidence - ever since.]
   So will our slump go on forever? No. In fact, the seeds of eventual recovery are already being planted.
   [Oh he thinks he has an answer with no timeframe? Check out this "answer" -]
   ...Housing starts [having] fallen to their lowest level in 50 years...means that spending on construction will fall even more. But it also means that the supply of houses is lagging behind population growth, which will eventually prompt a housing revival.
   [Anyone who has visited the Third World, or for that matter, post-Katrina New Orleans or the burgeoning homeless population in our inner cities, knows that mere population growth has no necessary connection to increased housing.]
   ...We're building up a pent-up demand for cars [and] durable goods and assets...
   [Again, demand without money is meaningless. The Third World is full of demand, but all the money is in the hands of the top tiny fraction of the population who were already spending all they cared to before they got the last ten million. And Krugman is not here mentioning that core money-concentration problem that is centrifuged by a perceived general labor shortage and the taxing of the wealthy which shortage-empowered working families can implement so that the recent astronomical redistribution of the national income and wealth to the nonspending topmost brackets can be reversed.]
   But still I wonder: Who'll stop the pain?
   [The people themselves...if they convert overtime into jobs and implement Reuther's " flexible adjustment of the workweek against unemployment" - in plain English, Phil Hyde will stop the pain, with Timesizing.]

   
   

1. 5,000 Characters, By Tom "The Sandwichman" Walker of Vancouver BC, EconoSpeak.blogspot.com
   The White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families has increased their comment submission length from 500 to 5000 characters. The Sandwichman submitted the following 4,994 character summary, along with a link to a longer version:
   The key to addressing the issues of work and family balance, labor standards, equitable distribution of the fruits of economic progress and protection of the environment lies in regulating and limiting the hours of work. In the absence of countervailing union pressure or government policy, there is a structural bias that leads to the prevalence of socially and environmentally harmful long hours of work. This summary outlines the case for work time reduction and draws attention to a promising policy innovation to redress the current imbalance. A full, hyperlinked version of this submission is available [at the end of this post].
   American families have changed substantially since the 1960s but many policies aimed at assuring income security have remained unchanged since the New Deal of the 1930s. Today, two-thirds of all families with children are either single-parent or dual-earner families. Between 1979 and 2000, the hours worked per year by married couples with children increased by 16 percent, or nearly 500 hours. Bernstein and Kornbluh noted that without that increase in hours worked, the incomes of middle- and lower-income families would have stagnated or declined. That conclusion, however, overlooks the possibility that the increased supply of hours may itself have contributed, through a feedback effect, to wage stagnation.
   Most work-family advocates in the U.S. focus on the need for family-friendly policies such as child-care, paid family leave and flexible scheduling that mitigate the effects of a seemingly immutable working time regime. "The challenge," though, Kornbluh has noted, "is to frame work-life balance as a broader political economy issue."
   Historically, work-life balance was framed as a broader political economy issue in labor agitation for shorter working time. For nearly a century, from the 1860s to the 1950s, American labor unions also put forward the reduction of working time as their focal strategy for combating unemployment. After the Second World War, though, the unions' enthusiasm for shorter hours waned. Instead, the AFL-CIO primarily focused its efforts on urging government spending to foster economic growth and only sought shorter hours as a "last resort."
   [But "the last shall be first." Basically, unions "sold their birthright for a mess of pottage." Unions were seduced with management-cancellable 'candy' (pay & benefits) into giving up their power lever, smaller labor surplus by means of market-force-harnessing shorter hours, and after peaking in the mid-50s, unions proceeded to shrink to 13% of the workforce. By not staying 'on issue' in terms of shorter hours, unions have made themselves useless in the struggle for sustainable social progress.]
   What changed between the 1930s and the 1960s was the acceptance of the idea that government spending could stimulate economic growth. Although popularly referred to as "Keynesianism," Keynes himself did not accept the idea that boundless expansion of production and consumption was worthwhile for its own sake. Instead, he specified working less as the "ultimate cure" for unemployment. The imperative for growth was a notion added by later economists.
   Continued economic growth, fostered by government fiscal and monetary strategies, has led to an increase in effective demand for what Hirsch called positional goods. Competition for these socially or physically scarce or congested goods draws resources away from the output of final consumption goods and also exacts a personal cost in terms of time pressure. Individuals are compelled to spend more time in market activities and thus have less time to spend in non-commercial pursuits such as production for home consumption, leisure and sociability. "This has helped to upset a long-held expectation about the potential fruits of economic growth – namely, that they will be taken increasingly in the form of relief from material pursuits."
   Rosnick and Weisbrot estimated that if European countries adopted the long working hours prevailing in the U.S., they would consume 25 percent more energy. Conversely, if the U.S. adopted working times closer to the European average, it would consume 20 percent less energy. Assuming that the intensity of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of GDP continues to decline at a rate consistent with the historical trend, economic growth averaging 2.5 percent annually would increase emissions by around 75 percent over the next 30 years. Meanwhile, poverty and unemployment will creep steadily upward. The alternative to continual economic growth and a resulting environmental and/or social catastrophe is to reduce the average hours of work for the bulk of the working population and increase employment opportunities for the unemployed and the underemployed.
   Dean Baker has proposed government subsidies for shorter hours and vacation pay as part of the economic stimulus plan.

   The government could give employers an incentive to provide paid time off now by giving tax breaks to cover all or most of the paid time off…
   This is a neat form of stimulus because it directly gives employers an incentive to hire more workers, as can be easily shown…
   If employers of 50 million workers took up the deal, then this 6 percent would translate into 3 million jobs…

   There would undoubtedly be technical challenges to implementing a scheme such as that outlined by Baker. But there are challenges to implementing any stimulus package or policy reform.
   [But they are the right challenges if they are anywhere along the path of spreading the vanishing natural employment rather than artificial job creation, and the most gradual and market-oriented overall version of this approach is the five-phase Timesizing program.]

2. Portfolio career replaces jobs for life as baby boomers pay, by Leon Gettler, 2/20 (cross-dateline) The Age - Melbourne,Australia
   THE financial meltdown will reshape the nature of work forever. When the recovery finally comes, careers and employment practices will look different, with more people [forced! to be] taking time out during the upheaval. That will lead to a reappraisal of the way we see work and leisure.
   [Leisure is financially secure and consciously chosen. Unemployment is insecure and willynilly.]
   How is that possible when people put in long hours? They do it because income, not the amount of leisure, is linked to our unquenchable desire for recognition and status. And how could there be more leisure with the traditional concept of retirement now coming to an end? After all, with so many Australians having their superannuation savings wiped out, or having lost everything because they took advice to buy shares with borrowed money, baby boomers will be working longer.
   Still, to describe this as "work until you drop" is wrong and simplistic. With fewer full-time jobs, it will be more of a portfolio approach, a term usually associated with the management thinker Charles Handy, who first used it in 1984.
   Portfolio careers often entail bringing together lots of different jobs, anything from working as a temp to consulting to company director. It can also involve volunteer work and time for personal development, which can mean anything from travel to writing books to yoga or learning a language. This is not unlike the student who attends uni, works as a part-time receptionist and does volunteer work at the local mission.
   But this trend was happening before the downturn. There is no longer a binary choice between work and retirement. The phenomenon of "worktirement", where older workers were staying on the job, going part-time, and taking on other kinds of work, was becoming popular. As was the "encore career", where boomers lent their skills to non-profits tackling such issues as environment, education, poverty and health.
   There are obvious reasons. First, the shift to service industries in the developed world means that fewer people have been doing hard, physical yakka in factories and mines and on farms and docks. We are not worn out after decades in the workforce. Secondly, the concept of retirement was originally designed around the notion that people stepped down at 65, and then snapped off this mortal coil shortly after. These days, they can be around 20 or even 30 years on from their 60s, and still be active.
   Adding to the leisure push is the growing trend of companies now cutting costs by putting their workers on three or four-day weeks. In the US, for example, Nissan is keeping car assembly plants on a four-day weeks and KPMG in Britain is offering its staff a shorter working week — at last count, 70% of staff had applied to work a shorter week or take extended, unpaid leave — and in Germany, Siemens is looking at reduced working weeks to prevent lay-offs. In Australia, several smaller companies are starting to do it and staff at accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers are being urged to cut their hours.
   Three years ago, a study by US economists Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst found a dramatic increase in leisure time over the past 40 years. Leisure for men had increased by six to eight hours a week, motivated principally by fewer hours at work.
   [Probably not financially secure leisure, but insecure unemployment, since Juliet Schor found the opposite in her 1992 book "The Overworked American" - that the American workyear had actually expanded by a month since 1970. You can't count on mainstream economists to distinguish leisure from unemployment - it might make their "work hard to get ahead" dogma look bad, not to say impossible during the Age of Robotization.]
   Even more interesting was the figure showing that leisure for women had increased four to eight hours a week, motivated by what the economists call a "decline in home production work hours", created by dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, more sophisticated cooking equipment and outsourcing of functions such as house cleaning. Women have more leisure, despite their greater numbers entering the workforce.
   [There's a sentence of doubletalk if ever we've heard one.]
   The combining of work and leisure has become an increasing focus of Melbourne company Act 3. Set up to work with companies to develop options for older workers, the downturn sees it helping companies transfer people out of the business at all levels, through solutions that provide more leisure time.
   [Au contraire, the blurring of work and leisure means less real leisure and more bogus time on the beach...with your cellphone and/or blackberry. "On call" is NOT leisure.]
   leon@leongettler.com

3. Working Dad: Work-life balance is suffering from economic stress, By PAUL NYHAN, P-I REPORTER, seattlepi.com
   The nation's widening recession is reshaping the lives of working parents, disrupting not only their fragile balance of job and family but how they think about that elusive goal.
   It turns out working parents are hurting themselves by asking for less in an economy that seems to get worse by the week.
   Around Seattle and the nation, new moms are cutting short maternity leaves, while parents are logging more hours at work and are less likely to seek time off, experts suggest.
   "Parents may censor themselves," said Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women's Policy Research in Washington, D.C. "They wouldn't want to stand out as someone who needs things, the needy employee."
   The recession also is disturbing maternity leaves, as mothers squeeze job hunting in between nursing and diaper changing.
   So far, evidence is anecdotal -- sweeping research of workplace trends won't arrive for a while -- but those stories and economic history are compelling.
   History suggests that when our economy slumps, employers gain an edge in setting the rules of work, thanks to the basic economics of supply and demand.
   [Yep, the economy slumps because labor has become a surplus commodity. And when you're a surplus commodity, you're common as dirt and cheap as dirt. And "you can't get no respec'."]
   "In good times, employers may be willing to put up with things," said Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Center for American Progress. "These are bad times. There are 10 people who can take the job you have if you have any sort of extenuating circumstances."
   While managers may gain power over work-life balance, parents also cede them power by limiting extenuating circumstances -- a day off for a sick child, absences for school field trips, extra vacation -- in today's economic uncertainty, Boushey said.
   [The good news for the planet is that this may discourage reproduction and slow the population explosion.]
   In North Seattle, Alice Naughton hears complaints from her circle of new moms. One friend is cutting short her yearlong maternity leave, and another is back to working start-up hours at her public relations business after laying off staff.
   [Shoulda shared the pain and cut hours for all, not jobs for a few (and a few more, and a few more...).]
   Naughton's own work-life balance was destroyed when she lost her job as project manager for a California-based educational software company.
   The 5 a.m.-to-2-p.m. workday that freed afternoons for her baby daughter was gone, replaced by frequent searches on CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com.
   Naturally upbeat, Naughton finds juggling motherhood and a job hunt increasingly stressful, especially since her husband is a pilot and often gone for four days in a row.
   "It just creates a lot stress," Naughton said.
   Overall, mothers likely will play an even bigger role in the struggle to preserve work-life balance in this recession because more men than women are losing their jobs, forcing families to rely on Mom's income, Boushey said.
   [cuz men are higher paid?]
   This reliance creates problems because women still earn less, on average, than men.
   [y-y-yep]
   "What is happening is higher-level jobs are going first in this economy, and it's the lower-paid wives who are keeping their jobs, and wives are having to scramble," said Carol Evans, chief executive at New York-based Working Mother Media.
   [and that weakens the foundational consumer markets faster and cuts marketable productivity quicker.]
   If the past is any guide, companies also are scrambling to cut costs, including family-friendly benefits such as broad health care coverage, Hartmann suggested.
   What is scarier is how quickly this economy is bleeding jobs -- roughly 3 million in the past three months alone -- faster than any other time in recent economic history, Hartmann added.
   "The financial strains on families are going to be enormous," she said.
   Amid all of this strain, families may think it's a bad time to ask for flexibility at work, but they may be wrong.
   Companies may be as desperate to save money as parents are to save their jobs, and a reduced workweek sometimes fills both needs.
   Since each job is different, make sure your boss is open to a new arrangement, such as a four-day workweek, said Michelle Goodman, author of the local work-balance blog Nine to Thrive.
   There also is strength in numbers, such as four or five employees banding together with a thoughtful written proposal, says Pat Katepoo, founder of WorkOptions.com.
   "It is called flexible downsizing, and it's an excellent way to leverage the situation," Katepoo said.
   When it comes to paternity leave, dads don't have to demand a block of weeks or months, Katepoo said.
   Instead, dads can ask for a few days off a week under a lesser-known provision of the Family and Medical Leave Act, Katepoo said.
   A dad who qualifies can work three days or four days a week and still help with his new baby, if his boss agrees, she wrote on her Web site.
   Whatever your work situation, this historic recession will call for flexibility in the corner office and the cubicle.
   It also may present parents with painful choices.
   Naughton was planning to have two children. But with no end in sight for this recession, she is reconsidering.
   "I am 39," she said, "and it's not like I can just hang out for a few years."
   paulnyhan@seattlepi.com, 206-448-8145, blog.seattlepi.com/family

4. Youth Unemployment and Underemployment in Africa Brings Uncertainty and Opportunity, by Eric Zuehlke, Population Reference Bureau, PRB.org
   From the recent riots in Greece to increased unemployment in urban China to anxiety over the prospect of more protests by young people throughout Europe, youth unemployment and underemployment is increasingly recognized as a potential trigger for social instability in other world regions. Africa in particular faces demographic challenges as its population of young people ages 15 to 24 increases and access to secure jobs continues to be problematic. In addition, the global financial crisis threatens to further strain labor markets and exacerbate a tenuous situation for Africa's youth.
   Beyond economic costs, high rates of youth unemployment and underemployment have social ramifications. Some youth with few job prospects and little hope of future advancement may see little alternative to criminal activities or joining armed conflicts. "Unemployed and underemployed [youth] are more exposed to conflicts and illegal activities—many of them fall prey to armed and rebel groups," says Jorge Saba Arbache of the Office of the Chief Economist, Africa Region at the World Bank. In addition he says, "Youth unemployed and underemployed are more exposed to economic cycles," making them vulnerable to job instability.
   The World Bank's Youth and Unemployment in Africa: The Potential, The Problem, The Promise report, released in December 2008, investigates the nature of Africa's youth demographics and recommends policies to give its youth access to stable employment. It argues that creating viable jobs for young people is a recondition for Africa's poverty eradication, sustainable development, and peace; and in countries emerging from conflict, access to employment for youth is integral to peace-building processes.
   Africa's Unemployed Youth and Demographic Challenge
   Africa has the fastest-growing and most youthful population in the world. Over 20 percent of Africa's population is between the ages of 15 to 24 and, since over 40 percent of Africa's population is under 15 years of age, that number is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. According to the International Labour Office, youth make up as much as 36 percent of the total working-age population and three in five of Africa's unemployed are youth.
   "The [high] total fertility rate is Africa's biggest demographic challenge," says Carl Haub, senior demographer at PRB. "For 30 years, 45 percent of most African countries' population has been below age 15. So, a constantly rising number entering the labor force ages is one of Africa's biggest challenges." The combination of population growth associated with high fertility rates and the slow pace of job creation in Africa presents challenges to its youth. Despite annual economic growth rates of 6 percent or more in sub-Saharan Africa in recent years, there has not been a sufficient increase in stable employment opportunities for young people. With current demographic trends, the pressure to create new jobs will only increase over the coming decades.
   Migration patterns put further strain on urban areas and labor opportunities. Young people are more likely than other age groups to migrate from rural to urban areas. According to Arbache, "Empirical analyses show that rural youth migrate to urban areas to find better educational and work opportunities and a way out of poverty. Unemployment and underemployment in urban areas are associated with rural-urban migration. Young migrants often earn less than their counterparts in urban areas, but more than those in rural areas." Despite increased rural-urban migration however, over 70 percent of the African youth population still lives in rural areas. In fact, a major finding in the World Bank report is that the average young person in Africa is not an urban resident who migrated from a village. The average young person is a poor, literate, but out-of-school female living in a rural area.
   Unemployed and Underemployed
   Focusing solely on unemployed youth overlooks the fact that many young people may be working but are underemployed, working shorter hours than they would like, or reaping little economic gain.
   [What he means is "making less money than they would like" - young people are hardly worried about how short a time they take to make it.]
   In addition, in areas with few formal employment opportunities, many are left to fend for themselves in the informal economy, often beyond the scope of official employment statistics. The problem is that underemployment is difficult to measure.
   "What economists call 'underemployment' is so difficult to define and measure because the standard of comparison, 'fully employed', is itself difficult to define and measure," says Bill Butz, president and CEO, of PRB. "So is a person 'underemployed' if he or she is working fewer than 52 weeks in the year, or fewer than 40 hours in a week, or just fewer weeks or hours than he would like to work, or else less intensively than he might be able if well nourished and healthy? All four standards of comparison are used…and all are arbitrary. Each yields a different level of measured underemployment."
   [Note the unquestioned assumption that the arbitrary, historically accidental 40 hours in the workweek is on par with the mathematically hardwired 52 weeks in the year (52 weeks x 7 days = 364 days = 365.25-1.25). Hooboy, are we gonna havva hard time getting beyond this ceiling of progress. Here we have the assumption in all its barefacedness that The Sacred Forty Hour Workweek was given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai along with the Ten Commandments. The 40/40/40 plan of the original enactment of the 40-hour workweek in the USA on Oct.24, 1940 was almost as sanctimoniously resonant - 40 cents minimum wage, 40 hours maximum workweek, in the year of our Lord, 1940 - and we wouldn't even have needed a minimum wage if we'd use labor-surplus reduction via further workweek reduction. And as for God-given, how about a workweek of perfect-number one-TENth of all the hours in a week (7 days x 24 hours = 168 hours total) = a 16.8-hour workweek?!]
   ...2 graphs ("Youth Population by Economic Activity Status in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1997 and 2007") omitted...
   The employment distribution of sub-Saharan Africa's youth has changed little over 10 years. In both 1997 and 2007, about half of Africa's youth were either unemployed or "inactive," as defined by the ILO. Defining terminology can give a clearer picture of Africa's employment situation. "Unemployed" refers to those in the work force who do not have a job but are actively seeking work. "Inactive" refers to those who do not have a job and are not seeking work. Inactive youth may be attending secondary or higher education, but they may also be discouraged workers who are not seeking work because they feel they lack qualifications for a job, do not know where or how to look for work, or feel there is no suitable work available. In much of Africa, there are few or no formal employment opportunities for young people. While the unemployment rate in the charts above is relatively low, the figures can be misleading. Those out of the labor force may be underemployed or wish to work, but have no means to find stable employment. Young people are not considered officially "unemployed" even if they are without work and would accept a job if offered one.
   Potential and Promise
   While recognizing Africa's demographic challenges, the World Bank report also sees the large youth population as an opportunity: "The demographic transition makes youth the most abundant asset that the region can claim, thus making it a window of opportunity."
   The report recommends a multisectoral approach by governments and international agencies to address the issue. Recommendations include expanding jobs and education alternatives in rural areas; building a support environment for entrepreneurship; expanding access to and improving the quality of training opportunities; and addressing demographic issues. Since most young people live in rural areas, development in agriculture and nonfarm sectors is integral to creating demand for youth labor, argues the report. Investments in irrigation, water resource management, and increased use of improved seeds, fertilizers, and better agricultural practices can fulfill the promise of Africa's rural population.
   Even in the face of the rising number of young people and current lack of employment opportunities in Africa, Arbache is optimistic. "The demographic transition is an opportunity for Africa to compete internationally. The main challenge is to employ the appropriate policies for the region to benefit from this unique opportunity."
   Eric Zuehlke is an editor at the Population Reference Bureau.

2/18/2009  primitive timesizing in the news, reinvented thousands of times every day in every recession by mid- and small-size companies, organizations and governments despite being *dismissed out-of-hand by many economists and business schools - with excerpting and [commenting] by Phil Hyde (PH) unless otherwise initialed -

• 1800 Washoe County workers agree to shorten work week, Staff report, Reno Gazette Journal - Reno,NV,USA
  An agreement between Washoe County and the Washoe County Employees Association is scheduled to be considered Tuesday by county commissioners after management and the union's 1,800 employees reached a compromise about layoffs.
  The employees have agreed to reduce their workweek by an hour through Dec. 20, saving the county $2.4 million in salaries, the equivalent of a 2.5 percent pay cut.
  Management and nonunion workers have agreed to take the same pay cut.
  In their original offer, the union sought a guarantee that none of their members would be laid off. But the commission could not approve that because of continuing declines in sales taxes and a drop in property taxes, county spokeswoman Kathy Carter said.
  The commission offered to guarantee no layoffs through June 30, which was approved by 90 percent of the association members late last week.
  A formal agreement on the changes will be presented to the commission Feb. 24.
  Seven other labor groups are considering the same wage cuts to prevent layoffs, Carter said. Unions represent about 80 percent of the county's 2,888 employees.
  [Note that a cut in working hours is a personal income cut, but it is NOT an hourly wage cut - the hourly wage stays the same.]
  If all unions agree to the pay cut, eight employees slated to be laid off would be kept on the payroll, Carter said.
  Eight other employees in the building and safety division were laid off last week.

2/17/2009  primitive timesizing in the news, reinvented thousands of times every day in every recession by mid- and small-size companies, organizations and governments despite being *dismissed out-of-hand by many economists and business schools - with excerpting and [commenting] by Phil Hyde (PH) unless otherwise initialed -

• City Professionals split over whether to cut hours to prevent job cuts, Online Recruitment - UK
  Only[?] 52.2% of City workers would cut their hours to save a colleague’s job, according to GRS, the specialist executive search consultancy.
  [Half of labor has always been suicidally shortsighted, preferring to overwhelm the job market with resumes, longer hours and ever-weakening wages than having some class, like physicians, and driving up their pay by strangling access to their skills.]
  In an online poll of 2,000 City professionals, 1,044 said they’d rather cut their hours than see a colleague lose their job, while 956 said they’d refuse to cut their hours.
  Clearly the City’s workforce was deeply divided over the issue, although insurance professionals were least keen to save their fellow workers (only 49.3% would cut their hours), while those in Tax demonstrated the most camaraderie (56.6%).
  GRS asked approximately 2,000 City professionals whether, in light of Obama's inaugural address (‘it is the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours’) they would cut their hours to save a colleague's job.
  The huge rift in attitudes to shorter hours and lower pay explains the difficulty KPMG had getting consensus from its staff for such a programme - when it became the first accountancy firm to offer its employees a four-day week. Eventually, around 85% of KPMG’s staff agreed to work flexibly as an alternative to company-wide redundancies. The BBC and the Financial Times have also announced shorter hours for less pay in a bid to stave off redundancies.
  Lucinda Brown, Managing Director GRS UK, said “As the four day week spreads from the factory floor to the heart of the City, London’s professionals are increasingly having to face up to the fact that the future holds not only a reduced working week, but also pay cuts. The problem is that only 52% of City professionals are interested in a deal that might save their colleagues’ jobs – it seems they’d rather take a calculated risk of possibly losing their job than have their own salaries cut. And if only 52% of a company’s workforce is willing to back a scheme like this, savings may be too limited to make it a viable alternative to mass redundancies, especially when the threat of a divided company (between those that opt-in and those that refuse to) is taken into account.
  GRS polled professionals in Paris, as well as those in London. Whereas London’s workers demonstrated some solidarity with their fellow employees, their French counterparts proved far less altruistic, with only 48.0% saying they’d cut their hours.
  Stéphane Lehideux, Directeur Général of GRS Paris said, “I’m not particularly surprised people are more reluctant to cut their salaries on this side of the channel, nor am I ashamed. Salaries are much lower in Paris than in London or New York – people have less ‘wriggle room’. Secondly, by law, you cannot lower someone's salary in France - people know this would be a very complicated process, and that if a company tried to push that kind of decision, it would probably end up in court.”
  

  
  

• Quick, What's Wrong With a Tax Cut that Shortens Work Hours?, by Dean Baker, TPMCafé - New York,NY,USA
  Everyone knows that a policy that makes sense has no chance in Washington, but let's try. As we sit here with an economy that is throwing 20,000 people out of work every day, there may be some interest in trying policies that the geniuses running things had not previously considered.
  Just to get our bearings, we are in a recession caused by lack of demand. People are not unemployed because we lack food, oil, computers, skilled labor, or anything else. People are out of work because we are not spending enough money.
  This should make the public furious because it is not hard to spend money. The suffering that the public is experiencing right now is entirely because of a combination of ideology and ineptitude. If we increase demand (yes, we can print money), then there will be jobs, and the unemployment rate will tumble.
  The tax credit for shorter work hours is so simple that even an economist can understand it.
  The deal is that if an employer reduces work hours by providing paid time off in some form (e.g. paid parental leave, paid sick days, paid vacation, or shorter standard workweeks), then they will get a tax credit from the government to compensate for the reduced time, up to 10 percent of annual pay, not to exceed $2,500 per worker.
  The logic is that companies will still be seeing just as much demand as before the tax break goes into effect. Workers' pay will not have changed; therefore they will be able to buy just as much as they did before the tax break took effect. If demand is the same, but the average worker is putting in fewer hours, then firms will want to hire more workers.
  For example, if employers of 50 million workers cut hours by 10 percent, and then seek to replace the lost hours with additional workers, they would need to hire 5 million workers. If they got a $2,500 credit per worker, this would cost the government $125 billion a year.
  There seem many benefits to going this route, and no obvious disadvantages. First, it can be put into place immediately. The day Congress passes the legislation employers can begin adjusting work schedules to benefit from the tax cut. In other words, this proposal is as shovel ready as it gets.
  Second, there is no risk of wasted spending, firms will offer paid time off in contexts where it makes sense for them and their employees. Companies will make adjustments that make sense given the structure of their workplace. In some cases, the best route could be shorter workweeks, in other cases, paid parental leave or sick days may offer the best route. The companies will decide for themselves which method, if any, works best.
  Third, there is little risk of fraud. Companies would be getting the tax break for cutting back work time through some specific mechanism. The condition of getting the credit is that they post the work time reduction on the Internet. Workers will know whether or not they are getting paid family leave or whether or not they get overtime pay for working more than 36 hours a week. This should provide a very good check on efforts by employers to fraudulently claim the tax credit.
  It is very difficult to see a downside risk in this story. The plan would be that the government would provide these credits for two years with the expectation that the economy is on a path to recovery by 2011. At that point, if workers and employers like the new work schedules then they may opt to keep them in place even without the tax credit, but that would be their choice. They would always the have option to return to the prior system.
  If there is an obvious flaw in the working of this sort of tax credit, it would be interesting to see someone identify it. The fact is that millions of people are now unemployed because of the incredible blunders of the folks determining the country's economic policy. This tragedy will be intensified if these workers remain unemployed simply because the current crew of economic policymakers can't think beyond their standard game plan.
  

  
  

• City, county cut costs through sustainability, By Dan Linehan, Mankato Free Press - Mankato,MN,USA
  MANKATO — Local governments are beginning to put energy-saving rhetoric into practice by auditing their resource use and drafting long-term plans to become more sustainable.
  In Mankato, a first step has been programmable thermostats and better insulation on select public works buildings, said Tom Fournier, assistant to the public works director. He said this step alone saved about $4,000 over the last few months of 2008.
  The next step is to hire an engineering firm to conduct energy audits on all the city’s buildings to establish a baseline for comparison and find opportunities to cut costs. Fournier said Xcel Energy and CenterPoint Energy will pay all but $200 of this cost.
  “Basically, what we started with was plugging the big holes and we’re going to be working on refining these buildings so they can be as efficient as they can be,” he said.
  Other things Mankato has done so far include banning the idling of vehicles while they’re unattended and modifying its computers to power down after they’re not being used for an hour. The public works department has also been switched to a four-and-a-half day workweek, which saves heating costs on Friday afternoon.
  Blue Earth County is also seeking to reduce its greenhouse gas emission through the use of building audits.
  The county joined ICLEI — Local Governments for Sustainability, a coalition of about 1,000 local governments that, among other services, offers software to help evaluate energy use. Mankato has also joined ICLEI.
  An intern is currently digging up data about energy use and entering it into the software, again to establish a baseline against which to judge progress.
  The county is also looking for ways it can replace its petroleum-based chemicals with more eco- and farmer-friendly soy-based products. The new products have to be comparable in price and effectiveness, though.
  After it looks after its own efficiency, the county is planning on expanding its effort to the general public.
  Both city and county are also bringing up all the things they’ve done over the years that can fall under the umbrella of sustainability.
  “We are or have been green in many ways over the years but not in the current fad way,” County Engineer Al Forsberg said of his department.
  That includes longtime policies of using gasoline with ethanol, diesel with 5 percent biodiesel, recycling waste oil and re-treading tires that have gone bald.
  Mankato continues to re-use millions of gallons of waste water to supply the Calpine gas-fired power plant with cooling water. Calpine then paid to improve the city’s water treatment system.
  Mankato City Councilman Mark Frost has been prodding the city to do more than sign environmental agreements.
  

  
  

1. Hasbro adapts to expected lower revenues, By Paul Grimaldi, Providence Journal - Providence,RI,USA
   Hasbro Inc. executives said yesterday that they expect the recession to weigh on the toy company’s revenues as it forces continued markdowns on leftover holiday inventory and higher spending to promote new products at the same time the toymaker deals with higher production costs and unfavorable exchange rates.
   The company has frozen salaries and travel expenses, briefly furloughed some manufacturing workers and cut the workweek at its factory in Ireland. It will renegotiate some contracts as it deals with the worsening economy, Hasbro executives said. The company also closed its “tween” electronics division due to poor sales.
   On Monday, Pawtucket-based Hasbro said that its fourth-quarter profit fell a sharper-than-expected 30 percent as the nation’s second-biggest toymaker cut prices on many items during the sluggish holiday season. The stronger dollar also hurt results.
   The global economy was “extremely challenging,” said Brian Goldner, Hasbro’s president and chief executive officer.
   Goldner and other Hasbro executives talked yesterday about the company’s finances and prospects with investment analysts gathered in New York for the opening of the annual International Toy Fair.
   Goldner said he has told Hasbro employees there will not be “wholesale layoffs” at the company as a result of the weakened sales.
   The company, however, plans a “mid-single-digit” price increase, said David Hargreaves, Hasbro’s chief operating officer and chief financial officer.
   The company looks forward to solid sales this year in its boys division, boosted by the release of three movies and new television programming, the executives said.
   First out to movie theaters will be Wolverine, followed by a sequel to the wildly popular Transformers movie, and then the emergence of the iconic GI Joe onto the big screen. More Star Wars television cartoons are due out this year as well.
   Company executives said they are hopeful the movies will do as well as the 2007 Transformers movie, which garnered the company more than $700 million, according to Box Office Mojo LLC. Transformer-related toys and licensed products such as T-shirts generated $480 million that year.
   That wish is particularly true for G.I. Joe, which in the 1960s was the company’s first big toy hit.
   “G.I. Joe fans have been waiting for a reconnection, some kind of spark,” Goldner said.
   Hasbro also has a six-year agreement with Universal Pictures to make at least four films based on game brands such as Monopoly, Battleship, Clue and Candy Land. The first film is due out in 2010 or 2011.
   The company also has high hopes for its digital gaming initiatives, particularly for the girls who like Hasbro’s line of Littlest Pet Shop toys.
   Hasbro will use partnerships with Marvel Entertainment and Electronic Arts, as well as its own development team, to bring products to movies, animated videos, online and on mobile devices, Goldner said.
   “What you are really seeing is casual gaming coming to the fore,” he said. “Our relations with Electronic Arts and others is going to accelerate our engagement with 10- to 14-year-olds.”
   Electronic Arts is developing an online entertainment and community destination for girls, based on Hasbro’s Littlest Pet Shop brand. Electronic Arts said its five Pet Shop-branded games have sold 2.8 million copies worldwide. The online community is set to launch in the fall.
   Electronic Arts also creates video, cell phone and other digital games for Hasbro’s Scrabble, Yahtzee and Tonka brands.
   pgrimald@projo.com

2. Jacobson outlines road ahead for Medical Center, 2/13 Vanderbilt University News - Nashville,TN,USA
   The nation’s health care landscape will not survive the ongoing recession unscathed, but a renewed focus on belt-tightening and essential expenses on campus is keeping Vanderbilt Medical Center’s workforce of 16,000 intact, said Harry Jacobson, M.D., vice chancellor for Health Affairs.
   Jacobson’s annual State of the Medical Center Address on Wednesday to a standing-room-only crowd in Langford Auditorium was confident and upbeat despite the economy and focused, in part, on what lies ahead for the Medical Center and its employees.
   "We brought down spending quickly and efficiently, with no disruption to patient care, education or research,” he said.
   “If we act prudently and spend carefully, we will make it through this stronger than ever. We can make it through this better, smarter and stronger.” Operations for fiscal year 2008 were on par with projections but investment losses brought numbers down for an otherwise successful year.
   The Medical Center experienced a loss of $24 million in investment income as of Dec. 31, 2008, leading to delays in major capital projects.
   “We are going to meet our goals for operations,” Jacobson said. “But investment losses are really hitting us.” Other potential consequences could be a lower demand for elective surgeries, higher rates of charity care delivered and potential TennCare cuts.
   VMC delivered $238.6 million of uncompensated care in fiscal year 2007; $245.3 million in fiscal year 2008; and is already projected to reach between $286-$290 million in fiscal year 2009.
   Jacobson said he received news from Vanderbilt representatives in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday of a consensus agreement between the House and Senate on the economic stimulus package that “looks very good for us” in terms of helping to alleviate some TennCare cuts proposed at the state level.
   A stimulus plan at the federal level would help mitigate the proposed state cuts while adding crucial federal funding for women’s health services, research and information technology.
   The package would send $1.2 billion to Tennessee to assist with Medicaid, children’s health, research, graduate medical education (GME) funding and COBRA - which would give a $30.3 billion extension of coverage to the unemployed.
   “It looks like, if the vote of consensus goes through, we are looking at a better future with respect to TennCare,” Jacobson said.
   Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen had proposed a three-tier plan of TennCare funding reductions that would negatively impact the state’s safety net hospitals, but some of those cuts may now be avoided.
   The first tier proposes to cut essential access payments by 50 percent, cut GME payments by 50% and cut $14.5 million in state funding to Vanderbilt.
   The second tier would cut the remaining 50 percent of both GME and essential access payments, reduce rates for hospitals and Vanderbilt Medical Group by 7 percent, and add an additional $34.9 million cut to Vanderbilt.
   The third tier represented an additional 1.5 percent rate reduction for hospitals and VMG and an additional $4.4 million cut to Vanderbilt.
   Jacobson used the five elevate pillars to update attendees on performance in service, quality, people, growth and finance.
   In response to the slumping economy, departments worked together this fiscal year to identify areas of cost savings and eliminate unnecessary spending in order to preserve the quality of workers throughout the campus.
   Jacobson illustrated the “keeping the team together” concept in mentioning the Space and Facilities project management team, which collectively agreed to cut back to a 32-hour workweek rather than eliminate employees who had been planning for MRB V and the expansion of the Monroe Carell Jr.Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, which are postponed due to the economy.
   In the area of Growth, the new $169 million Critical Care Tower is scheduled for completion by September, with patient occupancy forecast to follow in November. Vanderbilt Health at One Hundred Oaks is nearing completion, with a Vanderbilt employee’s preview party scheduled for Feb. 17.
   Quality goals were established for VMC to be in the 90th percentile in all components of the health care system in 2009.
   Jacobson individually commended Vanderbilt University Hospital’s 10 South, 5 South, 8 South and General Medicine for improved performance over the past six months, saying all are close to 100 percent in the survey category of “Willingness To Recommend.”
   Vanderbilt’s observed-to-expected mortality rate for the current fiscal year is .71, which is on target to match the University of Wisconsin Medical Center’s top ranking last year. Vanderbilt placed seventh in the country in 2008 with a rate of .735.
   The crowd applauded as Jacobson announced that VMC’s combined community contributions for last year were nearly $200 million.
   “In five years, that’s a billion dollars,” he said.
   Contact: Craig Boerner, (615)
   Craig.boerner@vanderbilt.edu

• Vignette to reduce workweeks to cut costs, Triangle Business Journal - Raleigh,NC,USA
  Vignette Corp. will reduce four workweeks by one day during February and March to control operating expenses.
  Austin-based Vignette (Nasdaq: VIGN), which provides content management software and services, announced that offices in the United States and Australia are affected by the reduction. The company, founded in 1995, employs about 200 workers in Austin.
  The workweek reduction comes less than two months after the company laid off less than 10 percent of its 600-person company-wide workforce.
  Last week, Vignette posted a loss of $229,000, or a penny a share, for the fourth quarter 2008, which ended Dec. 31. That compared with a profit of $13 million, or 49 cents a share, for fourth quarter 2007.
  The company’s revenue declined 29 percent to $37.2 million during the three-month period versus the same period in 2007. On Friday, shares of Vignette were trading at about $7.68.
  

  
  

1. Sharing the pain: the recession gets real - Mitel has become the latest company to take unpaid days off to help cut costs, writes Bert Hill with files from Citizen News Services, Ottawa Citizen, D1.
   Another sign this recession is for real: job-sharing is back.
   Mitel Network employees were told this week they will be taking one day of involuntary unpaid leave every three weeks as the company struggles with weak demand in the global economy.
   For some workers in Mitel global operations, the action will involve two days leave every three weeks, the equivalent of a 13% pay cut.
   [Is that 8x2 divided by 8x5x3?]
   "The general feeling is that people would rather take a pay cut than lose their jobs in this market," said Sandra Pacey, Mitel director of corporate marketing, who broke the news to her team.
   "Sure it stings because we still have to make ends meet at home at the end of the month. "But most people want to help the company avoid a situation like Nortel where people are leaving without a severance package."
   Mitel is no stranger to job-sharing. It used the technique during the recessions of the early '80s and early '90s.
   Like most companies struggling with a recession, it is one more tool to save money including cutting travel and discretionary spending.
   And, of course, layoffs.
   Mitel also cut more jobs this week, eliminating an estimated 45 more jobs in a global workforce of about 2,500. About one-quarter work in Kanata [western suburb of Ottawa].
   Last November, Mitel laid off about 300 jobs in addition to 400 earlier in the year following a takeover of Inter-Tel, an Arizona company.
   Chief executive Don Smith said that he cut his pay by one-third.
   Sharing: Trend is stronger in the United States (continued), D6.
   "The downturn is accelerating and nobody really knows where the hell it is going," Mr. Smith said. "You can't ask your people to step up unless you step up too. My father was unemployed so I know how tough it can be."
   [This is just like worksharing company Lincoln Electric of Cleveland and their principle of "everyone sacrifices together, starting at the top."]
   Job-sharing schemes allow employers to minimize the loss of key skills and avoid the payment of severance packages in full-scale layoffs.
   [We prefer to call them work-sharing schemes because "job" implies the old rigid standard of 40 hours a week, while 'work' is flexible, anything from zero to 168.]
   In addition to Mitel, 20-20 Technologies Inc., a Montreal-area company, is also using unpaid leave to reduce operating costs as the U.S. housing collapse hurts demand for its 3D interior design and furniture manufacturing software. It also chopped 13% of the workforce.
   In 1991, former [NDP] Ontario premier and...Liberal leadership candidate Bob Rae was pilloried by public service unions when teachers and government employees were forced to take one day of unpaid leave per month ["Rae days" - actually very successful]. In February of that year, there were 80,000 workers on job-sharing programs across Ontario, reducing the unemployment rate by one-half of a percentage point.
   The jury is out over whether job-sharing stops layoffs.
   [Not when you workshare and cut hours as deeply as required to stop layoffs, and this is the future of any economy that wants to survive in the age of robotics.]
   A federal study following the 1982-83 recession found that while 100,000 jobs were saved, almost as many were lost.
   [So, duh, cut twice as many hours - why is it that otherwise intelligent people go braindead on this topic?! This is not rocket science.]
   But a study following the recession of the early 1990s found that 64% of the jobs of participants were ultimately saved.
   [So gee, guess they cut more hours, duh.]
   The trend to use job-sharing this time is stronger in the U.S. because the recession has been running longer and deeper there.
   [And because Canada tends to be an unimaginative little copycat when it comes to big problems like this. I used to think the Great Depression in Canada was not as bad as in the U.S., but from reading Pierre Berton's book on the Depression in Canada, I learned that Prime Minister Mackenzie King was slower to relieve the suffering in Canada and basically had to sell it to his braindead co-politicos by citing precedents by FDR in the States.]
   Dell, the struggling computer maker, is using involuntary leave to save money and retain staff.
   A recent survey of 100 U.S. HR executives by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that almost half of them avoided job cuts at their companies by using several options, including reducing salaries, forced vacations [ie: work sharing] and hiring freezes.

2. James Harris: L.A. mayoral candidate, 2/11 11:11pm Los Angeles Times - CA,USA
   With the March 3 primary election drawing near, The Times asked all candidates for Los Angeles mayor to respond to questions about key issues facing the nation's second-largest city. Here are the responses from candidate James Harris:
   ...3. Q: To cut costs, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is considering layoffs or offering early retirement to city employees. Do you support either or both of those alternatives? Given the increased need for government assistance in these bad economic times, is now the right time to reduce the number of city employees or cut hours at libraries and city parks?
   A: I am against Mayor Villaraigosa's budget cuts. Layoffs, early retirements and cutbacks in city services will only worsen the conditions of working people. I say no cuts to libraries, schools and parks. In fact the use of these facilities should be greatly expanded, not cut.
   If elected I would fight for cost-of-living increases in all wages and benefits, as well as federal legislation to
   shorten the workweek, with no cut in take-home pay, to spread the available work to all....
   [Make it easier for people to support themselves and us taxpayers won't have to!
   Let's get government and taxpayers OUT of the role of employer and charity of last resort!]
   

2/11/2009  primitive timesizing in the news, reinvented thousands of times every day in every recession by mid- and small-size companies, organizations and governments despite being *dismissed out-of-hand by many economists and business schools - with excerpting and [commenting] by Phil Hyde (PH) unless otherwise initialed -

• Infineon To Extend Shorter Working Hours To Other Sites, -By Archibald Preuschat, Dow Jones Newswires, +49 69 297 25 505, archibald.preuschat@dowjones.com, Dow Jones Business News, via EasyBourse.com - Paris,France
  DUESSELDORF - German semiconductor company Infineon Technologies AG (IFX) said Wednesday it plans to extend shorter working hours to additional sites, following similar moves earlier this year at its Regensburg and Dresden facilities, a spokeswoman told Dow Jones Newswires Wednesday.
  Infineon plans shorter working hours at it Munich and its Warstein, Germany sites, the spokeswoman said. Negotiations with the working council on this measure are due to begin shortly, she said.
  Shorter working hours in Munich would affect 4,000 employees in the research, sales, marketing and administration departments and should be introduced by April 1 at latest, the spokeswoman said. In Warstein, Germany, where the semiconductor company has another site, 800 employees would be affected, she added. She also said shorter working hours should start in Warstein from March 1 at the latest.
  Since the start of the year most of the 2,200 Infineon employees in Regensburg are working shorter hours, while the measure was introduced in Dresden at the beginning of this month, affecting most of the 1,800 employees at that site. Infineon is suffering weak demand for its logic chips mostly for the automotive and telecommunication industry and posted steep declines in sales in the first quarter of the current fiscal year, which spans the October to December period. Infineon has around 29,000 employees worldwide, with 9,900 in Germany.
  Company Web site: www.infineon.com
  

  
  

• Prichard, AL. to cut 17 jobs, shorten work week, al.com - Birmingham,AL,USA
  Prichard Mayor Ron Davis said today that he would cut 17 jobs within the city and shorten the work week for city employees.
  Sixteen employees will lose their jobs. One, a police administrator, will be transferred to the mayor's staff.
  He also announced at a news conference in City Hall that he would reduce "take-home" vehicles, but said that he would keep a sport-utility vehicle that he drives.
  A four-day work week will start March 16, and the layoffs would take effect Feb. 27, Davis said.
  "Now is the time we have to come and deal with the realities that we have," Davis said. "Believe me, this is a sad day to have to make this decision."
  Davis said the reductions would save the city $540,000 in the remainder of the 2009 fiscal year. The mayor plans to cut the only information technology worker on the city payroll, and 10 of the layoffs will come from the 55-person Public Works Department, he said.
  

  
  

• Mueller Water Products to cut execs’ pay, furlough workers, By PÉRALTE C. PAUL, Atlanta Journal Constitution - GA, USA
  In recent weeks, the U.S. recession and global economic slowdown have led to a parade of layoff announcements by some companies while others have fled into the arms of federal bankruptcy protection.
  But one Atlanta company hurt by the recession is trying to buck that trend. [It's a lot more than one, but this strategy is completely unnoticed and unconnected by the mainstream media, so the 'reinvention of the wheel' goes on and on and on....]
  Mueller Water Products, which last week reported a net loss of $400 million, will temporarily furlough all employees at its 26 plants nationwide. The company has about 5,900 plant workers and 55 employees at its headquarters.
  Also, the company’s board of directors, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Gregory E. Hyland, his direct reports and one division president will take 20 percent pay cuts. Other salaried employees will either have their work week reduced to 36 hours or have their base pay reduced or both.
  Shares of Mueller, which lays the pipes and hydrants in pre-building phases of residential development projects, rose 23 cents, or more than 6 percent, to close Monday at $3.92. They’re still under pressure, though; Mueller shares have fallen more than 53 percent since January.
  Mueller isn’t saying how much money the company will save by making these moves. But the company’s three divisions will decide individually the timing and frequency of the shutdowns. The closures could last a few days to a week.
  John Pensec, a Mueller spokesman, said Monday it was important to senior executives to send a message that executives also would be expected to sacrifice, not just the rank and file.
  “It’s not easy, but we would much rather reduce hours than jobs,” Pensec said, adding executives are hoping that by spring some development projects could come online. “We’re trying to share the pain a little bit.”
  But its also a little bit of a defensive strategy. Laying off workers outright could leave a company strapped when the economy rebounds.
  If housing construction sees any sort of growth, Mueller wants to be positioned with its workforce to take advantage of that, Pensec said.

• Monday view: Short-time working is vital for economy - Short-time working is rapidly becoming commonplace in British business says automotive industry expert, Tom Whyatt, 2/08! ThisIsMoney.co.uk.
  Coping: The automotive sector has been hit especially hard in the downturn [caption on photo of Honda cars seen parked at docks in Southampton]
  Many companies are having to cope with a downturn in orders.
  The automotive sector has been particularly severely affected, but no business sector is immune and the impact of the recession is accelerating.
  How do companies cope? Some opt to make redundancies.
  But others are now laying off sections of their workforce for one or more days per week.
  There are huge advantages to this latter approach of putting employees on short-time rather than cutting them adrift altogether.
  The incidence of unemployment is significantly reduced.
  Redundancy payments - a potentially large short-term hit to businesses - are avoided, and the government doesn't have to stump up benefits.
  The employer has a better chance of keeping the skilled workforce not just balanced, but intact and available for the upturn when it eventually arrives.
  Whereas making people redundant means that someone has to foot the bill for retraining into new jobs.
  But how to encourage companies to opt for short-time working rather than redundancies?
  Germany, Holland [Netherlands], France and Italy all have schemes in place where government subsidises the pay of employees on short-time working.
  The schemes in each country vary, but the German state pays 60% of the net pay of workers for the days laid off due to short-time working -'Kurzarbeit'.
  This rises to 67% for those with children. The scheme used to pay out for just six months but this has been raised to 18 months. The employee is often required to undertake training activities during the 'non-working time'.
  The benefits of this approach are many. The 'non-working days' created by short-time working are available to pursue national and company training and development objectives; not only maintaining the skills base but enhancing it and leaving the country better able to profit from the eventual upturn.
  Multi-national companies will have made employees in the UK redundant but will have kept employees in other European countries working a shorter working week supported by their respective governments.
  When the orders do return, the favoured locations for the returning business will be outside the UK because they will have skilled and under- employed workers on their books. With short-time working subsidies, more people will be kept in work avoiding both the emotional damage that redundancy can do and assisting a quicker return to the required confidence levels essential to stimulate spending.
  Stimulating customer demand, retaining skills in the right places, workforce upskilling, retention of business in the UK and creation of business opportunities will be positive impacts of short-time working subsidies properly applied. There need to be safeguards, but we can learn from the positive experiences of others. We are just at the start of this recession. We have seen the first stages of reducing volumes as confidence weakens and credit is restricted.
  Many automotive businesses have seen demand reduced between 30 and 60% and some component suppliers will see zero orders for months. There is some 'destocking' by the car manufacturers, but this is largely a genuine reduction in final customer demand. As unemployment grows, demand will weaken still further. Profits and cash flow will reduce. As a result, more companies will go out of business, with debts to suppliers remaining unpaid, putting further pressure on remaining companies. Key suppliers will disappear.
  Wales is piloting a 'ProAct' programme which provides a £2,000 per employee subsidy for short-time working plus £2,000 to cover training costs. Small and medium sized companies will benefit most. This is an inspired initiative but the major solution has to be UK-wide and UK resourced. The government has money set aside for training support which in a recession will not otherwise be used. Yes, short-time working subsidies are costly. But so is prolonging a recession. We need to encourage our government to act now.
  Tom Whyatt was managing director of Continental Teves, a manufacturer of braking system components, and is a director of the Welsh Automotive Forum. Other stories: 'Golden hellos' for firms to employ jobless

  
  

1. To minimize layoffs, employers cut worker hours, Christian Science Monitor - Boston,MA,USA
   New York - Faced with a downturn in orders, Hardinge Inc. is laying off workers, cutting executive salaries, and freezing hiring. But the machine toolmaker in Elmira, N.Y., is also doing something else – something that hasn’t happened much in other downturns: Most of its workforce is now only getting paid [and only actually working?] for four workdays a week.
   “The alternative was to lay off 20 more people,” says Rick Simons, Hardinge’s president. “This way, we get to keep those people employed, and they get to keep their benefits going.”
   From coffee shops to machine shops, employers are trying to mitigate the effects of the downturn by reducing employees’ hours or overtime. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for one, has ordered some 200,000 state workers to take a two-day furlough every month in an effort to close a $42 billion budget gap. Even some of the legislation in the economic stimulus package would reward states that use “innovative benefits” – such as giving unemployment insurance to workers who have had their hours reduced.
   [Fred Best has an entire book about this: "Reducing Workweeks to Prevent Layoffs: The Economic and Social Impacts of Unemployment Insurance-Supported Work Sharing."]
   “Shrinking the hours everyone works helps reduce the extremes of how hard people are hit and maybe makes it a bit easier,” says Nigel Gault, chief US economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Mass. “It also may be more helpful for morale, perhaps.”
   The attempt by companies like Hardinge comes during one of the worst job markets in decades. Last Friday, the Department of Labor reported that the US unemployment rate climbed to 7.6 percent in January, up from 7.2 percent in December. And the economy shed 598,000 jobs, the worst performance since the end of 1974. Over the past two months, more than 1 million people have lost their jobs.
   “This is about as bad as it gets,” says Daniel Meckstroth, chief economist at Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI in Arlington, Va. “There is no good way to spin this as anything good.”
   Since October, the US unemployment rate has climbed by one full percentage point, a pace of layoffs not seen since at least the 1980s. Given the number of recently announced layoffs and the rising number of new claims for unemployment, the February job losses could be even worse, some economists say.
   “If there is any silver lining to the news, we are seeing job cuts so widespread and massive [that] it may mean everyone is making all their job cuts all at once,” says Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pa. “We are compacting an adjustment process that might have taken two years into 12 months, so we may get through it sooner.”
   Reducing workers’ hours may help keep the unemployment numbers from soaring yet higher, says labor economist Della Lee Sue of Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. “If the unemployment rate keeps going up, it makes a lot of people feel worse about the economy,” she says. “And that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
   But some work experts wonder if cutting hours is such a good idea. “It’s hard to get a team of people giving it their all when you’ve reduced their pay,” says Roberta Chinsky Matuson, president of Human Resource Solutions in Northampton, Mass. “This is particularly true if you have asked them to do more work than they have been required to do before.”
   [And if the alternative is total job loss? - some of these HR people just aren't thinking this through.]
   She worries that many people will be forced to get a second job. “They may like the other job better or be so exhausted [that] they may not be rested.”
   [The Timesizing program takes care of second jobs and moonlighting in Phase 3.]
   In Elmira, Mr. Simons says his workforce seems to have accepted the cut in hours, considering the alternatives. “They read the paper and see what’s going on,” he says. “We have another company, Corning, up here, and they have announced a layoff of 3,500, and most people know that.”
   Under New York State law, the Hardinge workers are eligible for unemployment payments for the loss of a paid day of work each week.
   According to Oakland, Calif.-based Maurice Emsellem, a lawyer at the National Employment Law Project, the states are “all over the place” on paying for reduced hours.
   Thirty states require an unemployed worker to seek full-time employment while receiving benefits. The federal Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act under consideration in Congress, part of the Obama economic stimulus plan, would offer states incentives to improve benefits coverage for part-time workers.
   Another thing that could help workers is if they anticipate that a work reduction is temporary. That’s the case for Katie Corrigan, who had her hours cut in half at a Boston recruiting firm last month. She envisions that the business will pick up once the economy recovers.
   “They will be calling on us. They will have to beef up their ranks,” she says. “We will be well positioned.”
   It helps, Ms. Corrigan says, that she likes the company. “What it comes down to is if it’s a company that you want to stay with, you will make the sacrifices over the short term to get the job back,” she says.
   For those who have had their hours sliced, however, there are adjustments. In Tacoma, Wash., waitress Kristen Olson has seen her hours at a local coffee shop cut from 35 hours a week to 20. Next month, she plans to move in with a roommate since she can’t afford rent by herself. And, she says, she either “sticks to happy hours” for dinner or makes a big pot of spaghetti that will last the week.
   The reduction in overtime at some companies can also be difficult for workers. In Jackson, Tenn., Bodine Aluminum has eliminated overtime for much of its workforce. “Some people bought houses and vehicles based on a 40-hour-plus workweek,” says Thaddessus Watford, a quality-control employee. “I’ve heard a few are in danger of losing their homes, and everyone is feeling the effects of it.”

2. More companies use worker furloughs in tough economy - Many firms cut workweeks to avoid expensive hiring, training when good times return, By TAMMY JOYNER, Atlanta Journal Constitution - GA, USA
   To keep its workers off the unemployment line, Atlanta sheet metal contractor Gardner & Son has gone to shorter workweeks.
   Marietta businessman Jimmy Miller is considering doing the same next month if business doesn’t improve. In the meantime, he keeps his 60 employees working, doing odd jobs around his two fence firms.
   Just last week, Georgia lawmakers said 100,000 state workers will likely be furloughed to rein in the state’s $2 billion budget deficit.
   And at the Buckhead office of Dr. Bruce Edelstein, the staff takes a day off when patient bookings are thin.
   Once routine for government employees, autoworkers, airline pilots and flight attendants during economic lulls, furloughs or temporarily cutting employee hours are being used by more U.S. companies in what’s become a particularly brutal recession.
   Unlike the sting of permanent layoffs, furloughs let companies and government agencies keep workers and avoid costly hiring or retraining when conditions improve, some experts said. It can be particularly valuable for businesses that expect customers to return when the economy rebounds.
   “It’s increasingly being used throughout the economy,” said Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte. “Mainly because so many companies are having a hard time finding skilled and capable workers during the good times that they don’t want to have to go through that again in a year or two when the economy comes back. They’re hoping to keep people.”
   California attorney Alison Hightower said the 700 lawyers at her firm have been inundated with calls from employers nationwide “asking questions about furloughs and other ways to reduce hours, workweeks and labor costs besides layoffs.”
   The intense interest in furloughs comes at a time when many companies are on second and third rounds of job cuts and American workers are taking a beating.
   Nearly 3.5 million jobs have vanished in the past year. And just last week the number of Americans filing initial unemployment claims soared to a 26-year high of 626,000 and the unemployment rate for January jumped to 7.6 percent.
   While corporate giants continue to jettison workers by the thousands, some manufacturers, media companies, doctors, dentists and plenty of other businesses have instituted or are considering shorter workweeks or unpaid time off — anything short of layoffs, which can be expensive and heart-wrenching.
   That’s Miller’s goal. His family’s fence businesses, Marietta Fence Co. and Circle A Fence Co., have never had a layoff.
   “My dad prided himself that he’d never had a layoff, and I am trying to keep that tradition alive,” Miller said. “I can’t say with certainty that I’m going to be able to do so. But my fear is if we let people go they will not be able to find another job. Under these conditions, the odds of them being able to find re-employment are pretty slim.”
   At 8.1 percent, Georgia’s unemployment rate is at a 26-year high. Miller’s employees would join the already hundreds of thousands of jobless Georgians looking for work.
   “The majority of our employees are married and have more than one child,” he said. “We’re affecting families, and that bothers me.”
   What bothers him even more is how little unemployment benefits are for jobless workers in Georgia — a weekly average of $271.
   “You might be able to buy groceries, and that’s about it,” he said. “God help you if you’ve got a house payment.”
   To keep his workers from having to collect unemployment, Miller said he has them do painting, cleaning and other odd jobs for the companies.
   “Whatever we can do to get them to 40 hours,” he said. “We’re resisting layoffs as long as we can. I’d rather cut them back than eliminate [jobs]. Something’s better than nothing.”
   Many industries that have been immune to downturns in the past are now scrambling to figure out ways to deal with this recession.
   Take Gannett Company Inc. Hit by declining advertising revenues, the nation’s largest newspaper publisher recently told workers to take an unpaid week off by March.
   “We would expect to see furloughs mainly where an economic downturn is substantial, broadly based across the economy and not expected to be permanent,” said Barry Hirsch, an economics professor and Usery Chair of the American Workplace at Georgia State University.
   Employers who use furloughs aren’t as worried about losing workers to other jobs when a downturn is as severe as the current one, Hirsch said.
   On the other hand, companies that don’t expect to see their business rebound are more apt to make permanent cuts such as layoffs, he added.
   The worsening economy has forced state and local governments to use furloughs more now, given the decline in sales tax revenue and falling home values.
   In addition to state workers, Fayetteville teachers have been furloughed along with city of Atlanta workers. Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin has come under fire for her decision to use furloughs.
   The head of the Atlanta firefighters union calls the practice “detrimental” for mission-critical jobs such as fire, police and rescue. Franklin ordered the furloughs to deal with the city’s $50 million revenue shortfall.
   “We understand employers want to use furloughs to hang onto highly trained, highly skilled workers,” said Jim Daws, a lieutenant with Atlanta fire and rescue and president of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 134. “It pulls down staffing below need. It translates into more dangerous working conditions.”
   In addition to being furloughed, the city’s 850 or so firefighters have had overtime taken away and seen their pay cut 18 percent, Daws said.
   “Almost all of them have at least a second job, and many have a third job,” he said. Still, he conceded, furloughs may be a necessary evil in this economy.
   “It’s better to have a job than not have a job,” he said.
   

2/07/2009  primitive timesizing in the news, reinvented thousands of times every day in every recession by mid- and small-size companies, organizations and governments despite being *dismissed out-of-hand by many economists and business schools - with excerpting and [commenting] by Phil Hyde (PH) unless otherwise initialed -

• Engine parts maker Mahle to cut work week - paper, by Christiaan Hetzner, Stuttgarter Zeitung via Reuters - USA via Google News Search
  FRANKFURT - German automotive engine parts specialist Mahle aims to introduce a three-day work week for 7,000 of its German employees starting in March as demand from carmakers crumbles, the Stuttgarter Zeitung reported on Saturday.
  Through the end of August, production at its Stuttgart site alone where 2,000 people are employed -- more than a fifth of the overall staff in Germany -- will cease for up to eight days a month and the plant could be shut for entire weeks around Easter holidays, it wrote citing a company spokeswoman.
  Mahle could not be reached for a statement.
  Owned since 1964 by a foundation set up by its two founders, Mahle is one of Germany's largest automotive suppliers and competes with Rheinmetall (RHMG.DE) in the manufacture of pistons for example.
  In the first half of last year, Mahle's revenue had grown by 7.3 percent to 2.67 billion euros ($3.42 billion), although operating profit fell just short of the previous year's first-half level due to higher raw material prices, unfavourable exchange rates and consolidation effects.
  It had forecast in mid-September group sales of about 5.3 billion euros for 2008.
  [So it's happening anyway, but not in the best way unless we can get our policymakers, Bschool professors and economists out of denial.]
  

  
  

1. Furloughs, the Future, by admin, AmericaDoomed.com
   California began its furlough program today where it requires certain state employees to take off, without pay, two days a month. Expect to see more of this in the future and it would be a good thing if they didn’t cut salaries. Long term America needs to embrace shorter working hours so that government and companies hire more people to do the work. However, it is important that these shorter work weeks still yield living wage jobs. That is the point that has been missed in California.
   Also, when employees are paid nothing more than living wage jobs, they can only pay for necessities. Paying for those necessities keeps some people employed; however, many people are employed in industries that sell “nice to have” products. Thus, people need to make more than a living wage to afford all of those other products.
   With unemployment zooming higher each month, many are just thankful if they have a living wage job. Yesterday, a thrift shop in Long Beach, California advertised 22 job openings and 400 people showed up to apply. In Florida, a thrift shop advertised some job openings and 1200 people showed up.
   America is doomed

2. Cessna Aircraft cuts work week, warns of furloughs, By ROXANA HEGEMAN, AP via Forbes - NY,USA via Google News Search
   Cessna Aircraft Co. said Friday that it plans to cut the work week of some production workers to just three or four days a week as part of its ongoing effort to reduce costs amid a slumping economy.
   The move by the nation's largest manufacturer of general aviation aircraft comes a week after the Wichita-based company announced a total of 4,600 job cuts.
   Managers personally informed the affected employees, primarily those who make and assemble the small components used in building aircraft, said Cessna spokesman Doug Oliver. He had no numbers on how many workers in the components manufacturing department were affected.
   "The key is to keep inventory from building up and to make sure that we are producing only the parts we need to produce the number of aircraft we are going to produce this year," Oliver said.
   Reduced work weeks will begin on Feb. 13 and probably last seven weeks, he said.
   Cessna, which is a unit of Providence, R.I.-based Textron Inc. (nyse: TXT - news - people ), is also looking at other cost-cutting measures, including forced time off for some employees.
   "I don't foresee a plant-wide shutdown, but details are being worked on specific future furloughs," Oliver said.
   Last week, warning notices went out for most of the last 4,600 laid off workers, although a small number of support jobs are still being identified as part of those cuts.
   "We think we are at a level - given current economic conditions - that will carry us through this year and perhaps even next year," Oliver said.
   Cessna is not the only Wichita aircraft maker that's hurting.
   Wichita-based Hawker Beechcraft Corp. announced Tuesday it would lay off 2,300 workers on top of the nearly 500 positions cut last year.
   Two days later, Canada's Bombardier Aerospace said it is cutting 1,360 jobs, including about 350 at its Wichita plant, which 3,100 workers.
   Boeing (nyse: BA - news - people )'s Integrated Defense Systems plant in Wichita said last year it would lay off 800 workers due to the delay of a U.S. Air Force tanker replacement program. Boeing Co. has said it plans to lay off 10,000 more workers across the company.
   [The more you lay off instead of keeping on with shorter hours, the faster you downsize your customers' customers and your own markets.]
   

   
   

1. IP shortens work week, By Kathi Pines, 2/03 Suffolk News-Herald - Suffolk,VA,USA
   The Sheet Conversion Department at International Paper Co.’s Franklin mill has cut its operations to 32 hours a week, instead of 40.
   Mill spokesman Desmond Stills said Friday the reduction in hours is due to a lack of demand.
   The Sheet Conversion Department takes large rolls of paper produced by the plant and cuts them down to product size.
   “About 103 employees will be affected by the reduction, and they will remain on that schedule until demand increases,” Stills said.
   Word of the Franklin reductions came a day after Memphis, Tenn.-based IP said its fourth-quarter operating profit tumbled from a year ago, hurt by a sharp decline in demand for paper products and weaker results from its distribution and forest products businesses.
   The company reported a net loss of $452 million, or $1.07 a share, compared with a year-ago profit of $327 million, or 78 cents a share. Quarterly sales rose 12.1 percent to $6.55 billion, driven primarily by gains from last year’s acquisition of Weyerhaeuser Co.’s packaging business.
   Teresa Beale, executive director of the Franklin-Southampton Area Chamber of Commerce, said she was saddened but not surprised by Friday’s news about the Franklin mill.
   “It’s a sign of the times,” Beale said.
   She said the reduction eventually will have some economic impact on local businesses.
   “I don’t have the numbers, but with that number of workers bringing in less salary, there will be a trickle-down effect on the amount of disposable income spent with local merchants,” she said.
   “It’s a tough year, but we’ll all get through it. At least no one is losing their jobs (in the IP reduction). We are all finding that we have to make adjustments through this time.”
   In November, International Paper announced it was eliminating 50 jobs after a permanent shutdown of the No. 3 uncoated freesheet paper machine.
   The company offered buyouts for interested employees, and more than 100 decided to voluntarily conclude their tenure with the company. As a result, no employees at the Franklin mill were laid off, officials said.
   [Always take the first buyout, because the rest won't be as good, or won't happen at all.]

2. Australian PM announces $42 billion crisis stimulus package, By Mike Head, World Socialist Web Site - Oak Park,MI,USA
   In a desperate bid to prevent an economic collapse and head off the eruption of social discontent, the Rudd government yesterday unveiled another multi-billion dollar rescue package—the sixth since last October. Under its latest "Nation Building and Job Plan," the government pledged to spend $42 billion over the next three years, claiming that this would "support up to 90,000 jobs".
   By the government's own estimates, however, unemployment will still nearly double to 7 percent by next year, destroying some 300,000 jobs, illustrating how quickly the package will be swamped by the continuing global economic meltdown. This has already happened to the estimated $44.7 billion already handed out to boost the banks, businesses and consumer spending over the past three months.
   Major finance houses and leading economists have warned that official unemployment will in fact rise to 10 percent by 2010, with another 10 percent of the workforce pushed into shorter hours, meaning that almost two million workers will be jobless or "under-employed".
   [...only by pre-robotics 1940 standards! The shorter hours can be part of a long-term solution....]
   The government's jobless estimate is as unreliable as the rest of its projections. Only two months ago, it was forecasting a 2008-09 budget surplus of $5 billion. Now, it is predicting a deficit of $22.5 billion—a $45 billion turnaround from the $22.5 billion surplus promised in last May's budget. As recently as last November, the government said the global slump would cut its tax revenues by $40 billion over four years. It has now almost trebled that estimate to $115 billion.
   Rudd vowed to "throw everything" at avoiding the national economy falling into recession. But no matter how much his government spends, it is powerless to hold back the impact of the worldwide financial maelstrom. All the country's major export markets are now officially in recession, except for China, whose economy has been contracting for the past three months.
   Chris Richardson of Access Economics commented: "What is happening internationally is absolutely diabolical. You are seeing economies very badly affected by the breakdown in the global banking system that happened in recent months and nothing Australia can do will stop recession here because it's recession everywhere."
   In his announcement, Rudd himself referred to "the worst economic crisis since the Second World War" and the "rapid unwinding of the mining boom," which has delivered multi-billion dollar profit and tax revenue windfalls for the past 15 years.
   In another sign of alarm at the speed of the downturn, the Reserve Bank of Australia cut its benchmark interest rate by a further 1 percentage point to 3.25 percent, the lowest level since 1964. This was the bank's fifth consecutive cut, with rates now down by a total of 400 basis points, from 7.25 percent in September. Despite these measures the latest data reveal that business and consumer lending dropped last year for the first time since World War II.
   It will not be long before the government exhausts its capacity to continue offering stimulus packages. Even by the Treasury's current calculations, this year's budget deficit will be followed by larger shortfalls over the following three years—by 2011-12, around $118 billion, or about 12 percent of the annual gross domestic product.
   Rudd will respond by demanding drastic cuts to welfare programs and social spending. While the government has predicted four years of deficits, former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating has warned that the global "catastrophe" is "way worse than it appears" and will last for at least six or seven years.
   Yesterday's $42 billion package contained about $13 billion worth of various one-off handouts to low- and middle-income households. In their joint media release, Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan declared that these payments, together with similar ones in a $10.4 billion package last October, were "designed to assist those groups most affected by the flow-on effects of the global recession".
   This is a fraud. There is nothing for the growing army of unemployed, who have to live on just $225 per week. There is no money for emergency relief, despite welfare agencies telling the government that demand from families has doubled over the past few months. There is no increase in the level of pensions and benefits, which remain far below the poverty line, and nothing at all for self-funded retirees, whose savings have been decimated.
   Workers earning $100,000 or less per year will receive tax bonuses of $300 to $950. Low- and middle-income families will get a $950 per child back-to-school bonus and single-income families will get an extra $950. Similar bonuses will be paid to students and jobless workers who sign up for education or training. These amounts are puny compared to the scale of the growing hardship inflicted on working people, and their impact will soon evaporate. By their very nature, one-off handouts cannot address the ongoing social crisis.
   Even where families receive several of these amounts, the total will not relieve the distress caused by the loss of jobs, cuts in hours and pay, and the drop in home prices and superannuation funds. Despite falling interest rates, many will lose their homes. Well before last year's crash began, millions of households were already under severe financial stress, incurring record levels of mortgage and credit card debt just to make ends meet.
   Even as Rudd attempts to present a "caring" face his government continues to call for wage sacrifices and cuts on the pretext of "saving jobs". It is working hand in glove with employers to protect their profits, while imposing the full burden of the economic crisis onto the backs of workers.
   The package allocates about $20 billion for school infrastructure and maintenance, community facilities, road repairs and social housing. These amounts also bear no relationship to reality—they are a drop in the bucket compared to the urgent needs produced by the systematic running down of government schools, public housing and every form of social infrastructure over the past quarter century. A recent report found that in New South Wales alone, $2.2 billion in extra funding would be needed annually to bring government schools up to adequate standards. There is not a cent for the crisis-ridden public health and hospital system.
   While Deputy Prime Minister Julie Gillard described the $14.7 billion for schools as an "historic nation building investment," it amounts to just $1.54 million per school. Over the next three years Australia's 9,540 schools—including the wealthiest private schools—will each be eligible to build or upgrade just one building, such as a library or assembly hall, and to apply for up to $50,000 (small schools) or $200,000 (large schools) for maintenance or minor building repairs.
   The government's package also includes token so-called "green" initiatives—subsidies of up to $1,600 for households to either insulate their ceilings or install solar hot water systems.
   None of these programs involves any public works to provide jobs for the unemployed. Instead, the funds will be funneled into the coffers of the investment banks, construction companies and contractors that have fed off the privatisation of road and school construction, housing and every other social infrastructure program over the past three decades.
   Rudd's latest package is also designed to provide a sop to the growing concern among ordinary people about the tens of billions of dollars already allocated in government bailouts and guarantees to the same major banks, financial institutions and companies that were involved in the looting operations that led to the economic breakdown.
   According to Bloomberg News, a business publication, Australian banks, including the Macquarie investment bank, have saved at least $800 million in lower borrowing costs in the two months since the Rudd government started guaranteeing their deposits and bonds. While the banks are raking in the profits, however, lending for homes and businesses has substantially dried up, and business investment is tipped to plunge another 15 percent this year.
   The government guarantees have also left taxpayers heavily exposed to the risk of further international banking crashes, which could engulf the local banks.
   [So the Aussies learned nothing from Malaysia's intelligent example in the Asian currency crash of the late 1990s??]
   Last month, the government announced the establishment of a new fund, dubbed the Rudd Bank, to raise up to $30 billion to protect commercial property developers should foreign banks fail to roll over as much as $75 billion of maturing debt this year. Commercial property loans cover only a fraction of the economy.
   All the major business organisations, newspaper editorials and trade unions leaders have praised the latest package. Speaking in parliament, Rudd boasted that it had the backing of the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Industry Group and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who were all consulted closely. Pledging the support of the unions, Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Jeff Lawrence described it as "the right plan for very difficult circumstances".
   

   
   

• Hours cut for some Massena Alcoa employees, By: Web Staff, News 10 Now - Syracuse,NY,USA
  MASSENA, N.Y. -- Alcoa is shortening shifts for some employees at its plant in Massena. The company says the change is due to a decrease in demand.
  Alcoa estimates about 140 hourly employees in the Global Hard Alloy Extrusions, or G-Ha, section of the plant will be shifted to a 32-hour work week, as well as some of the salaried workers. The change started on Monday and the duration will be determined weekly, based on business conditions.
  A company spokesperson says the G-Ha section of the plant deals directly with customers and a recent decrease in orders means the company has to cut costs.
  "Business is slow to respond to changes in demand because many of those customer orders have long lead times, so it's taken G-Ha longer to realize the impacts of the economic slowdown," said Laurie Marr.
  Marr says the G-Ha section of the plant employs about 170 of the 1,200 workers at the Massena location. The workers who are affected will not see any changes in their benefits.
  

  
  

• Hardinge makes slew of restructuring moves, by Meyase & Narayanan, Reuters.com - USA
  Hardinge Inc (HDNG.O), a maker of specialty cutting tools, said it would shut down its Asian facilities for a week in February, and cut 36 positions worldwide.
  The company, which has more than 1400 employees, also said its Elmira, New York production facility will initiate a four-day, 32 hour workweek.
  The base pay of all U.S. employees who are not subject to the reduced workweek, including corporate officers, will be cut by 5 percent.
  Hardinge, which said overtime has been discontinued at most of its facilities, has also initiated a hiring freeze.
  With these actions, the company expects to bring production levels and its cost structure more in line with current global demand levels.
  In December last year, the company said it cut 70 jobs and would reduce production hours at its Taiwan and China manufacturing facilities.
  The company had also said it...shut down manufacturing operations for a two week period over the holidays at a U.S. manufacturing facility.
  Shares of the company closed at $4.39 Tuesday on Nasdaq.

• UK faces return of three-day week, 1/27 The Observer newspaper(?) 1:55:41 PM via Global House Price Crash Forum
  British workers could have their working week cut to three days under plans being considered by the government to help companies cope with recession.
  The government is understood to be considering paying firms to cut the working hours of thousands of staff instead of retrenching [=downsizing] them in an attempt to stop unemployment soaring past two million.
  Now business secretary Peter Mandelson is facing calls to offer compensation for workers who have their hours cut.
  Unnamed ministerial sources told The Observer newspaper that a compensation scheme for workers was an option being discussed but was "not imminent".
  "Government sources said there were issues about whether to restrict compensation to the car industry or apply it to all firms," the newspaper said.
  The Department for Business is already advising employers on its website to consider cutting staff hours as a way to save money, saying it might be better than making staff redundant.
  Similar measures were [taken] after a series of crippling strikes by mine workers in the 1970s which had dramatic knock-on effects through the rest of the nation's economy.
  Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher introduced a short-time working directive in the 1980s to cover earnings lost through shorter hours.

2/2/2009   primitive timesizing in the news, reinvented thousands of times every day in every recession by mid- and small-size companies, organizations and governments despite mainstream economists' and business schools' scorn - with excerpting and [commenting] by Phil Hyde (PH) unless otherwise initialed -

• 2 Salesmen - Simply the Best, By Gswede, 2/01 Gswede Sunday, Sweden
  Being in sales most of my career, I often think of two unforgettable salesmen. As Tina Turner would say, they were "Simply the Best, Better than all the Rest".
  I was fortunate to work with and learn from both during the 1990's in New York City (NYC). They worked for separate companies yet were similar in that they sold "high end" sports sponsorships (print, TV, radio, arena, signage) to major companies like American Express.
  Each consistently performed at the top and brought in millions of dollars each year. I cannot imagine a salesperson better than either of these men. Since they sold in the same industry, I witnessed many similarities of success. Watching them perform on a daily basis made me a better salesman.
  Below are common elements they shared that helped them produce tremendous results:
  -- Appearance - Both were attractive and that helps immensely in life. First impressions can make or break a potential deal especially in sales. I frequently talked with one about how important it is to have quality suits, shirts, shoes and ties. He often conveyed to me that even if one lacked the advantage of good looks, dressing properly and caring about one's image were essential. A great lesson!
  -- No Small Talk or Wasting Time - From the moment they walked into the office, it was ALL business, ALL the time. One would occasionally talk to someone while the other NEVER talked to anyone beside customers or those that could help him with a sale. I admired their discipline and wondered how they were able to act that way day after day. Personally, I like a little down time during the day and most people do but I respected their style.
  -- No Paperwork - Both did very little paperwork, leaving most to their assistants. Their day was spent selling. I learned a valuable lesson from this because I shared the same assistant with one and followed his lead. Many of our colleagues were spending 1-2 days per week doing administrative work that was wasteful to the selling process. At first, top management thought our way wasn't ideal although they soon realized our efforts were producing improved results. Needless to say, the department started working in this manner. We often talked about and agreed that a salesperson should sell, not do paperwork. Unfortunately, many organizations haven't figured this out and suffer lower profits because of it.
  -- Focus and Discipline - They went after the sale aggressively, particularly if they knew the potential was there for closing the sale. They were focused on business they could obtain not in business that never had a chance to blossom. Their discipline in staying on the proper course of a potential sale was impressive. One was so focused that he was able to work shorter hours than everyone and go to the gym every day yet still perform better than his colleagues. He proved that working smart is sometimes better than working long hours.
  -- Relentless and Tenacious - They kept great prospects in their pipeline which meant they were always focusing on new business. In addition, their existing clients were cared for brilliantly with the aim of selling more advertising to them. Dogged in this pursuit would be an understatement.
  -- Athletic and Competitive - One played college basketball in the Ivy League and the other hockey at a level below professional. That athleticism and teamwork gave them fierce confidence not to mention the discipline and focus it takes to succeed at high level sports. Both were competitive in that Tiger Woods sort of way. I played basketball with the hockey player during a client outing and even though it wasn't his sport, his work ethic was inspiring.
  -- Customer Service - They were exemplary in providing customer service to their existing clients and were steadfast in giving the same passion of service to those customers they were aiming to close. They would do whatever it took to please their customers as long as it was ethical.
  -- Charm - Both had this characteristic and I don't think it is something that can be taught. Their charm was invaluable as they often had to sell to women responsible for advertising decisions and meet new people in various settings. Charm goes a LONG way in sales and networking (invaluable in selling). If you have it, use it.
  -- Knowledgeable and Great Presentation Skills - They would welcome the task of doing any presentation as long as it meant moving a sale forward or closing a deal. Both had wonderful presentation skills and usually had the audience eating out of their hand. One was a fantastic orator and effective in selling his clients on why it was important to advertise. It was a thrill watching him perform. Their knowledge of the product was never lacking as they knew their business inside and out! In sales, knowing your product thoroughly is a must.
  -- Thrill of Going after the Sale - With sales, no day is typical and it usually involves a variety of people which has always been exciting to me. If one doesn't enjoy the thrill of going after business and building relationships with people, sales will be a bumpy road. Both embraced being in sales and their enthusiasm was infectious. They had fun everyday.
  -- Listening - Even though it was tough for them to do at times, they listened intently to their prospective customers in order to uncover ALL their needs. If one asks good questions, needs usually come to the surface. Without uncovering needs, it is difficult to sell effectively.
  -- Enthusiasm and Passion - High levels of enthusiasm and consistent passion were their trademarks. I never saw them deficient in these areas. Sometimes their passion worked against them as they could be curt with people that presented an unnecessary obstacle to their performance. During a long meeting, one showed obvious displeasure to a superior who was wasting our time with endless talking. This boss asked, "what is your problem"? The swift response was "I want to sell not talk". Another salesman might not have been so bold but he could afford to act in that manner as he was the best salesman in the company.
  -- Closing a Sale - The hardest part in sales is the last, closing the sale. Sometimes customers will make you work or not know what they want and it is a good salesman's job to figure out the NEEDS and jump over any roadblocks to close the deal! Not only were both great closers, they were often quick to the close which meant that they had more time to chase new business.
  People tend to buy for one of 4 reasons.
  A) To keep or save their job
  B) To advance their career
  C) To save time or money for their organization
  D) To make the company more competitive
  If a person had a need to advertise, my former colleagues quickly found it and closed it.
  -- Results - In NYC, results are usually the most important element for a company and both sizzled in their annual sales figures. They were top performers every year, sometimes outselling their colleagues by $500,000 dollars. Their main concern was producing results and they were paid quite handsomely for their efforts. Every good salesperson should be concerned with results first and foremost.
  I am grateful to have met and worked with these men. They have impacted my life significantly in the way I approach sales, utilize time management, deal with customers and go after results.
  If you want to be a great salesperson, focusing on many or all of the aforementioned areas will help you to be successful. You may never become as good as these super salesmen but a step below will make you competitive in any industry. In addition, we all sell (some not so good) daily with wives, boyfriend's, parents, jobs, siblings,etc so brushing up on your selling skills can be beneficial in accomplishing your goals and/or dreams.
  Remember, the most important element in sales is to CLOSE THE SALE. I have seen many salespeople who were very talented yet never seemed to produce quality results. Why? They couldn't or wouldn't do the hard or sometimes uncomfortable work of closing the sale. If one doesn't close effectively, success will remain elusive.
  Legendary American football coach, Vince Lombardi once said the following; a line which has some good insight although it is a bit harsh in my opinion:
  "Winning isn't everything...........it's the only thing"
  Let's change those words slightly to make it more sales friendly so that it reads like this:
  "Closing the deal isn't everything in sales, it's the only thing".
  Happy Gswede Sunday!

• Schaeffler to enact shorter hours at most plants - AP Worldstream via encyclopedia.com
  Car parts company Schaeffler Group KG said Monday it would introduce a shorter work hours program at most of its 25 German production facilities for six months.
  Each plant would adapt the program to meet its production needs, because some have more work and order backlogs than others, said Detlef Sieverdingbeck, a spokesman for the Herzogenaurach-based company.
  The automotive division will be most affected by the shorter hours program, as carmakers in Europe have reported weak demand in recent months, while the company's industrial division has had more work...

2/01/2009   primitive timesizing in the news, reinvented thousands of times every day in every recession by mid- and small-size companies, organizations and governments despite mainstream economists' and business schools' scorn - with excerpting and [commenting] by Phil Hyde (PH) unless otherwise initialed -

1. [Temporary] Pay cut or [permanent] job cut? - Sideways, by Anita Gabriel, 1/31 Malaysia Star - Malaysia
   PARIS, the inimitable city of romance, art and everything fine in life, turned into a city of near chaos over the week. Millions led by unions thronged the city through snarling traffic to protest part of the government’s US$34bil stimulus plan – to cut the number of permanent public sector jobs. Indeed, too much for the French who have long grappled with high unemployment of 8%-10%.
   In contrast, unemployment has never quite been a prickly issue in Malaysia and as long as the jobless data hovered around 3%-3.5% (full employment by some standards), it didn’t have to be. Up till now that is.
   In recent weeks, there has been a deluge of grisly jobless data that has hit a nerve among Malaysians. The Malaysian Institute Economic Research (MIER) expects unemployment rate to creep up to 4.5% this year as businesses brutally slash cost and downsize operations amidst a slowing global economy.
   Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) reported that 10,000 people have lost their jobs so far this year and expects more layoffs on the cards.
   Over the week, the International Labour Organisation, not meaning to be alarmist, warned nevertheless that global unemployment rates will increase this year, particularly in developing countries.
   Naturally, Malaysians who have escaped layoffs are now asking – will I be next?
   Just when the Government thought they have enough problems to deal with, in came another major one – the rising tide of layoffs. Let’s not forget. Thousands of fresh graduates are expected to enter the market this year, flooding a labour pool that could potentially shrink.
   Companies in dire straits, who are strapped for funds on the back of dwindling sales due to waning consumer confidence, may find it hard pressed to adhere to the Government’s behest to use retrenchment as a last resort. And what if many companies find themselves at that point of “last resort” and are compelled to cut jobs? Not unthinkable considering pundits’ forecast that this may be a long and arduous downward spiral.
   It was announced late in the week that a three-day work week may be on the cards for companies and factories if workers and employers agree. The rationale is clear – instead of laying off staff, companies can cut their work days and reduce the wages proportionately. It’s drastic but not quite as drastic as losing one’s job. Half a job is better than none at all.
   But that’s easier said than done. Imagine a factory with over 1,000 employees and trying to get all of them to agree on such a plan, particularly when the two groups – employer and employees – most often have such divergent positions.
   Desperate times call for desperate measures as well as speedy intervention. In order for public policy to rise above partisan interest, could the current circumstances be compelling enough for the Human Resources Ministry to formulate a regulation or legal framework that allows companies, which meet a certain set of criteria, to cut working hours if the only remaining alternative is to cut jobs?
   Some industry participants also suggest that this may be the right time for the country’s Employment Act, 1955 to be tweaked as it’s still very much related to the old economy which makes it “rather archaic”.
   There is, however, comfort in the fact that the Government has moved to tackle some burning issues concerning the slack in the labour market.
   For starters, employers in the textile and electronics and electrical sectors will be able to save some RM40mil, as they have been exempted from the human resources development levy for six months. The MEF has called for the exemption to be extended to other industries as well – not a bad idea, given the speed and scale of the impact of the global recession on Malaysian businesses.
   In addition, the Human Resources Ministry has asked for more funds to retrain those who have been retrenched from their jobs.
   How about temporarily reducing the mandatory 12% contribution by employers to their employees’ retirement fund, the Employees Provident Fund? Maybe it’s also time to rethink if we should have unemployment insurance, something the Government has long said we do not need, given the rose-tinged vision of full employment.
   Most of these measures may be a bitter pill to swallow for the employed lot but if they manage to stave off job cuts and add a ray of light in a dark employment landscape, then why not?
   Unemployment rate is an important indicator of a country’s general state of economy. Close rapport and regular discussions between the traditional tripartite parties – employers, employees and Government – is imperative in an economy banking on spending its way out of a slowdown.
   Anita Gabriel, business editor of The Malaysia Star, is overcome by an impulse for fairness. She thinks it’s time for the wealthy to pitch in during times of distress.

2. VW sales tumble 15% in January, 1/31 Chattanooga Times Free Press
   Sales at Volkswagen fell by 15 percent in January as the worldwide slump in the car industry showed no sign of slowing, its chief executive officer was quoted as saying.
   Sales at Volkswagen were still better than its competitors, however, Martin Winterkorn told the Financial Times. Auto sales worldwide are down 25%.
   Still, it has put around two-thirds of its German work force on shorter hours as it slashes production to cope with the fall in demand.
   

   
   

1. USPS Wants To Cut Back To Five-Day Work Week, By Alex Chasick, 1/30 The Consumerist - New York,NY,USA
   A $3 billion deficit and expected losses of $6 billion more have led the Postmaster General to suggest cutting mail delivery from six to five days.
   The post office blames FedEx and email, along with the decline of advertising mailers that has occurred with the economic downturn, for its troubles. Various studies have estimated that cutting a day of service, probably Tuesday or Saturday, could save between $1.9 and $3.5 billion annually.
   We pay most of our bills online, most of our packages come via UPS or DHL, so the only mail we usually get is magazines and ad fliers. Would you care if the mail came only five days a week?
   
   
2. Britain Needs a Shorter-Hours Culture, What’s New, Sloan Work and Family Research Network, 1/30 Work and Family Blog - http://wfnetwork.bc.edu/blog/
   David Spencer of the United Kingdom’s Guardian [=Manchester Guardian] calls for a change in traditional orthodox economic theory to a more radical approach that would readjust work time to reduce the jobless rate and improve work life quality.
   

   
   

1. Budget looking bleak - Councilors discuss options for smallest tax increase possible, By Dawn De Busk, Independent Publishing Group - Windham area, ME,USA
   During a budget workshop following the Windham Town Council’s regular meeting on Tuesday night, Town Manager Tony Plante presented a set of recommendations to stimulate revenue and decrease costs.
   The councilors repeated many of the same sentiments and beliefs they had expressed in earlier workshops. Councilors stated they did not want to lay-off town employees, and they voiced a concern for most residents’ ability to pay higher property taxes sometimes balanced with a realization that taxes might be raised within the levy limit to cover necessary costs.
   Plante advocated for maintaining road funding and replacing aging police cruisers in addition to exploring any other creative ways to deal with an anticipated $1.5 million budget gap for the 2009-10 fiscal year.
   In providing the council with his suggestions for reducing the budget, Plante slimmed the budget gap down to $335,000. His recommendations included: a one-year wage freeze for town employees, flat funding all operating expenses, a $50,000 reduction in capital equipment funding, and suspending contributions to the lands and buildings capital improvement fund.
   “A wage freeze could reduce the size of the gap,” Plante said. “The world has changed. The wage freeze is in line with what’s going on (economically) in the private business sector. It keeps staff we have as whole as possible.”
   “I’d rather see a freeze than layoffs,” Councilor Donna Chapman said. As she has mentioned in previous meetings, Chapman advocated for exploring a four-day workweek like the Town of Gray has established.
   Councilor Bob Muir asked Plante to provide his perspective of the four-day workweek.
   A four-day workweek would be the equivalent of a “20 percent wage decrease. For some, that’s not sustainable,” Plante said. Going to that work schedule would force some town employees to seek another full-time job, and would make the town less attractive in the marketplace when it advertises for positions left open after someone retires or gives notice, he said. In addition, employee’s health insurance deductions would go up.
   [Some people just don't understand that in a depression there is not "another full-time job" no matter how hard you "seek," and what makes the town less attractive in the marketplace is the amount they resort to layoffs. Plante's just another braindead destroyer. All he knows how to do is cut, cut, cut - right down into the 3rd world.]
   “The wages go down, but we would take more out of wages to pay health insurance,” he said.
   There wouldn’t be any significant savings from shutting down the Town Hall and the Windham Public Library one extra day out of the week since both structures are small and fairly efficient to heat, he said.
   [No, let's kill jobs, not just hours, and with the jobs let's kill employee-consumers and their dependent-consumers - let's just gather round and drink economic cyanide!]
   With some reluctance, Plante said the state-set tax levy limit correlates into a 15 cent per 1,000 mils increase, “but things can change.”
   Councilor Liz Wisecup said she’s been soliciting comments from residents, and everyone told her they don’t want to see any increase in their property taxes.
   “The majority of people can’t afford it. People are willing to see a reduction in town services,” she said.
   Muir and Chapman agreed with Wisecup on avoiding taxation.
   “Given the economy, I’m not in favor of raising taxes if we can get around it,” Muir said. “Fees and taxes – it’s money out of people’s pockets.”
   “It’s a tough one when we’re talking about people’s tax dollars,” Chapman said. She said not only is she a resident who pays property taxes, but many people in her district do – and some of them are not faring well enough financially to afford a jump in their tax bill.
   “This is going to be a tough budget season,” she said. “I have got one call about the budget, and it was from a town employee worried about their job. Tony, I wouldn’t want to be in your seat when it comes to handing out pink slips.”
   Chair Carol Waig said she would not support cutting jobs. As she had stated in the past, she thinks layoffs will only contribute to the recession.
   “It’s a ripple effect: you lose your job, you lose your home or your car,” Chapman said.
   Muir asked Plante if he could envision any way to cut services without cutting positions. Plante responded, “Not really.”
   [Plante has no vision at all - except The Great Depression Revisited.]
   Plante said he would keep the councilor’s input and priorities in mind while finalizing next fiscal year’s budget. He said he would be meeting with town managers in other communities to brainstorm creative solutions for making cuts or stimulating town revenue.
   [But creative solutions are staring him in the face and he's too lacking in vision to recognize it. And if these downsizing-bound Americans dominate the next few years, America is finished as a world leader.]
   The Windham Town Council will receive the proposed budget on March 31.

2. Creative Cost-Cutting Tactics For Small Biz - How to pinch pennies until they wail, By MELANIE LINDNER, 1/29 FORBES.COM via 2/04 AOL rotating headline (Why the Stimulus Will Not Save Us - A Small Windfall Now Doesn't Equal Long-Term Help...)
   With credit locked up and consumers on the sidelines, small businesses should be sleuthing for any and all ways to shave expenses. Chopping heads only gets you so far--slice into muscle and you may be too hobbled to ride the rebound.
   "Many think that the next step is to eliminate head count, but they will almost certainly be late when recovery comes," says Ken Hagerstrom, chief executive of Carlsbad, Calif.-based consultancy Expense Reduction Analysts.
   With that in mind, we canvassed small business owners and consultants across the country to root out a host of creative cost-cutting techniques.
   Serious cost cutting means looking everywhere--even at the very packages that you send through the mail. Aaron Rubin, chief executive of karatedepot.com, an online karate-equipment retailer, cut costs by switching from the free boxes used by the United States Postal Service to lighter, bubble protected plastic envelopes. While he has to pay for the envelopes, the difference in weight is so significant that it costs him less than using the free boxes.
   "If you get a package down from one pound, one ounce to less than one pound, the saving for priority mail is over $3 per package," says Rubin.
   Sharing office space can save more than a few bucks. Tyler Jorgenson, a real estate broker in Chino, Calif., recently renegotiated his lease to include a provision for subleasing. He's now renting out 65% of his location and charging two tenants enough to cover his entire rent. One of the conditions of the deal is that Jorgenson pays for the utilities and Internet connection for the whole office (which he would have to do anyway if he didn't have tenants).
   Sometimes you have to lie down with competitors for survival. Group-purchasing organizations like the Council of Small Business Enterprise in Cleveland negotiates on behalf of nearly 17,000 members to get better deals on everything from employee benefit programs to office supplies. Buying in bulk lowers everyone's rates.
   If after preliminary layoffs your payroll is still weighing you down, consider turning your line workers into entrepreneurs.
   Say your firm writes software. Instead of chopping overhead by chopping heads, let each of the developers take charge of their own product while you take a stake in their efforts. In lieu of a salary, offer them partial support (in terms of marketing, product testing and health benefits) to build out their slice of the business and, with any luck, substantially increase their wealth. If all goes well, everyone wins.
   Don't forget to crack open your information technology expenses. You could pay $15 a month for conference-calling services offered by the likes of AccuConference, which allows an unlimited number of callers to convene for up to 10 hours per call. For that price, you get special features like the ability to poll participants during the call and, if they have a computer nearby, real-time viewing of Power Point presentations.
   Or you could pay nothing at the slightly stripped-down freeconferencecall.com, which allows up to 96 callers to have a maximum six-hour conference call. You can call in by phone or computer; record and reply to the call and share it by RSS feed or podcast. Cost: only your usual long distance fees.
   Cash-strapped manufacturers and other businesses with significant hard assets should take advantage of Section 179 of the United States Internal Revenue Tax Code. This provision allows deductions for "tangible" assets such as property and equipment.
   In 2007, the maximum deduction was just $125,000, but for 2008 and 2009, the IRS raised the amount to $250,000. If you're thinking of buying, say, a new truck and want that deduction, do it within the next year because the maximum deduction will drop back down to $125,000 in 2010. (For a complete description of property eligible for Section 179 deductions, click here.)
   Short on cash to cover year-end bonuses? Offer a few extra paid vacation days for the coming year instead. That way, you can still compensate employees for hours they didn't work, but you don't have to lay out all that cash in one shot.
   This one may be a tough sell during the holidays--but, hey, it's worth a shot.
   [Or how about offering a few extra unpaid vacation days - in a recession they're likely to view this as better than a 'permanent vacation.' And the amazing thing about this article is that it never mentions cutting the workweek = offering a few extra unpaid hours of free time each week - which, as the recession deepens, employees are also likely to view as better than being laid off.]

1/28/2009   primitive timesizing in the news, reinvented thousands of times every day in every recession by mid- and small-size companies, organizations and governments despite mainstream economists' and business schools' scorn - with excerpting and [commenting] by Phil Hyde (PH) unless otherwise initialed -

1. Pass the stimulus - then help shorten the work week, op ed by Dean Baker, New York Daily News via nydailynews.com.
   As job losses hemorrhage, the American economy is in desperate need of a stimulus. It is becoming increasingly clear that Congress must work rapidly to approve some version of President Obama's plan.
   Then, Obama and the Congress should very quickly turn to taking a second, temporary step to create more jobs: creating incentives for companies to reduce the workweek and work year for many Americans.
   The idea is not as radical as it sounds - and could prove very productive indeed for the American worker.
   Recent Labor Department data make the scope of the problem clear: The economy lost more than 500,000 jobs a month in the last quarter of 2008. This adds insult to injury as state and local governments are already facing serious budget strains that will lead to massive service cutbacks and public sector layoffs.
   President Obama's $825 billion plan is a very good first step to contain the damage. Much of the package would go directly toward maintaining state and local services. The package also would help those hardest hit by the downturn with increased funding for unemployment benefits. For the first time, the feds also would cover most of the cost of health care insurance for unemployed workers. Finally, infrastructure and energy spending would inject money into the economy over the next two years and offer long-term benefits.
   But, big as the plan is, we're fooling ourselves if we believe that our work is done when some version of this stimulus gets passed. As President Obama's own analysis showed, the package would still leave us with 7% unemployment two years from now - roughly the current rate - even if things go well. This is intolerable.
   And of course, things could get worse. A further collapse of the banking system due to a tidal wave of bad debt or a run on the dollar are both plausible scenarios that could seriously worsen the situation.
   In short, we must right now start brainstorming creative and temporary plans to boost the economy further. One innovative policy that would provide a quick boost to the economy and jobs - and lasting gains in reduced unemployment - is a tax incentive for shorter workweeks or work years.
   No doubt, such a suggestion will make conservatives howl about liberals attempting to turn the United States into France, where in 2000 the government mandated a 35-hour workweek.
   But I'm not suggesting the government force a shorter workweek; I'm suggesting it create incentives for businesses to make the choice themselves.
   And in any event, there are worse examples to follow than France's on this score. The reduction in the workweek there created new jobs and improved productivity.
   Incentivizing a shorter workweek in the U.S. could take different forms. To qualify, an employer who currently provides no paid vacation might offer all workers three weeks a year of paid vacation, approximately a 6% reduction in work time. Alternatively, employers could cut the standard workweek, say from 40 hours to 36 hours, a 10% reduction in work hours.
   [This is essentially the way France's Robien Law worked in 1996.]
   Or they could offer paid sick leave or paid parental leave.
   How would this help the economy? The tax break would allow the employer to compensate workers for fewer hours up to some limit, say a maximum of $2,500 per worker. That would cut work hours but maintain staffing levels.
   As a result, workers would be getting just as much money as before the reduction in hours - but putting in 10% fewer hours. If workers have the same amount of money, then demand in the economy will be the same. At the same time, firms would then need to hire more workers to meet this demand, since they would be getting 10% fewer hours from each worker.
   Such a tax break would stay in effect for just two years. However, if workers and employers liked the new work schedules, there would be a lasting benefit from this job creation measure.
   Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
   [Dean Baker may turn out to be the fully credentialled economist needed by the shorter hours movement to lead the minimalist logical modification and upgrade of the time-blind illogic and contradictions within contemporary mainstream economics. See also the comments below this article on *this webpage.]

2. ...More sectors of US economy hit by layoffs, 1/28 Singapore Business Times via ICIS News, ICIS.com
   Furloughs, wage reductions, hiring freezes and shorter hours simply did not do enough.
   [Then hours were not shortened enough across the board to reduce the labor surplus sufficiently to harness market forces in hiking wages...and spending and markets.... The volume of hours on offer in the job market is shrinking anyway - in the worst possible way - so it will happen anyway, and it finally goes so far as to create the necessary perceived shortage of labor to stop the collapse of wages. At that point, hiring and wage stability returns and we started calling the "recession" "over" ... at a much lower level of activity.]
   A year into this recession, companies across the board are resorting to mass job cuts.
   [Oh that's going to help - not! This is just further market-cutting suicide. Let's get back to shorter hours and retaining employee-consumers and their dependents.]
   

   
   

1. How county departments will absorb personnel budget cuts, 1/27 Rome News-Tribune - Rome,GA,USA
   The Floyd County Commission on Tuesday accepted the proposed budget reductions for 2009 for various departments.
   The following list shows how each county department or agency will absorb a 4.5 percent cut in personnel funding for 2009. Larger departments also lost pay and benefit money for one in 10 positions. Salaries for elected officials and some of their deputies are set by state law.
   Office of Receiver & Jury Management: Each employee to take eight furlough days; Reduction in supplies, seminars and conferences, and legal fees line items.
   Juvenile Court: Eliminate two part time-positions. Each employee to take one furlough day per month.
   Probate Court: No furlough days. Reduction in supplies, health insurance, seminars and conferences, and hearing account line items.
   Clerk of Superior Court: No furloughs. Salaries of new clerk of court and chief deputy total $47,000 less than salaries of previous clerk and deputy.
   District Attorney: All employees to take one furlough day per month. District attorney, as well as each county-paid assistant district attorney, also will voluntarily take one furlough day per month. Seminar and conferences budget reduced.
   Victim Witness Assistance Program: No furloughs. Reduction in witness fees, seminars and conferences and child victim assistance program line items.
   Sheriff: Freeze up to five positions. All staff will take one eight-hour furlough day per month. Sheriff and chief deputy will voluntarily be part of the furlough program.
   Board of Commissioners: Each commissioner will voluntarily take a 4.5 percent pay cut.
   Human Resources: Each employee to take two furlough days. Reduction in merit board meeting fees, supplies, dues and subscriptions, seminar and conferences, repair and maintenance, employee medical exams, legal publications, data processing and postage line items.
   Police: Freeze four vacant patrol officer positions. Eliminate three school crossing guard positions, or require two days of furlough per employee. Reduce uniform budget.
   Facility Management: Each employee to take six furlough days. Three employees retired at the end of 2008. These positions are being replaced by employees with lesser salaries. Reductions in uniforms and small tools line items.
   Public Works: Freeze five positions. No furloughs. Employees to work Monday through Thursday – all PWC facilities to be closed on Fridays to save $15,000 in utility costs. Reductions in supplies, surface treatment (road paving), materials, uniforms, gas and oil, seminars and conferences, small tools, bridge material, traffic markings, and all other line items.
   Engineering: Two furlough days per employee; reduction in seminars and conferences and data processing line items.
   Prison: Freeze one outside detail officer position. Each employee to take five furlough days.
   Tax Assessor and Appraisers: Each employee to take three furlough days.
   Board of Assessors: reduction in days worked; no out-of-state audits; no new equipment. Reduction in supplies, seminars and conferences and data processing.
   Cooperative Extension: Each employee to take one furlough day per month.
   Tax Commissioner: Freeze two vacant positions. No furlough days to be taken.
   Magistrate Court: Eliminate two part-time constables and replace with one full-time constable. Eliminate one intern position in May. Eliminate overtime.
   Judges Durham, Colston, Mathews and Niedrach Court Reporters: No furloughs. Reduction in dues and subscriptions, seminars and conferences, postage and supplies.
   Superior Court Administrator: Furlough days to be taken. Reduction in bailiff’s time. Reduction in supplies, mileage, seminars and dues and subscription line items.
   County Manager: County Manager to take reduction in pay. Reduction in supplies, dues and subscriptions and seminars and conferences line items.
   County Clerk: All employees to take one furlough day per month.
   Purchasing: All staff will take one furlough day per month.
   Finance: Employees to take six furlough days. Eliminate intern position. Reduce seminars and conferences and data processing line items.
   Management Information Systems: All employees to take up to 12 furlough days.
   Emergency Management: Revised supplies, uniforms and seminars and conference line items. No furloughs.
   Animal Control: Reduce employee work week from 40 hours to 38 hours per week.
   911: Freeze two currently vacant positions to save $50,800. No furloughs.
   Solid Waste: Most employees to be permanent part-time employees instead of full-time; no special community clean-up days to be held in 2009, saving $12,000.
   Airport: Freeze one position. Cut back winter hours by one hour per day, closing at 8 p.m. instead of 9 p.m.
   211: One furlough day per month.
   Forum: Each employee to take nine furlough days. Reductions in uniforms, seminar and conferences and food and beverage line items.

2. UK faces return of three-day week, 27/01/2009 1:55:41 PM globalhousepricecrash.com
   British workers could have their working week cut to three days under plans being considered by the government to help companies cope with recession.
   The government is understood to be considering paying firms to cut the working hours of thousands of staff instead of retrenching them in an attempt to stop unemployment soaring past two million.
   Now business secretary Peter Mandelson is facing calls to offer compensation for workers who have their hours cut.
   Unnamed ministerial sources told The Observer newspaper that a compensation scheme for workers was an option being discussed but was "not imminent".
   "Government sources said there were issues about whether to restrict compensation to the car industry or apply it to all firms," the newspaper said.
   The Department for Business is already advising employers on its website to consider cutting staff hours as a way to save money, saying it might be better than making staff redundant.
   Similar measures were [taken] after a series of crippling strikes by mine workers in the 1970s which had dramatic knock-on effects through the rest of the nation's economy.
   Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher introduced a short-time working directive in the 1980s to cover earnings lost through shorter hours.
   

   
   

• Maine lawmakers consider shorter school week, NECN - Newton,MA,USA
  (Amy Sinclair, NECN: Augusta, Maine) - The economic crisis has everybody looking for ways to cut back. For example, school districts are trying to make ends meet with less funding and higher expenses. It has prompted state lawmakers in Maine to consider a controversial proposal that is sure to get parents and students talking.
  The story is the same in school districts across Maine. Heating and transportation costs are up, food is more expensive, and funding, both local and state is either flat or falling.
  "We lost 502 thousand in the latest curtailment."
  These stark financial realities pushed school superintendent Mark Eastman to approach his representative with a proposal that's sure to get parents talking.
  The bill, if passed, would allow Maine schools to adjust the number of school days and hours of instruction from the mandatory 175 days students are required to put in now.
  Sawin: "My primary focus is on equivalent instruction & flexibility of options given lean financial times that we're in and the uncertainty of energy fuel prices."
  Here's what switching to a four-day school week would mean for Maine’s largest geographical school district.
  Eastman: "For me it's a half million in savings in transportation costs.”
  Shortening the school week isn't a new idea. It was first adopted by some schools during the energy crisis in the seventies and right now 100 districts in 17 state have gone to four days for the same reasons.
  While some students would no doubt embrace the idea of a three-day weekend, many parents would not.
  But even if the bill passes, it doesn't mean every district would go to a four-day week, because what makes sense in rural school districts, might not work for city schools.
  In the current economy, schools will need all the tools they can get their hands on.
  

  
  

• Hospital doctors coping with 48-hour week, by Cherry Thomas, Bolton,The Bolton News - Greater Manchester,UK
  HEALTH chiefs have moved to quash fears of a shortage of surgeons at the Royal Bolton Hospital when new EU rules come into force.
  The European Working Time Directive, which becomes law in August, will set a maximum working hours week of 48 hours, reduced from 58.
  [If Obama really wants a quick fix for our economic crisis, he should just copy the European Working Time Directive.]
  And that has fuelled concerns that surgeons will not have enough time to carry out their vital work.
  The Royal College of Surgeons has warned that staff levels may be reduced too much by the directive, handovers between shifts will be rushed and doctors will lose out on experience.
  John Black, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said: “There are simply not the surgeons in the UK to fill the gaps when every doctor’s hours are cut to a 48 hours per week maximum.
  [Then bust open the bottleneck on training 'em - I don't want no surgeon workin' on me who's been onduty more than FORTY hours, preferably LESS!!!]
  “Trainees are also telling the college they cannot gain enough experience to progress on the shortened hours.”
  [Good little robots, they're suckin' up nicely! And this is still WAY ahead of the US EIGHTY-hour 'limit'!]
  But the Royal Bolton Hospital said it was already meeting the new 48-hour rules, months before they will be implemented.
  The hospital has been following the new practice since the summer and says it has not had any major problems.
  It is thought to be one of the first hospitals in the country to get ready for the change.
  However, hospital bosses said they were monitoring the situation due to concerns over junior doctors gaining the experience they need.
  Heather Edwards, head of communications, said: “The hospital trust met the directive’s requirement for a maximum 48-hour week last summer, a year before it is due to become mandatory.
  “While we understand that there has been some concern about this, we have already met the European Working Time Directive in Bolton.
  “So far, we have been relatively unaffected by a shortage of surgeons compared with elsewhere.
  “We believe that working extremely long hours is not good for the doctors and is not safe for patients. [Amen to that!]
  “There is, however, a tension between shorter hours and trainee doctors gaining enough experience which may lead to difficulties and shortages in future. We are keeping a close eye on this.”
  [Let's get back to the tension between longer hours and patient safety! and the stranglehold that doctors have on access to their skills in order to hype their pay, patients be damned.]