Time, Productivity and Tax Rates

["Doug, Data Librarian at Ext 4225" <engstromdd -at- PHIBRED -dot- COM>]

Apologies for the long delay; Mailer bounced this after three days while I was
out of town.  I'm replying to some of Barb's comments on the dearth of good
part-time jobs:

*********************
Surprising that business hasn't picked up on this - I think it's partly the
government's fault (isn't everything). I hired two people on a short term
basis for about 10 hours a week, and the paperwork (I wasn't paying them
under the table) was horrendous. Almost all state-level stuff - Workmen's
comp, etc. I think if they'd loosen up on some of this stuff, they would
actually see more tax dollars.
**********************

I think you touch on part of the picture; we certainly load waaay too much stuff
into payroll.  This is partially because this country has a deep-seated horror
of the idea that somebody, somewhere might get something for nothing, and if we
tie social benefits to the workplace, then by gosh we at least know they did
some *work* for it.

However, the culture of most businesses is also strongly biased in favor of
full 40-hour commitments.  And face it, including part-timers in meetings is a
pain, especially when you have people with only slight schedule overlaps or are
trying to include heavily-scheduled people in the group.

I think it's fair to say that what most companies want deep in their corporate
hearts is a work force that will show up on demand and work like mad when
there's work to be done (fully tooled up and familiar with the business and
customer base, of course) and then go away and stop running up overhead when the
work slacks off.

It's probably equally fair to say that what most employees really want is stable
salary and benefits (steadily increasing, of course) with work hours that flex
around family schedules and other commitments.

An alternative (to steer this discussion to a more tech-writer direction) is
freelancing.  This can give the employee and the employer freedom to "flex,"
with pricing as the rationalizing agent.  Unfortunately, because of our
workplace-as-the-fount-of-social-benefits fixation, we force freelancers to
assume some pretty awesome risks, as regards to income, retirement income, and
especially health insurance.  Perhaps some Canadians could enlighten us on the
subject of whether or not their National Health Plan makes freelancing more
attractive.  (It seems like it should, but they've got the actual experience
and I don't.)

Freelancing also has the problem of requiring more general business skills,
such as bookeeping, negotiating, managing inventory and capital goods, etc.
than most people have.  This may actually be a bigger barrier than any social
policy.

**************
Anyways, it's interesting that you say this - I read a report about a year or
two ago that said that most people don't really want two incomes - they want
one and a half, but companies just don't offer the option.
**************

You got that right.  My wife works part-time while taking care of our daughter
and the basic deal seems to be that you can put in half the time for one-third
the pay, sans benefits and seniority privileges.  It's this kind of thing that
makes many workers view contingent and part-time work with suspicion, and I'm
not sure how you persuade businesses (or in her case, colleges) not to do that.

***************
In the same vein, I also read an article about a company in Japan that went
to a completely automated shop. It kept its employees - they worked shifts of
about a day or two a month as security, maintenance, and other tasks that
haven't been automated. It's an interesting idea, but I never saw a follow-up
story - I've always been curious how it worked out.
****************

If you ever find out, let me know.  That's sort of the realization of the great
liberal vision of the 1930's -- that our machines would do more and more of the
"grunt work" of day-to-day survival, leaving us with an ever-shrinking range of
tasks the machines couldn't perform, and the rest of our time for productive
leisure.  As I think we're all acutely aware, that's not how it worked out, and
I think it's worth figuring out why not.

Thanks for the reply,

Doug
ENGSTROMDD -at- phibred -dot- com