Downsizing Literature LO4205

GMBrady@aol.com
Tue, 12 Dec 1995 11:44:56 -0500

Replying to LO4198 --

Rol writes:

>It is interesting that the major reason given for down-sizing is the
>amount of overhead in American companies compared to their international
>competition -- 27% of costs in the US, 22% in Germany, and 18% in Japan.
>Those differences are astounding.

REALLY interesting. I spent some time in both urban and rural Japan
recently, and that 18% figure is just astounding to me--differs so much
from what I thought I was seeing as to make me wonder about the possible
agenda of its source.

Pull into a service station, and 4, 5, 6 attendants come running out to
fill the tank, clean the windows, check under the hood. Go to a
department store, and there are one or two greeters at every door (I mean
_every_ door in a bank of doors). Elevator operators on automatic
elevators. Two or three clerks behind every counter, in situations where
an American department store would have one clerk for two or three
counters. A very rural post office--the sort that here would have a
single worker--with 6 or 7 people behind the counter . . . Maybe it's
different in the industrial sector, but I was probably in scores of
service places of business, and saw no exceptions to the pattern.

Or come at it from another perspective, and compare the number of paid
non-work days in America with any other industrialized country. In a
phone conversation a few days ago, a German friend asked my wife if we
couldn't come to Bad Godesberg for at least part of the holidays. When
wife Joy (a technical editor) said she had to work, that if we came the
days would be subtracted from her two week annual vacation, Norma was
incredulous. "TWO WEEKS!!?? You're kidding! Oh Joy, you should tell
those people you work for to stick it!"

>the major reason given for down-sizing is the amount of overhead

What am I failing to take into account?

Marion Brady

--
GMBrady@aol.com