The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, January 24, 1992, Image 1
Ianuary23,i! »er ain m that date, (• ude service 1 Austin. Page 7 A&M groups do a commendable job in celebrating MLK holiday. -Battalion editorial board. Page 2 CAREER FAIR offers counseling and employment opportunities to fight shrinking job market. Page 5 A&M bounces back into action against Rice after lengthy layoff. ves from Bryi- and Waco ha; ation to consi; is in their cities ibers met ( t it hours - i[. irs spent in ei — before at >ar agreement JO citizens wh ral homes an; suld be affecte nded the mee: first deadline rise agreeme: V to repay th; ts for the High ority, and foil ong way froj speed rail tt exas Railroa; .ena Guerreit chairperson s are unclear," > give The Battalion Vol. 91 No. 78 College Station, Texas “Serving Texas A&M since 1893” 8 Pages Friday, January 24, 1992 Experts say Americans work harder, longer than Japanese WASHINGTON (AP) - People who study the U.S. work force say Japan's Yoshio Sakurauchi got it just about all wrong when he said “inferior ... lazy" American workers are the cause of this country's competitive troubles. The U.S. economy has its troubles, these observers say, but the American worker is not the cause. “American workers work very hard and try to work even harder; the thing that impresses me is how hard they'll fight just to get a lousy job," said former U.S. Labor Secretary Ray Marshall. Still, there were enough home truths in what Sakurauchi, speaker of Japan's low er house, said over the weekend to cause squirming in this country. Economists said he was on target in □ L. A. County cancels $122 M Japanese contract in backlash to criticism of U.S. workers/ Page 4 suggesting America isn't training workers for the skills needed to make the work place operate at its most productive level. Sakurauchi, who said later he had been misunderstood, was quoted as telling his constituents that the source of America's competitive problem “is the inferior qual ity of U.S. labor," 30 percent of whom, he said, cannot read. “They want high pay without working," he said. The charge is simply off base, said Stephen Cooney, international investment director for the National Association of Manufacturers. And the proof, he said, is that in the last five years “we've doubled our exports of manufactured goods; in virtually every industry we've gained market share against all other industrial countries." Jeff Faux, president of the Economic Policy Institute, which studies economic growth, said Sakurauchi was “all wet" in his comments on the American worker. “People are working harder, and hard er for less," Faux said. Since 1970, he said, the average Ameri can in manufacturing worked 38 hours more per year while the Japanese worker worked 114 fewer hours per year and the German workers 286 fewer hours. But he said Sakurauchi was on the mark in suggesting that America's prob lems lie here, not overseas, and in saying that the United States is becoming Japan's “subcontractor." "It's true: We're supplying Japan with inputs, with raw materials and they're de signing and manufacturing the final goods. The Japanese have been moving over here to assemble components pro duced in Japan," he said. The problem with that, he said, is that high wages go to the production workers of the world, not the assemblers. Marshall laid America's competitive problems largely on management systems that use too many white-collar and ad ministrative workers and too many in spectors and supervisors. This discour ages production workers from using their creativity. The point, he said, is illustrated by the joint General Motors-Toyota venture in Fremont, Calif. town s, love Page 2 its with sinus; bronchitis aw II nesses, Bud- Jegras group ai re they had m; :ts with seve: a junior fromt that she chant ise of the trip, a life-changi: : said. "As at now have Chr. hat her groi roups withint! d really got: well. They ws res from the e / for during fi night and hac hday," she sai tad a Bible shi: ■oncentrating as Christ." len the trip w e^dy to leave i vade. id to get bad: d be with thts e said." I miss isses oney ^ersit] Page 2 gift that wild n exceptional if and research! ^ortation. an equal gift! ded through tli ' y Scholars Prf Kelleher's wifi 1 in the areao at. nical donatci be used by th ering to develoj )stics Laborator :al Engineeritii yam. EarlierC ade a $5,000 gif dham Midtun nator of MEl dication. e released totk \.RCO's Univet Grant Prograf to match fund; he National So for developint ion Laboratorj •iagnostics and ring. assistant profes of Engineering Master variabli ntly from IDhl t — a very ad mtor — willb dustrial Distri nt for student; tory automatio» lid the drive'; ^plication is to ding to need in nergy efficient, ■ive is a chance ands-on experi- shows students tions of the the- aed in lecture." ORTRUN GINGRICH/The Battalion Get a leg up... Senior Karl Lockett (center), a political science major, looks on as senior Torey Dangerfield’s boots. This freshman privilege is a freshman Amit Bhavsar, a freshman from Ft. Worth, takes off way to honor senior Corps of Cadet members. Health care policies decline in U.S. WASHINGTON (AP) - Nearly 36 million Americans under the age of 65 were without public or private health insurance in 1990, a private research organization reported Wednesday. The report by the Employee Benefit Re search Institute said the figure increased to 35.7* million from 34.4 million in 1989. The percent age also rose, from 16.1 percent in 1989 to 16.6 percent in 1990. Persons 65 and over were not counted be cause 96 percent of them have Medicare cover age. The institute said a decline in employment- based insurance coverage, perhaps the result of increased unemployment and higher health in surance coverage, was a primary cause of the increase in the uninsured. Dallas Salisbury, president of the institute, said the figures indicate that health insurance is likely to be an issue in this year's political campaigns. "The pollsters for some time have said that health care in the context of politics is really an issue of the 'haves,' not an issue of the 'have nots,' and politicians will move towards action when the 'haves' begin to hurt," he said. "What this survey and the most recent num bers indicate is that the 'haves' are beginning to hurt." In the early surveys, he said, the percentage of insured people with incomes above $50,000 per year and full-time worker families contin ued to climb. From 1988 to 1990, he said, an erosion of the insured rate in these categories began. The report said that 6 percent of people in families with incomes above $50,000 were uninsured, compared with 55 percent of those in families living on less than $20,000 a year. The uninsured rate among families headed by a full-time, year-around worker rose from 12 percent in 1989 to 12.5 percent in 1990. The institute is supported by corporations, financial institutions, associations, labor orga nizations, pension plans and professional ser vice organizations. It gathers and analyzes in formation on health care financing. Salisbury said the organization does not ad vocate particular policy changes. N ations unite to aid republics U.S. leads international effort to relieve former U.S.S.R. with supplies, advisors WASHINGTON (AP) - The world's wealthiest nations agreed Thursday ou a global effort to help the emerging nations of the former Soviet Union. Secretary of State James A. Baker III said U.S. Air Force planes will fly 54 shipments of emergency medicine and food to the former Soviet republics next month. Baker said the first C-5 trans ports in Operation Provide Hope will leave Frankfurt, Germany, on Feb. 10. Baker said the shipments will go to each of the 12 new states emerging from the wreckage of the Soviet Union. He said the Air Force flights would take one or two weeks to complete. "It's fair to say we truly have a global effort," Baker said at a news conference closing a two- day 47-nation conference con vened by the United States to co ordinate aid to the former Soviet Union. “Above all. Operation Provide Hope can vividly show the peo ples of the former Soviet Union that those that once prepared for war with them now have the courage and the conviction to use their militaries to say, 'We will wage a new peace,"' said Baker. “We are no more enemies: we have become friends," said Man fred Woerner, secretary general of NATO, the military alliance formed to block Soviet aggression in Europe. NATO will provide lo gistical support to the aid effort. The participants will send rep resentatives to Minsk next week to brief leaders of the former Soviet republics on the progress made to ward sending them aid. Germany Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscner said, "We have to do everything in our pow er to do away with weak spots in the food supply." “Operation Provide Hope can vividly show the peoples of the former Soviet Union that those once prepared for war .. . have the courage and conviction to use their militaries to say, ‘We will wage a new peace.’” - Sec. of State Baker A follow-up conference will be held in Lisbon, Portugal within 90 to 120 days. Japan also has offered to host a third meeting. Baker called- the conference “just the start of a continuing ef fort to intensify and coordinate a global response to this emergen- cy -" Baker said other U.S. contribu tions to the aid effort would be shipping Department of Defense excess medical stocks, establishing partnerships between U.S. hospi tals and their Soviet counterparts and providing logistical support to American private sector groups shipping food and medicine. The United States will also put up to 3,000 farm volunteers on the ground, create a training program for grassroots democracy with up to 500 participants and establish a foundation for training in leader ship and management. Dallas Council backs Number crunching anti-gay hiring code Japan utilizes statistics to out-produce U.S., speaker says DALLAS (AP) — Gay rights ac tivists were disappointed in the Dallas City Council's decision to keep a controversial anti-gay hir ing ban, but most remained confi dent the decision would be over turned this month. The council in a 10-5 vote Thursday decided to keep the ban in place as long as the Texas sodomy law remains in effect. A state appeals court is expected to decide later in January whether to uphold a lower court judge's rul ing that the law is unconstitution al. "I was disappointed that they didn't show the courage and lead ership to remove the questions from the application and poly graph," said John Thomas, execu tive director of the Dallas Gay Al liance. "But I think the law will be overturned." If the Texas 3rd Court of Ap peals upholds state District Judge Paul Davis' December 1990 deci sion, the 112-year-old law would be overturned and th& basis for the police ban removed. The council's decision, reached at 2 a.m. Thursday after listening to scores of gay rights activists and anti-gay advocates, allows police to continue to discriminate against hiring homosexuals. However, the decision also calls for a 90-day review of the depart ment's application which asks offi cer candidates to admit whether See Gays/Page 4 By Karen Praslicka The Battalion Japanese assembly industries are ahead of those in the United States partly because of the strong statistical foundation in Japanese industry, an expert in statistics and quality and productivity said Thursday. Dr. Stuart Hunter, president elect of the American Statistical Association, visited A&M for the first time and spoke to the South east Texas Chapter of the ASA about new methods in statistical monitoring. During a press conference be fore the speech, he discussed American and Japanese produc tivity. Hunter said the Japanese were told not long after World War II by a famous U.S. statisti cian that quality and productivity go hand in hand. "The Japanese were told that if you have quality, productivity fol lowed," Hunter said. "This is what they've been doing." But Hunter said he is not wor ried about reports that U.S. prod ucts cannot match the quality of Japanese products. "There's so much talent right here," he said. "If industry wakes up, things will progress rapidly." Hunter said he would like to see U.S. industries using more statistics and using more modern problem solutions. He said the statistical tools used by most in dustries were developed about 50 years ago. "Lots has happened since World War II that's not being used," Hunter said. Assembly industries in Ameri ca, such as the automobile and electronics industries, are less ad vanced in statistical methods than other industries such as pharma ceuticals, he said. Another part of the problem facing U.S. industries is that no new solutions are being devel oped, Hunter said. American in dustries are basically importing back technology from the Japanese that was developed in the U.S. "But you don't win by playing catch up," he said. Hunter said there are simple statistical tools available that could improve U.S. assembly in dustries, but the industries are re luctant to use them. "In another five or ten s years, they'll be hearing about these things from foreign tongues," he said. The perception that American workers are lazy compared to Japanese workers is untrue - U.S. society is simply rich. Hunter said. A rich life is not a criticism, be cause Americans have worked just as hard and are just as resourceful as Japanese workers, he said. 4* It