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The average employee wastes about 20 percent of the workday. The 2007 Wasting Time Survey by Salary.com, which asked 2,000 employees across all job levels about how they spend their working hours, found employees waste an average of 1.7 hours of an 8.5-hour workday.

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One third of the employees spend their work-time for non-work related activities. One quarter of the employees waste their time at work because they feel that they are not paid enough for their efforts.

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Unproductive tasks in the workplace, from Web surfing to watercooler chit-chat, is costing companies $759 billion annually, according to a report released this week by America Online and Salary.com.

In a survey of 10,000 employees, the average worker admits to frittering away 2.09 hours per day, not counting lunch. The number one way they waste time at work is personal Internet use (e.g., email, IM, online polls, interactive games, message boards, chat rooms, etc.). Personal Internet use was cited by 44 percent of respondents as their primary time-wasting activity at work. Socializing with co-workers was the second most popular form of wasting time at work (23 percent of respondents). Conducting personal business, "spacing out," running errands, and making personal phone calls were other popular time-wasting activities in the workplace.

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I note for the record that co-ops are what has made California the economic powerhouse it is today.

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Worker-owned co-ops growing.

LAURA MAYORGA of Oakland was about to leave the United States for a trip abroad, but she managed to squeeze in one last visit Thursday to Arizmendi Bakery in Oakland, grabbing a slice of mozzarella, roasted yellow onion and red cabbage pizza. Arizmendi is worthy of a special trip, Mayorga said. "The food is so fresh," she said.

But the bakery, known for its exceptional cheese bread, scones and pizzas, is special for another reason. It belongs to its employees, known as "owner-workers." There are no bosses -- or, more accurately, everyone who works there is the boss. The bakery, along with Berkeley's Cheese Board Collective, the Berkeley Free Clinic and San Francisco's Rainbow Grocery Cooperative, is an example of the 30-year tradition of worker-owned cooperatives in the Bay Area, which has the largest concentration of such companies in the United States. And insiders say the sector is growing, with numerous co-ops opening in the Bay Area over the last five years.

Still more are in the planning stages, with cities including Walnut Creek and Concord seen as "great opportunities," according to a spokesman for the Cheese Board, a Berkeley pizzeria and bakery. Nationally, worker cooperatives are a $400 million business, according to the National Cooperative Business Association. Bay Area worker-owned co-ops generate more than half that amount, said Melissa Hoover, executive director of the San Francisco-based U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives.

In the Bay Area, there are two main types of cooperatives: consumer, such as outdoor outfitter REI, and worker-owned. "With a consumer co-op like REI, membership can be extended to anyone who buys its goods and services," Hoover said. Worker-owned cooperative membership is determined by working at the business. Co-op members say the work isn't bad. "I like the variety of working at a co-op," said Darren Korn, who has been a worker-owner at the Oakland Arizmendi location for seven years. Five days a week, Korn rounds dough, spins pizza into pizza shells and builds and bakes pizzas. "While I'm doing that, I'm discussing policy issues with the other members," he said. "You get to know your co-workers very well. It becomes like family," said Korn, who is starting a family of his own, with a baby due this spring. His co-op has 23 workers and generated $2 million in revenue this year, Korn said. (The bakery has three locations -- the two others are in Emeryville and San Francisco -- and each operates independently.)

Worker-owners don't have to worry about what management is thinking, since they are management. But this has its drawbacks, too, Korn said. "You can't just say, 'Screw it, I'll let the boss take care of it,'" he said. "You are the boss." Wages can be another concern. Steve Manning, a worker-owner at the Cheese Board, took home around $38,000 last year -- though he also pocketed a $12,000 bonus because the business made a profit. With worker cooperatives, profits are shared among the employees and also put back into the business. Still, Manning and Korn said worker-owned cooperatives are good places to work. At Arizmendi, employee turnover is very low -- an anomaly in the food industry, Korn said. Indeed, the 30-year-old Rainbow Grocery, which now boasts 250 workers and $40 million yearly revenue, has employees with 10, 15 and even 25 years' tenure. Arizmendi is also an example of how the co-op sector has been picking up steam in the Bay Area over the last few years.

Other worker cooperatives are forming independently. Inkworks Press, a 32-year-old worker-owned union print shop that is also an Alameda County certified green business, spawned an offshoot called Design Action Collective about three years ago. Manning, who was laid off from a corporate job in 2001, said cooperatives are becoming attractive to a growing segment of workers. "The standard corporate model is no longer providing pension plans and other forms of security," he said. "People are realizing they have to take more responsibility themselves, and one of the ways they can do that is by becoming an owner-worker and having a vote."

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Lingering doubt about the effectiveness of the agricultural cooperatives that serve California farmers has been cleared up by a 12-year study completed by University of California researchers. They found that the 41 co-ops they examined are doing quite well, thank you.

The study identified a few areas of comparison between the two types of receivers that should help growers evaluate performance. The university's Cooperative Extension specialist Shermain Hardesty and postgraduate researcher Vikas Salgia conducted the study of cooperatives operating in four strategic sectors of the state's agricultural economy: fruits and vegetables, dairy, farm supply and grain. Their report was part of California Agriculture, the university's quarterly research magazine for October-December.

"Contrary to popular belief, we found that the overall financial performance of cooperatives was on par with that of similar investor owned firms," the report said.

The profitability ratios of all three grain cooperatives were higher than those of their IOF counterparts.

Fruit and vegetable cooperatives averaged higher profitability levels than the IOF firms in the field, bit it was noticeably cyclical. Co-ops in all sectors had lower debt equity ratios than their IOF competitors.

Producers in the four categories studied can gain helpful data comparing co-ops with the IOFs by studying the tables and graphs included in the report and the extended version available from the lead author.

For example, the fruit and vegetable co-ops averaged less in current assets than their IOF counterparts, but they accounted for a lower use of debt.

While the IOFs in all four sectors showed greater assets than their cooperative cousins, the co-ops had lower debt/equity ratios in all sectors.

Overall, the study found that the financial performance of the co-ops on the West Coast has been comparable to that of the IOFs operating in the same sectors. And the co-ops are continuing to evolve, using flexibility in marketing to the advantage of their members.

The study provides convincing evidence that agricultural cooperatives such as Sunkist, Sunsweet, Sun-Maid and others are serving their members well.

Most of them are poised for even greater success in the future as they continue to promote the economic welfare of agricultural producers on the West Coast.

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As governor of California and president of the United States, he enacted policies that greatly expanded the role and size of government.

As governor, he oversaw the largest tax increase in Californian history. Democratic Governor Jerry Brown cut back the tax rate when he came to office.

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Reagan's 1967 tax increase was among the first of a long series of significant departures from a right-wing agenda that continued throughout his governorship. Seven weeks earlier, Reagan's first budget had exceeded Pat Brown's last one by nearly one-half billion dollars, instead of staying the course by inaugurating a policy of "squeeze, cut and trim" as promised. He raised sales taxes from three to five cents on the dollar; the maximum income tax from seven to ten percent; distilled liquor taxes from $1.50 to $2.00 per gallon; and cigarette taxes from three cents to ten cents per pack.

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While running for the governorship, Mr. Reagan demanded a legislative investigation of alleged Communism at UC Berkeley. Once elected, Mr. Reagan set the educational tone for his administration by:

a. calling for an end to free tuition for state college and university students,

b. annually demanding 20% across-the-board cuts in higher education funding,

c. repeatedly slashing construction funds for state campuses

d. engineering the firing of Clark Kerr, the popular President of the University of California, and

e. declaring that the state "should not subsidize intellectual curiosity

He called protesting students "brats," "freaks," and "cowardly fascists." And when it came to "restoring order" on unruly campuses he observed, "If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with. No more appeasement!" Several days later four Kent State students were shot to death. In the aftermath of this tragedy Mr. Reagan declared his remark was only a "figure of speech." He added that anyone who was upset by it was "neurotic."

Governor Reagan not only slashed spending on higher education. Throughout his tenure as governor Mr. Reagan consistently and effectively opposed additional funding for basic education. This led to painful increases in local taxes and the deterioration of California's public schools. Ronald Reagan left California public education worse than he found it. A system that had been the envy of the nation when he was elected was in decline when he left. Nevertheless, Mr. Reagan's actions had political appeal, particularly to his core conservative constituency, many of whom had no time for public education.

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Is it any wonder that California seems to have all of the crazy homeless people? State mental hospitals were taken away by Governor Reagan in the seventies, and federal mental health programs were later taken away by President Reagan in the eighties.

When Ronald Reagan was governor of California he systematically began closing down mental hospitals, later as president he would cut aid for federally-funded community mental health programs. It is not a coincidence that the homeless populations in the state of California grew in the seventies and eighties. The people were put out on the street when mental hospitals started to close all over the state.

Seeing an increase in crime, and brutal murders by Herb Mullin, a mental hospital patient, the state legislature passed a law that would stop Reagan from closing even more state-funded mental health hospitals. (Comment on this article: “Recently I saw a President Reagan stamp on correspondence from a homeless shelter to which I donate and felt physically ill. If Reagan hadn’t shut down all of those mental hospitals I wonder how many of the people that use that shelter would be getting treatment and hopefully getting better instead of living on the streets endangering themselves and possibly others.”)

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Is the new governor's real last name Moonbeam?

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When Jerry Brown — California’s once and future leader — won back his old job, he brought with him more than questions about his age (71) and his record of political service (40 years and counting).

He brought Moonbeam with him, too.

For the uninitiated, ‘Governor Moonbeam’ became Mr. Brown’s intractable sobriquet, dating back to his days as governor between 1975 and 1983, when his state led the nation in pretty much everything — its economy, environmental awareness and, yes, class-A eccentrics.

The nickname was coined by Mike Royko, the famed Chicago columnist, who in 1976 said that Mr. Brown appeared to be attracting “the moonbeam vote,” which in Chicago political parlance meant young, idealistic and nontraditional.

The term had a nice California feel, and Mr. Royko eventually began applying it when he wrote about the Golden State’s young, idealistic and nontraditional chief executive. He found endless amusement — and sometimes outright agita — in California’s oddities, calling the state “the world’s largest outdoor mental asylum.”

“If it babbles and its eyeballs are glazed,” he noted in April 1979, “it probably comes from California.”

But as any New Age Californian can tell you, such hate is probably cover for a deeper love. And so it was with Mr. Royko, who after many vicious gibes at Mr. Brown’s expense offered an outright apology to the governor, and spent years trying to erase the moniker.

In a 1991 column in The Chicago Tribune, he called the label, an “idiotic, damn-fool, meaningless, throw-away line,” and pleaded with people to stop using it.

“Enough of this ‘Moonbeam’ stuff,” Mr. Royko concluded. “I declare it null, void and deceased.”

It didn’t take. Mr. Royko died in 1997, and when Mr. Brown declared his candidacy last week, most, if not all, press accounts referred to his “Moonbeam” past. (This reporter included.)

Exactly when Mr. Royko first crowned Mr. Brown “Governor Moonbeam” is unclear. Mr. Royko said he didn’t even remember when he first landed on the phrase. He “was stringing some words together one evening to earn his day’s pay,” he wrote.

But the nickname accompanied Governor Brown as he declared his fascination with outer space, proposed that California launch its own space satellite and made headlines dating the rock star Linda Ronstadt.

The nickname became a whipping stick for Mr. Royko. And he flailed away as Mr. Brown was trying to convince fellow Democrats that he’d be a good presidential candidate. (His 1980 campaign slogan was “protect the earth, serve the people and explore the universe.”)

Mr. Royko’s epiphany came in 1980, at the Democratic National Convention, where Mr. Royko said that the best speech had come from — you guessed it — Governor Moonbeam.

“I have to admit I gave him that unhappy label,” Mr. Royko wrote. “Because the more I see of Brown, the more I am convinced that he has been the only Democrat in this year’s politics who understands what this country will be up against.”

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March 18 (Bloomberg) -- A Wisconsin state judge temporarily blocked a law that would strip government employee unions of most of their collective-bargaining power.

At a hearing today in Madison, Wisconsin, Circuit Court Judge Maryann Sumi granted a temporary restraining order to block publication of the measure signed into law by Governor Scott Walker on March 11. Publication gives the law full force and effect.

The legislation championed by Walker, a first-term Republican, requires annual recertification votes for union representation and makes voluntary the payment of union dues. The measure exempts firefighters and police officers. Democrats and organized labor called the bill an attack on workers. Opposition to the legislation sparked almost four weeks of mass protests around and inside the Capitol.

Dane County District Attorney Ismael R. Ozanne, acting on complaints by three other public officials, had asked the court to bar publication. He said a group of lawmakers had violated a state open-meetings law in gathering to craft compromise legislation that was then passed.

The case is State of Wisconsin Ex Rel. Ozanne v. Fitzgerald, 11cv1244, Dane County, Wisconsin, Circuit Court (Madison).

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