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Monday, February 09, 2004

Restaurant workers reclassified as industrial. 

From Notes on the Atrocities. Be forewarned: there is no obvious attempt at irony on the part of the administration, in its reclassification of restaurant workers:

The Labor Department today announced a change in the way jobs will be classified. The Department called it an effort to reflect changes in the workforce over the past twenty years. The last time jobs were reclassified was in 1978, before computing altered the workforce.

The largest change will affect the manufacturing sector. Under the new rules, restaurant employees are being recategorized as industrial workers. "Most restaurant workers today are emplyed in the fast food industry," explained Roland Grimes, economic undersecretary. "These employees work on an assembly line and manufacture a product, pretty much just like Henry Ford's old factory workers, so we felt this made a lot of sense."

Employment figures released today show that industrial and manufacturing jobs were up 347% over last month. President Bush praised the figures and hailed the increase as further evidence that his tax cuts were spurring job growth.