Seattle: Coffee and Planes?

It's curious, but despite the fact that I had probably the fullest itinerary of meetings and visits in Seattle than for any of the cities that I've visited so far, I think I ended up with the least complete picture of what it's like to live and work in this city. 

I kicked off with some time with the City Council's Economic Development team.  A really useful overview and lots of stats and info on the city's economy and also the challenges and opportunities it faces.  A few thoughts;

1. The city is very young - an average age of just over 37 and with just a Bachelor's degree in Seattle you can earn the same as someone with a Master's elsewhere.  
2. Washington has no state income tax so the fiscal levers that the City or the State has to stimulate job creation are limited to what's know as the local B&O (business and occupation) tax.  There are some lessons for Cities in the UK here with the coming "localisation" of business rates.  
3. The City's own electricity company (Seattle City Light) is doing some really interesting stuff around energy efficiency and the capital cost of efficiency improvements.
4. The City is particularly focused on Bio Sciences and promoting the area as a location for film and TV production - both areas that Nottingham is also making great progress on. 
5. The Economic Development team are deliberately separately branded from the City Council under the Start / Grow / Green banner in order to move away from a perceptions that the city is "anti-business".  

Some useful food for thoughts and I was still processing it when I was collected by a colleague from UFCW Local 21 here in Seattle and taken to meet with representatives from the Boeing Machinists Union - the IAM.  The Machinists are a great bunch - pugnacious, passionate and perceptive.  I didn't have that long but got a good sense of what it was like and is like now to work for Boeing.  There are essentially two key moments - the merger with McDonnell Douglas and the move of the corporate HQ to Chicago.  Again, just a few thoughts;

1. The Boeing Company made public statements to the effect that they moved some production away from Seattle because of the labour disputes in Seattle - South Carolina was the beneficiary of this move away from the historic home and is a 'right to work' state - ie one with very poor union rights.  
2. There is a deeply entrenched feeling of ownership and pride in Boeing that is slowly being eroded as the company evolves.  There are many multi-generational families working at the plants.  One member is quoted as saying that he voted 'No' on a strike ballot because "they took away my Christmas in 1995" because the plant was on strike.  
3. The IAM are highly politically organised, offering a very strong steer to their members on how to vote in the coming elections and running a massive phone-bank out of their union hall.  

Tuesday morning saw me up bright and early to get to the Starbucks HQ in the 'SODO' district of town.  The office (that's it at the top of this post) is two blocks from the Light Rail system so I was excited to use that.  I braved the 5 minute walk and shunned the kind offer of a lift from my contact at Starbucks - they commented that they didn't know anyone who'd ever used the tram system in the 10 years they'd worked there...

I met with the President of New Channel Development and never quite got a full sense of what his job exactly was but had an interesting chat about the company in general.  It was the morning after the revelations in the UK about the tax position of the company - despite much encouragement from people on Twitter I resisted the temptation to ask about this and focused on the company's position in the Seattle business-scape. 

The Starbucks mission statement is, "To inspire and nurture the human spirit, one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time".  We talked quite a bit about the ways that they are delivering on this, including expanding out of straight coffee shops into juice bars and also selling more food and alcohol in the evening.  Interesting stuff.  The company does offer a good benefits package including a good pension to their teams but I kept thinking about the chapters in 'No Logo' that really lay into the working practices - obviously I got a very glossy sheen but I wonder how much the company has really changed from those days.  Hard to tell in such a short space of time and I was certainly impressed with their commitment to local community activities and the fact they deliberately had their national conference in New Orleans shortly after Katrina in order to contribute to the regeneration of the City.  

Finally I spent some time in the afternoon with SPEEA who are the technical, engineering Union at Boeing.  They're currently in the middle of a quite messy contract renegotiation so it was good to get the download on that.   They're similarly proud as the IAM team to work for Boeing and take real pride in being the intellectual heart of the company - the 'No Nerds, No Birds' poster is a great example of this.  Again some thoughts;

1. The SPEEA team make a very clear set of distinctions between pre-merger and pre-move to Chicago Boeing.  The physical location of the management team now means that they are also culturally distant from the teams on the ground which might mean that they are over-reaching in this current negotiation.  An interesting example of when a company moves away from its 'Company Town' roots.  
2. The union do a fair amount of lobbying locally and nationally, including some joint work with the company but have made a conscious decision not to engage with the political process - they do not endorse candidates or campaign in elections.  I'm not sure if this doesn't weaken their hand.
3. There is a cultural difference in the political process between what is known as the 'Seattle Way' - very consensual (and often slow!) decision making and the Chicago rough-and-tumble - this has affected relations between management and the workers,  

Phew.  Lots to take in and I haven't yet formed it into a coherent whole - will need to come back to this at a later date.  

Chicago

What a place - I've absolutely fallen in love with Chicago.  

From the moment that I stepped off the (efficient, clean, fast) 'L' public transport system at Damen Avenue in Bucktown I knew that I would enjoy my time here.  There was a buzz about the place that was tangible - shops, bars, restaurants, boutique shops, oh, and, people (unlike in Detroit!) going about their everyday lives.  I was made very welcome by my Servas host, Jeff and we went out and had a few beers in the local pubs.  Jeff is a 'Quant' at a hedge fund, but that didn't mean that he was loaded he was quick to point out!  It was nice to talk to him about the places that he had travelled to around the world.  

As I had a really early start and important meetings I obviously drank far too much so wasn't in tip-top form for my 6.30 start the following day.  When will I learn eh?  Stupidly enough I had to travel almost all the way back to O'Hare Airport as I was due to attend the Illinois AFL-CIO (like the TUC in the UK) annual convention which was at one of the airport hotels.  Luckily it was an easy ride on the 'L'.  I freaked out the team from the UFCW who had arranged my attendance by insisting on walking from the station to the hotel.  It was a total of half a mile so I told them that I thought I'd be ok...

The convention was really interesting - lots of great speakers including Senator Dick Durbin.  I was made out to be some kind of visiting celebrity which was amusing.  I also went along to one of the workshops on GOTV ahead of the elections here in November.  I was interested to see if there were similarities or differences this side of the Atlantic.  There were a couple of interesting tips that I might be able to use in either our Parliamentary or Local elections in 2015 but the most striking thing was the similarities - including the perennial problem of what to do with the big band of volunteers who only turn up on election day itself ask what they can do to help - the reaction from activists from both the UK and the USA was, "be here 6 weeks ago when there was real work to be done"...

I was then lucky to be taken out to lunch to Gibson's which is something of a Chicago institution and also to meet Jon Karmel a local union right lawyer.  It was great to talk to Jon about the history of the labour movement in the US and also the development of Chicago.  Linked to my discoveries in Detroit re corruption, Jon's take was that although there have been question marks over the conduct and probity of the various members of the Daley family who have been Chicago leaders, the overwhelming focus has been on delivery of projects and initiatives - yes there might have been some greasing of some palms somewhere but fundamentally the public improvement works actually happened on the ground.  Certainly the city is night and day vs Detroit so something has gone right along the way! 

I did a bit of sightseeing in the afternoon but I was keen to get back to Jeff's place in time for the first Presidential debate.  I'm sure that people who are interested have watched the highlights already, but I was hugely disappointed with Obama's performance.  Hesitant, stumbling and willing to let Romney walk all over him.  As I said here this could be the turning point of the election and I don't think I'm alone in that analysis.  The second debate is on 16th October and the President is going to have seriously up his game.  

Thursday was a day totally dedicated to sightseeing so I covered a lot of ground.  First thing I went on an architectural boat tour as recommended by my good friends Dan and Josie - it was absolutely brilliant!  So much history and development in this city and the guide was excellent at drawing it all together.  Just a couple of photos below, including one of my all time favourite buildings, Marina City, not least because it features on the great album, 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot' by local band Wilco.  

I also popped over to see Millennium Park and the outdoor art installation by Anish Kapoor (of Sky Mirror outside Nottingham Playhouse fame of course) - Cloud Gate.  (It's know by everyone as 'the bean').  A great atmosphere of fun and jokes, just one shot here - you have to spot where I am reflected! 

I've barely covered a fraction of what I did today - as I said, it's a brilliant city. 

Tomorrow (Friday) I go to the Walgreen's offices in Deerfield to meet with the team there - looking forward to that! 

Final Thoughts on Detroit

I'm writing this in Chicago airport: I was freakishly bumped to an earlier flight (vs my rubbish experience leaving Cincinnati) so I've got a couple of hours to kill.  I thought I'd jot down my final thoughts on Detroit - it's a place of contradictions and variety and I'm sure that I barely scratched the surface.  But hopefully I'm seen a bit more than just the 'usual' downtown areas.  (I don't know when I'll get a chance to post this so some of the timings might be off!). 

 

I went downtown for the morning the other day - mainly to post some stuff home (both from where I massively overpacked but also from things I've been given or bought along the way.  Top tip to scholars doing this trip in future years is to take less stuff that you think you'll need).  I took the opportuninty to wander around the city centre area.  As per my previouspost the overwhelming impression is one of emptiness - it's clean and feels safe and has all the infrastructure (roads, buildings etc) of a much larger and busier city than it is now but there's simply no-one around!

I stumbled across one of Detroit's 'Urban Gardens' - this one was sponsored by Compuware, one of the local employers and I spoke with the people seconded from the company to staff the garden.  One of them was a long term resident and told me that 15-20 years ago it was even quieter than now - he could have laid down in the road beside us for 15 minutes and nothing would have happened - no-one would be there to either tell him to get up or in his words, "no-one would even be around to try to take my wallet". 

They also filled me in about a couple of names that have consistently come up in coversation - Matty Moroun and Phil Cooley.  The former is a local landowner (he owns Michigan Central Station and also the bridge and tunnel over to Canada - more on him later) and the latter a local businessman and self-promoter.  Both divide opinions, shall we say...  I ate dinner that night at one of Cooley's restaurants - Slows BBQ.  The food was ok, not as great as I'd been led to believe but the place was totally packed to he's obviously doing something right. 

Talking of food, and being a huge Man vs Food fan I couldn't go to Detroit without sampling the delights of a Coney Hot Dog - some info on the backstory here.  I plumped for what's supposed to be the more 'authentic' of the two rival restaurants and can confirm that it was qutie an experience - the mixture of mince, chilli, hotdog and raw onions will stay with me for quite some time...  I shied away from one of Adam's volume challenges on this ocassion - another chance will present itself I'm sure. 

I was due that afternoon back at the offices of the UFCW where their Secretary-Treasurer had promised me that he would show me the political offices of the local Democratic Party.  For a political nerd like me this was obviously very exciting, not least because I'd be able to look at lots of maps of different Congressional Districts...  The office was very much like all the Labour Party committee rooms I've been in: slightly messy, lots of junk-food, assorted literature and posters along with a hardcore of activists phone-banking and stuffing envelopes.  Probably the best part of the visit, apart from the collecting of much literature and bumper stickers (yes, I've got one for you Rory!) was when my host, Rick, took me on a short drive to some of the local neighbourhoods. 

I'd already learned that Detroit's not all decay and disorder and there are some pretty acceptable places but where Rick took me was totally unexpected.  Firstly for Nottingham readers the district of the City rejoices in the name of 'Sherwood Forest' and especially for Jane and Brian if they're reading this it is usually just know as 'Sherwood' and is one of the more desirable places to live in the City.  Some things are the same the world over, eh...

As you can see from the photo below the properties in this neighbourhood are pretty desirable - 5+ bedrooms and lots of big gardens.  Rick told me that places here would typically sell for $150,000 - and an equivalent place outside the stigma of the city's boundaries (but less than a mile away geographically) would be around $400,000!  (This compares with the place I was staying where a three bedroom Victorian semi-detached would set you back about $30,000...). 

I picked up in the campaign office an attack leaflet critisising 'Mad Moron' (sic).  Although it wasn't explained, I assume this was directed at Matt Moroun (as above).  As well as consistently delaying redevelopment proposals for the Michigan Central Station Mr Moran is also the monopoly owner of the bridge and tunnel to and from Canada and also of all the Duty Free Shopping concessions.  When I was given a sample ballot (it's 4 pages) for the upcoming November election I was surprised to see a Referendum (called a 'Proposal' here) essentially designed to make it much more difficult for an additional international crossing to be created.  When I was in the UFCW offices I got the team to explain this.  Essentially it looks like Mr Moran has used his considerable personal wealth to get onto the ballot (and hopes to pass) a proposal to protect his monopoly on the international crossing business.  The fact that the Canadian government would have paid the costs of a proposed new bridge and it would bring additional revenue and business through Detroit doesn't seem to be a factor in his thinking.  An interesting local political dynamic. 

On my last day in Detroit I planned a quick visit to the Henry Ford complex out in Dearborn.  This comprises of several museums and exhibitions but the main focus for me was the Rouge Factory Tour - a chance to go round the actual Ford factory that's currently making the F150 Truck.  The Dearborn complex is vast - a whole town dedicated to Ford and all things car related.  It used to be much bigger and was on a significant decline until the mid-naughties when the current leader of the company, Bill Ford made a bold investment to tranform the plant into a green oriented and future facing operation - investing around $2bn in the site and its future.  The actual tour of the factory was incredible - you walk along a kind of gantry where you can see the trucks being made, production line station by production line station.  Some of the workers acknowledged our presence and gave us a little wave - some others just carried on doing the same repetitive work (as part of a 4 day, 10 hours a day work-week).  There was a real pride in the quality of the work and the combination of sophisticated robots and real people was interesting to see.  I also liked the fact that at various stations the sophisticated manufacturing process was reduced to a bloke picking up a lump of plastic and banging it into place with his fist - percussive maintenance is always a winner!

My final thoughts on Detroit: what I originally read about on my pre-trip research as a concept of 'Planned Shrinkage' came up time and time again here in even the most casual of conversations with people - "the city's too big we need to downside"; "the city needs to grow its tax base we're too big"; "we can't keep the city this size".  All of the people I met were passionate and committed advocates for the City and they all knew that it made sense to shrink and try to grow back.  This wasn't at all what I expect to find so glad to have had my assumptions challenged. 

UFCW

In the UK I'm a member of USDAW - the shopworkers' union.  So when I knew that I was coming to America I asked the team there to see what contacts they could get for me in the US union movement.  They put me in touch with the UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers) union in Detroit, Seattle and Chicago.  I made an appointment in Detroit for 10am on the Friday on the basis that I was arriving in Detroit late afternoon on the Thursday.

What I hadn't banked on was the hilarious journey from Cincinnati to Detroit - what should have taken about 4 hours took over 12 featuring delayed then cancelled flights and my bag being delivered to a different terminal than the one I arrived in. Still, I got there in the end and was made very welcome by Janet and Jeff, my Servas hosts in Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor is a university town about 40 or so miles west of Detroit.  Janet in particular was a fount of knowledge about the area and things to do.  I went out for a drink with their son who is about my age and currently studying to be a lawyer at the university.  One of his friends is currently the deputy campaign manager for a candidate for the Michigan Supreme Court (we agreed that electing judges was a bit mad!).  The race has been enlivened by a campaign video made by the cast of The West Wing - you can see it here.

Tired and a bit dislocated I didn't really want to drive the 50 minutes to the UFCW Local 876 offices in Madison Heights (located north of the City).  But I'm really glad that I did - it was a fascinating morning.  I met with Rick Blocker, the Secretary-Treasurer and also Roger Robinson, President and their team and asked them for their views on the current political situation nationally and locally and what this means for their members.  They also took me out to lunch at a local restaurant which was beyond the call of duty.

A few thoughts / ideas from the discussions I thought worth capturing;

• There's more to Detroit's current economic woes than just historical racial tensions and recent economic issues.  I had assumed that the City's decline had started back in the late 60s with the racially motivated riots and been compounded by gradual white-flight and then the issues with the auto manufacturers in the 2000s had been the final straw.  What I learnt from the team at the UFCW was the role of corruption ("graft") in the intervening years.  I'd not picked up on the multiple scandals involving ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick but it looks like he's culpable to a certain extent for the trouble that Detroit finds itself in now. 
• There are huge powers available to the State Governor to appoint a 'Emergency Financial Manager' who can override any sort of negotiated agreement or contract with the Unions no matter how carefully negotiated or finely balanced to move forward to a balanced budget.  
• Another Detroit Mayor, Coleman Young, as well as being responsible for the (slightly hilarious) People Mover seems to have been a driver for the White Flight out of the city (or at least not working to prevent it) back in the 1980s. 
• We also talked a lot about the concept of a Food Desert in Detroit.  There are limited numbers of grocery stores in the City and that, coupled with a limited public transport network and a reliance on food stamps for food purchases means that the urban poor often end up eating junk food rather than nutritious sustenance.  

All-in a well-spent morning and one that has given me a useful context for my time in Detroit.  I'm planning on going back to meet the UFCW team again on Monday to see some of their work supporting Obama and fighting to protect the right of Collective Bargaining which is the subject of a ballot initiative in November - Proposition Two as outlined here.