Allan Block, chairman of Block Communications Inc., parent company of The Blade, yesterday pitched his idea of a Toledo Guarantee labor s promise that businesses will make a fair profit to a small group of local business and development leaders.
The veteran of contentious labor negotiations last year and this year with unions at the newspaper, Mr. Block said his ideas were shaped by that struggle.
He said Toledo is in terrible shape, blamed unions for the departures of factories from the Toledo area, and said unions have the power to turn Toledo s economy around.
The speech was given to a group of about 25 invited guests at the Toledo Club organized by Mayor Carty Finkbeiner and the Regional Growth Partnership, an economic development agency.
Mr. Block said Toledo is in need of new investment $20 billion worth.
There s not a chance in hell of it coming here unless we change the kind of change that runs through the offices of unions in Toledo, Mr. Block said.
There are examples of progressive unions, he said, such as United Auto Workers Region 2B, which has members at Chrysler LLC s Jeep Assembly complex and General Motors Corp. s Powertrain plants in Toledo, and the skilled trades unions.
The bad news is it s specific-situation change, he said. We have to make the change at Powertrain and Jeep that the UAW has exhibited the rule, not the exception.
He said he d leave the details of the Toledo Guarantee to the unions, but suggested a kick-off date.
This next Labor Day, instead of a traditional Labor Day, if the whole union movement was enforcing on the membership a different kind of labor celebration a Labor Supports Investment Day in Toledo it would be amazing, Mr. Block said.
Such an event, he said, would be covered by national networks and business media because it would be so unusual.
Mr. Block said Toledo should model its economic rebound on former third-world countries that have pushed themselves into leadership status. He cited Singapore, the Arab emirate of Dubai, and the People s Republic of China as examples.
Acknowledging that he d been criticized for suggesting communist China as an economic model, he focused on Singapore, a former colonial backwater that is now a financial center of the world. He said change in unions, forced upon them by the Singapore government, helped drive Singapore s economic rebirth.
My message is simple. We can be Singapore. We can be Dubai. We can be the breakout economy, Mr. Block said.
He said The Blade s protracted contract negotiations which resulted in a contract that had union wage and benefit concessions put the newspaper on a firm footing.
We ve had to struggle to survive, [but] with the new agreements that came down, we are going to survive.
Bruce Baumhower, president of UAW Local 12, which represents employes at the Toledo Jeep Assembly plant, told the group that unions know that companies have to earn a profit.
We re all about productivity and efficiency and I believe all the unions feel that way, Mr. Baumhower said. I think he s suggesting we talk about our productivity and our ability to allow companies to invest in Toledo. I think that goes without saying. If we need to say that, if that would help our economy, I don t see anything wrong with that.
Daniel Johnson, former University of Toledo president who now works on the Science and Technology Corridor project, agreed that Toledo needs structural change if we want to be competitive.
What we re doing now is adding to the margins. The union leadership has to recognize that they re suffering as well, he said.
The speech came the day after a new ranking of job growth in 200 major U.S. cities from the Milken Institute, a California think tank, and Greenstreet Partners showed Toledo making no progress on its rank the previous year 196th.
Contact Tom Troy at: tomtroy@theblade.com or 419-724-6058.
First Published September 28, 2007, 1:07 p.m.
