Is Windsor a lot like Michigan.. Manufacturing won’t support the middle class.
This Sunday morning as I waited for my laundry to dry, I was cruising the newspapers as I do every morning for interesting articles for the Scaledown News blog I post every Monday, when I came across this Opinion Main Street from the Wall Street Journal, dated June 16, 2009: Michigan and the Knowledge Economy; Manufacturing won’t support the middle class.
I found quite a few similarities that if you replaced the word Michigan for Ontario and Windsor for Detroit it would feel all to familiar. With the Provincial and Federal money starting to flow to Windsor for infrastructure, what are we getting, sewers (important,) more roads and roads to be widen (20th century thinking that will take us nowhere except for the future expense of maintaining them.) The first two paragraphs sums up what I am thinking:
With the highest unemployment rate in the nation and two of its Big Three auto makers bankrupt, Michigan could benefit from a dose of Sen. John McCain’s tough love.
Instead, it got Vice President Joe Biden bearing $2 billion in stimulus bonds for roads and infrastructure. And that’s sad news for anyone hoping to see the emergence of what this depressed state economy needs most: a new middle class for a new century.
My question is, when everything is built what then? When every other place in Ontario is doing the exact same thing as us, what then? Will people come here to tour our sewers? Because of the newer roads will people come and live here and drive on them, if the exact same thing is going on in their present communities?
“Only one small problem. As Mr. McCain so bluntly put it on the eve of last year’s Republican primary, “Some jobs that have left Michigan are not coming back. And the answer to that isn’t to raise false hopes that somehow we can bring back lost jobs but to create new ones.”
Mr. McCain took a lot of grief for those words and ended up losing the primary to Mitt Romney. But Lou Glazer thinks Mr. McCain had it right. Mr. Glazer heads a nonpartisan think tank called Michigan Future. And he advances a simple argument: While the reliance on manufacturing made sense in the 20th century, the sooner we recognize that manufacturing is no longer the key to a prosperous middle class, the better off Michigan will be in the 21st.
“One of the things we do today is look back and say, ‘Boy, weren’t we stupid to concentrate so much in the auto industry,’” says Mr. Glazer. “But it wasn’t stupid then. It’s only stupid now.”
The University of Windsor and St. Clair College have seen the future and so have many of the laid off auto workers that an education at a higher level is the only key to future success..but will it be enough?
Mr. Glazer says that the state’s most pressing need is to transition to the “knowledge economy,” which Michigan Future defines as any industry where the proportion of workers with bachelor’s degrees or higher is 30%. That’s important, because the knowledge economy is more than the Googles and the Microsofts. The top knowledge industries include information, finance, insurance, professional services, health care and education. Not only are these industries creating jobs, they pay higher wages.
What does this mean for Michigan? It means, for example, that if President Barack Obama is right that the future lies in “building the next generation of clean cars,” the most promising part of that future will not be on the factory floor. It will be on the knowledge side, e.g., the engineering department. In many ways, says Mr. Glazer, that’s not so different from the heyday of the Big Three, when Detroit was synonymous with innovation.
Ironically, perhaps the greatest challenge to Michigan’s transformation is a function of its past success. Until very recently, the auto industry offered those with low educational attainment high-wage jobs. One legacy is that too many Michiganders do not aim for college. And too many of those who do get a college degree end up moving to cities like Chicago, where opportunities are more attractive…or drive on our new roads to London and beyond [my comment]
Windsor is losing its automotive middle class with the highest unemployment in the county, combined with the lowest rate of post secondary education, doesn’t bode well for a city in the twenty first century. This city can not and should not wait for provincial for federal funding or initiatives to make education the number one priority of this community. But my gut feeling is that the mayor, city council and the majority of citizens of Windsor and Essex county are waiting for the return of the auto jobs they once had and all will be well. But…
[I]n other words, even allowing the rosiest assumptions about a restructured GM and the jobs created by the stimulus, Michigan is likely to continue to suffer for some time ahead. The question is whether this suffering will lead to more of the same — or to a restructuring that provides for a more hopeful future. In this light it’s hard to see how priorities at the federal and state level — e.g., card check in Congress, or raising taxes to meet budget shortfalls in Lansing, Mich. — do much to address the hard truth Mr. McCain pointed out last year.
My fear is that this city along with this province and federal governments are desperately trying to restore what was rather than what will be..our future..
…The larger point is that what the middle class needs more than anything else is an economy where employers have to compete for their labor. The more open a state’s economy is to investment and entrepreneurship, the more employers there will be. And the more education a state’s citizens have, the more advanced the industries they can support.
“Both national and state policy are all designed to restoring a broad middle class that is factory based,” says Mr. Glazer. “But manufacturing will not be the driver of the middle class. The path to Michigan’s prosperity is knowledge.”
Albeit, Windsor’s future prosperity is knowledge and this city could do one thing for everyone is this city that won’t take millions of dollars and almost do it over night! Increase the funding for our public library system. Windsor Public Library has always known the struggle for life long learning in this city and the educational levels of its citizens and their needs. That is why WPL has taken a leadership role in Literacy training for this city, developed a computer training lab and courses for the public where the need is great in basic computer skills, something that neither the University or St. Clair College nor the two school boards have addressed or can address this situation because of their prime focus. Windsor Public Library’s focus has always been and forever will be on the needs of the people of Windsor, from the individual who seeks an atmosphere of life long learning, to teaching at the drop of the hat by professional Librarians any student seeking the skills to do research, assisting struggling grade school students with their reading skills, through our Book Buddy program and Early years programs.
Our mayor and city council can not dictate or influence what our educational institutions do or teach, they can’t demand of these institutions that they address the educational needs of this area’s citizens but they can sit down with Windsor Public Library and create something new for this 21st century and the educational needs of every citizen regardless if they are students or not, so that the whole city has access to a life long learning experience and the tools and materials they need to raise this city up! Windsor Public Library is the only such public institution that can do this across the vast diversity of this city and its needs.
I can only dream or imagine what seventy million dollars for a new arena or fifty million dollars for a canal could have done for Windsor Public Library and ALL the citizens of this city! Or just part of that money, with expansion of our Literacy labs and tutoring, expansion of our computer labs with more hours and more courses, more physical and electronic resources (that have 24/7 access.)
Once everything is built or upgraded what will we have? Once everything is built and the jobs have gone, what will we have to show for it besides higher maintenance fees!
Build, yes! But build for the future economy not the last one!
Post Feedback
Mark, this post says soooo much that needs to be said. It also needs to be heard and I fear much of this article would fall on deaf ears if brought before council or any higher level government.
Thanks Timothy, I had to say it! I am a product of life long learning and of public libraries, it was instilled in me by three generations of my family, that having the ability to read and read well and understand what I read, is a key foundation to my life long prosperity. Reading has been my greatest life long asset!
You see, I was a high school drop out (when my dad was then a high school teacher!) when I dropped out of high school. I joined the Canadian Army, where I spent seven great years and even then attempted to get my grade twelve by correspondence, using public libraries across this country as a source for my educational needs. I left the army, then drifted for several years, working in the mines of Northern Ontario, to working on a ferry in Lake Erie, to harvesting cucumbers and sweet corn in the fields of Essex County, when I went to St. Clair College and got my grade twelve.
After that, I got job on the line at Ford Motor Company here in Windsor! Yay! I’ve arrived at the feet of mana, the world and I am blessed. No more want, I can have everything! That euphoria changed in the first oil crisis and then the second when I was laid off…maybe forever!
After returning from the summer shut down in 1974, our section of the line - Piston Hook Up, our first robot appeared, doing a great job in once was a miserable job..standing in a bay spraying oil into each cyclinder before the pistons were physically pounded in. One day that robot went haywire and was spraying oil all over the place except the bores of the engine block. It wasn’t the 19th century millwrights that came to fix it but engineers in white lab coats using little screwdrivers! Since I always read magazines like Scientific American and they were writing about the new computer age coming, I had a catharsis that my days on the line were numbered and that September I got my butt as a mature student into the University. So at the age of thirty five I was starting something that I didn’t know or know where that will take me..a journey begins with one step.
I spent the next five years working steady afternoons on the line while going to university part-time during the day. I got a lot of hostility from my co-workers on the line that just couldn’t see the why I wanted to got to school..I hope they understand now why I did it.
In 1979 the hints of a downturn in our North American economy was starting to raise its ugly head and in 1980 the recession hit, I was one of the last to be laid of indefinitely…like forever! That summer I decide to attend university fulltime and leave Ford. Fearful? Frighten to leave the big nipple? Apprehensive, Scared? Yes to all of them but my gut was telling me that there was no future on line!
Four years later I graduate with an Honours degree in Visual Arts from the School of Visual Arts at the University of Windsor. But growing up in a professional art family, I knew then as I always knew that painting pictures wouldn’t supply me with a living and income. What to do? I didn’t need to two more years of painting classes at the Masters level, i’ve been painting and sculpting all my life, besides there were tonnes of students doing the same thing. I didn’t have the killer aspects to do a business degree nor a law degree, Ontario wasn’t hiring teachers then, so no use in becoming a teacher. It was a conversation in my fourth year with another student, who had a degree in library science then but wasn’t happy that got me thinking.
In 1986 I was accepted for the graduate program of Library and Information Science at the University of Western Ontario..another deep breath of fear and apprehension..so off I went at 39 years of age. One very hard year later I was a newly minted “Librarian!” What now?
Stumbling around for a bit, I headed off to Ottawa were contract work and hope of full time employment for librarians was the greatest market. I spent two years there working on contracts when out of the blue, Windsor Public Library called me for an interview, I had dropped off a resume two years earlier but then forgot about it. I was hired in November 1989 as a reference librarian..you answer questions all day! Where I am today! In 1989, according to the Canadian Library Associations statistics, there were only three full time reference librarians hired..I got one of them..I had won the lottery, you see I was competing with graduates that were fifteen years younger than me and that was always my biggest fear that I would be to old for the job market..a driven man I was.
Now after almost twenty years with Windsor Public Library, I no longer do reference work but administer a million dollar plus Integrated Library Computer System, the library catalogue and all the functions that it does
for the library and citizens of this city! If you asked me almost thirty years ago when my journey first started that I would be looking after three such computer systems (Windsor Public Library and the two school boards), I would have laughed in your face and told you screw off!
I didn’t become a librarian because I love books, books contain knowledge and that is what I am always after, to understand this world, to learn something of this world and of myself and how I fit in it.
An education with the ability to read well and understand what you read, and to know what you know and don’t know and it doesn’t matter what you study, it is a journey of life long learning and that journey can take you everywhere! I have a “painting degree” but I work on and in the leading edge of the electronic information world! Who would have guessed thirty years ago! Not me!
“But my gut feeling is that the mayor, city council and the majority of citizens of Windsor and Essex county are waiting for the return of the auto jobs they once had and all will be well”
My gut feeling tells me otherwise. The majority of people are not waiting for the return of the auto jobs. The mayor acknowledged that the changes in the automotive industry are structural not cyclical.
And for the record, St. Clair College offers several basic computing courses.
Mark, I also have that thirst for knowledge, which is why I love to argue vigorously (you can only learn something when you are proven wrong, if your right you didn’t learn anything)
Question: what could you imagine $50 million could do for the library?
One of the things at scaledown is the way I understand it, we are not arguing with the gov’t about spending money on infrastructure. We’re simply advocating for this same money to be spent on sustainable infrastructure for the future. Bike Lanes, Transit, Streetcars, residential intensification in the core etc… instead of widening the E.C.Rowe and sprawl.
I think we’re doing pretty well on the education front with non interference. The biggest distraction our gov’t did was the medical school vs. concentration on engineering that the University has chosen. We might have tried to sway locations but never the area of learning
I think the College has some grand plans and we just need to figure out how to support them.
I’m wondering if one of our problems is simply manpower. The University and College could be doing so much more if time was spent on it. We looked at the Film festival and College participation (animation school, computer graphic design etc. etc..) we just never have the manpower to coordinate these great initiatives.
Even the DWBIA has an annual distraction to their stated goals and priorities, The DWBIA stated priorities are to focus on beautification and recruit retail but ends up being forced to spend the majority of time on “one-off” Event production and our annual political Crisis. This year its CUPE strike, Last year it was the Engineering Campus Location, year before it was arena location, before that it was Contract duty Police issues. Each year there is something that consumes the entire time of the staff.
One statement or idea first before I answer your question Mark. It has been my experience and observation that not everyone is capable of going to college or university, regardless of the demand and the need of the state of our economy today. As hard as they try in a structure learning environment that demands a great deal of intellectual capabilities they just don’t have it to succeed and in some they are intimidated by just going to college or university. As Chris posted from a news article that I posted, lets call this the Uncreative Class, we can’t abandon them but we must be willing to offer them the basic skills of today, let’s call it education light, from how to basically use a computer from creating a simple document or resume, to using the internet to look for work and using email to reply job offers. A public library is well positioned to do this and we are trying to do this now. Using our relaxed open locations, with small classes offering the basics to everyone who needs those primary skills, alas how and when we offer these courses always depends of securing grant funding which is never a certainty. Good constant funding would allow more classes and the possibility of opening more libraries with computer labs to meet the demand that is being placed on us in these economic times.
I am going to change your question around and being a librarian for Windsor Public Library and almost a life long resident of Windsor and one who lives in the downtown, I will give my personal view on what I would do with $50 million dollars. This isn’t something that I just thought up to answer your question but something I have seen and thought about for the last twenty years, just ask my colleagues and friends. i lived through the devastation of core when the mall was built, I have lived through recessions and depressions in this city and I live in core right now and will retire here. I love this city and l love this downtown but more than anything I love the people of this city! Where else can you see the Dabke being danced on a Sunday night on the main street of a city? If you were downtown last weekend in Windsor you could!
I have three drafts of a future blog posting sitting on my desk top right now on that very subject and they’ve been sitting there for six months or so, unsure that my idea or vision or whatever you will call would be right for Windsor, it is my personal view and not of the Windsor Public Library of what I think this city really needs now and for the future in the 21st century. Something that will say to people of this city and to that world that we value an open free public space, where life long learning can take place regardless of a persons background or those that just want to come in from the storms of their lives.
I would build a new much bigger central library right in the core of this city, maybe in the lands to west. At and on Scaledown we have talked of the value of “Third Places” places other than work or home, a public library is the perfect third place for all of the community, better than the new arena which is event driven but not a community hangout, better than a community museum which is also event driven. College and university buildings although maybe in the core are primarily focused on their students and really don’t appreciate the public just walking in. You can’t hangout with the Windsor Symphony or at your local theatre or your community museum. But you can hangout for free at your public library, buy a coffee or lunch, read a newspaper, use the internet, follow your own private research and read whatever you like or meet friends and just talk while you surf for free on your laptop! No other place can or does offer this, you don’t have to buy a coffee to sit, or a book to read. And on top of that you have professional librarians on hand to answer all your questions for free. Even the Art Gallery of Windsor charges an admission fee just to hang out! So is it a real third place for the community.
But a public library built right in the middle of the mix, with an attached new community museum and municipal archives, with salons for the symphony and the art gallery, open public spaces indoors and out for public performances, more computer labs and tutoring rooms for literacy, quiet places for students to study alone or in groups, more space for Early years training, and including the very small but unique museums of this community, the wood carvers museum, the doll museum (both which are now housed at the Central library downtown) and opened more days and hours than all the above, could create a synergy where anyone could come in and cross the paths of all the citizens of this community.
Today’s public libraries are the cross roads of our community, from the new refugees and landed immigrant looking for assistance and language courses, to young parents looking to give their children a head start with our Early years programs, to business people looking for current research to seniors looking to learn computers so they can email their grandchildren. Just sit for a while at the central library and you will hear more languages being spoken in one place at one time than all the other places in this city, except maybe the market or the mall. All are equal in a public library, with equal access to everything that we offer during open hours of via the internet 24/7.
Where new libraries have been built it was found that seniors, young families with children, young adults have found a safe open public environment, moved into the surrounding area. Now imagine if you have college and university students and business people thrown into the mix, all crossing each others paths in a public library all there to be seen, what kind of synergy would that be …amazing!
Every major city in North America that has built, a new main library has seen the burst of residential and commercial development around it because libraries are seen as good places to be. Build the canal but have it run through the new library.
Adriano Ciotoli suggested a cultural mall here on Scaledown, a new public library can facilitate that idea. This past Friday, Windsor Public Library, the Multicultural Society, the New Settlement program celebrated World Refugee Day at the Central library. With the three hours of celebration and cultural performances, we figured at least 500 hundred people viewed all or part of it, except for the mayor and city council whose absence was noted! A new library in the core can offer space for such civic performances, a place were students, creative types, entrepreneurs and business people can have an area to meet with the world at their finger tips, much like Spacings in Toronto.
We have built a new arena for a small private business and the jocks of Windsor but it isn’t easily accessible to all the citizens of this city and in most cases doesn’t do anything or offer anything for a lot of citizens in this city, even though it was their tax dollars also that built it. A canal that seems as though it is going to be built, is being built in the great hope that some developer or many developers will rush in and develop the land.
When are we going to build something for all the people of Windsor besides boring parks. if they use it or not, it is there to welcome them when they do need it. If we build a new main library, we are saying that we value education and life long learning, we say that we value the wisdom of our foreparents in the knowledge they deposited in books, we value an open democracy with open stacks for research, we value the diverse life of our city and its history and its future, we value living in a community that is educated and free and has a place to learn and express it!
Along with building a new main library, increased funding could go to staffing and increased operating hours, so that it this new library is opened seven days a week, with more internet terminals and everything else that a library supplies. As it is now three libraries are open 64 hours a week including Saturdays, closed on Sunday during summer hours and then open on Sunday for four hours during the winters months, No other institution or arts group or the arena is open more hours in more locations than your Windsor Public Library! And it is FREE!
I have read all the grand schemes or developments that have been put forth by the city or here on Scaledown, my idea serves the whole community now and in the future, not the developer, not the business man, not the condo or mixed use developers and their occupants, it serves every citizen in this city!
A new library could house an expanded Genealogy centre, tapping into a multi-million dollar hobby as i expressed in this blog: Retour a la souche http://tiny.cc/drzzn
It has been studied and documented across North America, that on average every dollar invested in a public library returns on average five dollars to the community, so if we build a new library for $50 million dollars, the return will be $250 million dollars of direct and indirect economic value to the city. No other thing that we can build will give us such a life long return. But Windsor Public Library at this time is the lowest funded library system of any city this size in Canada!!! We’re number one at the bottom!!!
You asked Mark, here it is!
To me … this entry reflects much of my outrage with the current stimulus packaging … I couldn’t agree more with the statement that these jobs are all swell and fine … and yes, we need JOBSNOW … but as I stated several days ago that the unfortunate part of these JOBSNOW is that there are no jobs later … just ongoing costs associated with them … again, build now, to secure jobs for YOUR generation of older workers to guarantee that YOUR generation has nice retirements and that YOU can afford to keep living YOUR middle class lifestyle at the cost of burdening my generation with the billions in debt and ongoing costs of these operations ( and in some cases, soon to obsolete infrastructure … i.e. 6 lane stretches of Tec Rd E. with no public transit right of ways ).
I’m sorry to those in the construction industry chomping at the bit to make your money now … but, many of these projects lack ANY vision or foresight whatsoever … why not invest in public transit, brownfield redevelopment, transit only corridors, upgrade our leaky water distribution system, expand our recycling program so that it recycles some of the materials accepted by other municipalities … work on implementing smart growth, LEED projects, alternative energy, why not install green roofs, solar panels, turbines, geothermal heating in some of the govt / public buildings in our city … I don’t know … just something, no anything, that has foresight to help us deal with these systemic changes and the reality of the need for a less fossil fuel dependent future and a more eco-friendly future!!!
I just can’t help but think that our governments (and special interest groups … such as the construction and auto sectors ) have succeeded in maintaining the status quo … what we need is to re-stage, re-position ourselves, to engage in this forever altered economy … do I dare say that maybe the billions earmarked for the dinosaur auto industry is a waste? I realize it’s an important part of our local economy, but wouldn’t it make sense to invest in new tech start ups looking for capital??? how about green energy, existing Canadian based electric vehicle manufacturers, hell, even Bombardier!! Please … some vision … and, ultimately, an important role must be played by our educational institutions in providing the needed job skills for workers.
This is a watershed moment … things are f***ed up … so let’s keep doing things the same old way … or let’s try something different … I know I don’t have all of the answers … but, I just can’t see the status quo as the solution … my vote is to try something different … maybe sending a whole lot of us back to school ain’t such a bad idea!
What’s encouraging for me … are the U of W and St.Clair trying to come up with innovative solutions … from the programs they offer to their indirect support of downtown redevelopment … maybe a few years of a lousy economy can be viewed as acceptable if in the end we are better positioned to deal with the new realities of our global economy and higher energy prices. Reminds me of the library book I read at WPL as a kid … the one about the ugly little caterpillar turning into a beautiful butterfly … no pain, no gain!