By MATTHEW DOLAN

DETROIT—To dig out of a fiscal mess, the city of Detroit has reached tentative labor deals with the leadership of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the United Auto Workers and International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Then it had to win over Herbert Jenkins.

Mr. Jenkins is president of the Assistant Supervisors of Street Maintenance and Construction Association, the union representing the leaders of Detroit’s pothole-repair crews.

He also is the only member of that collective-bargaining unit.

Since 2008, Herbert Jenkins has been a member of the union representing the leaders of Detroit’s pothole-repair crews. But thanks to recent downsizing, not only is he now the union’s president — he’s its only member. WSJ’s Matthew Dolan reports.

As recently as last fall, the union was double the size. Then the other guy retired. That left the presidency, uncontested, to Mr. Jenkins, a married father of six who has worked for Detroit for more than two decades.

No ballots were cast, no convention convened. The 49-year-old Mr. Jenkins assumed command by writing a letter to the city, affirming that, as the last man standing, he was the union’s new boss. The city recognized him as such.

He concedes that it doesn’t make much sense. It is “probably bad for the city,” he says from his office at the Department of Public Works’ maintenance yard on Michigan Avenue. “Each union should consist of at least more than one.”

Such incongruities keep turning up in Detroit’s disordered government, which, like the city itself, is shrinking fast. The city of 713,000 now employs 11,000 workers, down from more than 13,000 when Mayor Dave Bing took office in 2009. Another 1,000 workers are scheduled to lose their jobs this year due to budget cuts.

Yet this labor force retains a complex organizational structure, a vestige of a time when it served a population of nearly two million. Workers are represented by 21 unions and 48 bargaining units, several of which now have fewer than 10 members. The five police officers in the city’s health department have their own labor council. An independent union for city field engineers has two members.

Then there is Mr. Jenkins, who constitutes the only one-man union recognized by the city. His union could have more members. But because of a citywide freeze on hiring and wages, no one in the Street Maintenance division has been granted the rank of assistant supervisor in years, says Mr. Jenkins, even though several people are doing the job.

The union muddle frustrates city leaders who are trying to negotiate their way out of a $200 million fiscal hole and stave off a takeover by a state-appointed financial manager. Mayor Bing is seeking $102 million in cost savings, including labor concessions, to prevent the city from running out of cash by this spring.

“This is inefficient and not productive,” says Kirk Lewis, a top aide to the mayor. He says the city has tried to get unions to develop coalitions for bargaining, but more needs to be done to encourage smaller unions to merge.

Other shrinking industrial cities face similar challenges. In Cleveland, the city’s 31 separate collective-bargaining agreements include pacts with individual unions representing four plumbing inspectors, three box-office cashiers and two seasonal ticket sellers. In Chicago, a glazer, a heat-frost insulator and a journeyman plasterer are all one-person unions.

It is tough on Mr. Jenkins, too. “It’s strange, because you don’t have anybody to help you out with any questions or any negotiation,” he says. “I have to do a lot of thinking on my own.”

Mr. Jenkins started with the city more than 20 years ago as a Teamster-represented garbage-truck driver. He heaved the trash cans himself. “You had to pick up 27,500 pounds of garbage by yourself in one day,” he says. One perk: If he finished his round early, he would still get paid for a full shift.

The seasonal job ended in a layoff. Mr. Jenkins found his way back into city government months later as a laborer with the Department of Public Works. He toiled on jackhammer duty for five years. Since 2008, he has been managing the crews who resurface miles of Motor City roads, fill potholes and clear snow and ice.

When Mr. Bing took office in 2009, the Assistant Supervisors of Street Maintenance and Construction Association had four members. The union president would call a meeting by phoning up the other three.

“We just met at the yard,” says Mr. Jenkins. There was no set time, no reading of minutes, no formal agenda. “We would just discuss whatever the president heard when he went downtown to meet with the city.”

The downsizing started that year, when that president retired. The next year, one of the rank and file died, leaving just Mr. Jenkins and Jerry Graham, who had taken over as president.

The two men would meet once in a while to discuss a contract when it came up, but otherwise didn’t talk much, Mr. Jenkins says. So it was a surprise last fall when Mr. Graham announced his retirement, elevating Mr. Jenkins to the presidency.

When Mr. Jenkins came home with the news, his wife thought it was a joke, like something out of a Hair Club for Men ad.

“I said, ‘Well, I’m a member of my unit and I’m the president,’” Mr. Jenkins recalls. “And she said, ‘There’s only one of you?’ And then she started laughing.”

Earlier this winter, a coalition of 25 bargaining units represented by the federation of municipal workers reached a tentative accord on concessions with Mayor Bing, followed by the city’s police and firefighters in February. Union members must still ratify the agreements.

In a private meeting last month, Mr. Jenkins says Detroit’s human-resources director showed him a copy of the contract that the other unions tentatively agreed to. It calls for a 10% wage cut by ending furlough days and an increase in health-care costs borne by employees. Mr. Jenkins decided to accept the deal, calling it fair despite the givebacks. As one of the last unions to sign and the only one with one member, he figured he had time to think it over.

“The other unions still have to get the agreement ratified,” he says. “But that’s not a problem for me.”

Write to Matthew Dolan at matthew.dolan@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared March 5, 2012, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A Labor Force Faces The Ultimate in Downsizing.

By BEN LEVISOHN

Since last summer’s market rout, central banks around the world have been more or less on the same page. That is beginning to change—creating opportunities for investors who can spot the signals.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve said it intends to keep short-term interest rates near zero through 2014, and will take other steps if the economy hits a wall.

Other central banks, however, haven’t been so keen on the status quo. During the past few weeks, central banks in Japan, Australia, Canada, Brazil and India have either made changes to their monetary policy or hinted at changes to come.

As long as the U.S. economy keeps muddling through and the European Central Bank keeps the continent from falling into debt-induced chaos, the differences among central bankers could drive short-term market results.

The key to finding the best opportunities is choosing countries where central banks are cutting rates just as economic growth is beginning to pick up.

On April 3, the Reserve Bank of Australia said it might cut rates if inflation doesn’t become a problem. On Tuesday, Australia reported inflation of just 1.6% during the first three months of 2012 from the same period last year, down from a 3.1% rate during the fourth quarter of 2011. That has some investors expecting a rate cut at the next meeting on May 1. The MSCI Australia Index rose 0.6% during the three days after the inflation announcement.

Economic growth in Australia has been sluggish recently, but that might be changing, says Adam Patti, CEO of IndexIQ, which manages the IQ Australia Small Cap exchange-traded fund. And that could give stocks a continued boost, he says.

The biggest opportunities for investors might be in emerging markets, says Phillip Colmar, a partner at MRB Partners, a research firm. While much of the developed world was either cutting rates or buying bonds to further ease monetary policy, vast swaths of the developing world were increasing rates to rein in inflation. That means they have room to cut now, he says.

“You want to be more favorable toward countries that are easing,” Mr. Colmar says.

Investors should look to Brazil, Russia and China in particular, strategists say. Russia has seen an increase in lending, which should boost economic growth. With inflation low, rate cuts could be on the way. China, too, has the ability to cut rates—and its stock market looks cheap relative to other emerging markets, according to MRB.

Brazil’s central bank has been cutting rates aggressively; it reduced its benchmark rate to 9% on April 18, down from 11% at the beginning of the year. While many observers believe the central bank is finished, Mr. Colmar expects it to cut rates at least once more. That, combined with a pickup in growth, should send stocks there higher, he says.

Investors need to be careful when playing central-bank moves, however. Sometimes the buy signals can change quickly.

In February, for example, the Bank of Japan announced it would boost asset purchases by 10 trillion yen. That helped fuel a nearly 13% gain in the MSCI Japan index since the beginning of the year.

But when the Bank of Japan announced Friday it would boost purchases by another 5 trillion yen, near the low end of expectations, the Nikkei Stock Average dropped 0.4%.

Strong growth might not be enough to keep a market rising if a central bank raises rates sooner than expected. That could be the case in Canada, where the central bank has held rates at 1% since 2010, despite its resilient commodities-based economy.

Now, however, Canada faces a potential housing bubble and overextended consumers. That might force the Bank of Canada to hike rates sooner rather than later, as Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney has warned recently. On Friday he urged Canadians to invest their money in businesses, not houses. A rate hike, says Dean Popplewell, a strategist at currency-trading firm Oanda, could be bearish for stocks if it occurs while global economic growth is slowing.

Investors should be most wary of countries where rates have been too low for too long—and economic growth might be slowing. Strategists say it is best to avoid Turkey and South Africa, where growth is slowing but the central banks may be unable to act because inflation has hit worrisome levels and interest rates are already too low.

As MRB’s Mr. Colmar puts it: “When central banks won’t or can’t act to improve growth, you want to be bearish.”

A version of this article appeared April 28, 2012, on page B9 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Opportunities Lurk Amid Central Banks’ Mixed Signals.

French unemployment ticked up in March for the 11th month in a row, and is now expected to hit 9.7% by June—its highest rate since 1999. This is the kind of lousy news that could only have a silver lining if it shaped a national consensus in favor of serious reform of the country’s restrictive labor laws. Don’t get your hopes up.

When the numbers came in on Friday, Les Echos published an interview with Prime Minister François Fillon, asking why President Nicolas Sarkozy was proposing “nothing in the way of labor-market reform” as part of his re-election bid. Mr. Fillon replied by touting his boss’s proposal to give companies the freedom to negotiate salaries, working-times and conditions at the company level, provided a majority of unions agree—a “major” new “element of flexibility,” according to Mr. Fillon. Mr. Sarkozy has also promised to reform unemployment insurance to put increased pressure on job-seekers to accept whatever work they can get.

These aren’t trivial reforms, and French companies would certainly welcome being a little less wedged in to some of the pan-sectoral agreements that have maintained rigid and expensive mandates in the French workplace. Yet the changes would still leave more than 3,000 pages of the notorious French labor code, which legislates everything from paid paternity leave to conditions for working at night. Businesses and workers alike would still have to navigate between more than 80 different types of permissible contracts—each with their own rules for recruitment, renewal, trial-periods and termination.

And that’s just now. In his interview, Mr. Fillon pointed out that François Hollande, Mr. Sarkozy’s Socialist rival, would do away with the few reforms the current government has passed, such as tax cuts for overtime pay and pension contributions.

With just a week to go before the election, there isn’t much time for Mr. Sarkozy to offer fresh thinking about what he can do about France’s chronic lack of economic growth and opportunity. Little wonder he spent the weekend talking tough about immigration and Dominique Strauss-Kahn (remember him?). But whoever wins on May 6, France’s unemployment rate is going to remain a topic that can neither be switched nor wished away. Any government that fails to address it will eventually find itself on the losing side of an electoral ballot.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page 16

By SARAH TILTON

STATS: A 1,940-square-foot one-bedroom, one-bathroom barn, according to the owners, on 80 acres, asking $925,000, or $11,562.50 an acre. Property taxes in 2011 were $2,260.

DETAILS: The owners designed and built this “modernist” steel structure themselves using mostly reclaimed materials. The off-the-grid structure is permitted as a barn, but the owners call it a studio and have used it as a retreat for the last five years. There’s no insulation and heat comes from a wood stove (the owners say there is plenty of firewood on the property). Water comes from two natural springs on the property and a gravity-flow 5,000-gallon tank. The husband points out that water wells need pumps and there’s no electricity for a pump: “We wanted to be as low-impact as possible,” he says. The appliances, including the stove and refrigerator, are propane-powered. The owners salvaged an 8-foot-tall oak wine tank, cut a door in it and made it into the kitchen pantry on the first floor. The owners are thinking of turning a second tank into a hot tub. The shower is a converted wine-mixing tank. “It’s wonderful but there’s a timpani quality to it,” says the husband of the tank-turned-steel-and-plexiglass-shower. There’s no land line, but there is cellphone reception.

SELLERS: Rusty and Karen Klassen. The Klassens are the founders of Tensleep Advisors, which consults on sustainable-energy policies.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD: It’s 30 minutes to the farmer’s market in Healdsburg and about two hours to San Francisco.

WHAT WE PAID: The Klassens say they paid $127,000 for the land in 2000 and estimate that they spent $150,000 building the barn and putting in the water-supply system.

WHY WE’RE SELLING: The Klassens are spending more time at their farm in Hawaii and say they don’t have time to enjoy the property because of their travel schedules.

WHAT WE’LL MISS: Waking up to the views across the Dry Creek Valley. At night you can see the stars “in shocking detail,” Mr. Klassen says.

WHAT WE WON’T: The Klassens say they won’t miss digging out the ditches along the dirt road to keep them clear so that they don’t fill with rainwater in the rainy season and flood the road.

COMP: Nearby, a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house on 95 acres is asking $1.3 million.

OTHERS SAY:
Martin Humphrey of Healdsburg Sotheby’s International Realty says the price is in the right range and that the “quirky and unique” improvements will appeal to some buyers. Listing agent Alain-Martin Pierret, also of Sotheby’s, admires the home’s environmental features but wouldn’t be surprised if the next owner builds a new house.

Write to Sarah Tilton at sarah.tilton@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared February 24, 2012, on page D7A in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Off the Grid in Wine Country.

By RICHARD B. WOODWARD

Purchase, N.Y.

‘American Vanguards: Graham, Davis, Gorky, de Kooning, and their Circle, 1927-1942,” a traveling exhibition now at the Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College, is an old-fashioned and expertly edited study in artistic influence during the Depression.

An august trio of scholars—William C. Agee, Irving Sandler and Karen Wilkin (a frequent contributor to this page)—retraces the ties of pedagogy and friendship that bound a trio of New York artists (John Graham, Stuart Davis and Arshile Gorky) to one another and to their young protégé (Willem de Kooning)—a foursome that referred to itself as “The Three Musketeers” and “D’Artagnan.”

Other artists touched by these swashbucklers are represented as well: the progressive Art Students League instructor Jan Matulka, the painter and writer Dorothy Dehner, and the not-yet-famous David Smith, Adolph Gottlieb, Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock. Even the more accomplished Alexander Calder has a cameo.

These men and women, many employed by the federal government and happy to affirm as citizens a New Deal agenda, were more eager to pursue an international modernist one in their art. Nearly all of the more than 60 paintings and sculptures in these airy galleries bear the marks of Cubist and Surrealist spatial experimentation. Works with a populist or regional accent are mostly absent. Uppermost on the mind of these artists: What was Picasso up to now?

The glamorous and mercurial Graham (1886-1961) was the ringleader of this group. Born Ivan Gratianovitch Dombrowsky in Kiev, he had fled the Bolsheviks for New York and trained at the Art Students League. A charismatic theorist intoxicated with his own insights into the history of art—the wall text generously calls them “idiosyncratic”—he was the author of the zany 1937 book “System and Dialectics of Art,” which promised “to unite questions of art into a coordinated system” and featured illustrations of Cycladic, African and pre-Columbian sculpture as well as reproductions of and praise for Picasso’s work. A collector of so-called primitive art, he had a peerless eye for identifying young talent.

Graham and Davis (1892-1964) were friends who had visited Europe at the same time. The first gallery has paintings they did in Paris in 1928 and 1929. As Ms. Wilkin points out in her catalog essay, trans-Atlantic travel was exceptional among this crowd and earned the two men lasting prestige back in New York.

The contrasting energies between them is one of the binding forces holding this chronicle together. Davis was the more consistent, having already developed a style of synthetic Cubism that served him to the end of his life. The commercial landscape of daily life, viewed in the lighthearted spirit of jazz and Léger, was his main subject. The example he set for many American artists not on the walls (Walker Evans and Roy Lichtenstein, to name only two) is one of the happy and unexpected take-aways from the show.

Graham, on the other hand, was a chameleon, never sure which great artist to use for inspiration and cover. Throughout the galleries, one can see him thinking of Cézanne here, and Miró or Dubuffet or Magritte or Léger or Gorky there. In “Horse and Rider” (1926), he awkwardly tried to fuse motifs from De Chirico (towers, flags) and Picasso (harlequins). “The White Pipe” (1930), more successfully negotiates a truce between Freudian surrealism and cubist fragmentation.

Such extreme open-mindedness, along with exquisite taste, made Graham an ideal impresario. He was an early champion of Gorky and de Kooning. Indeed, “American Vanguards” terminates in 1942 when Graham organized “French and American Paintings” at McMillen Inc., an Upper East Side decorating firm. That small group show is noteworthy for being Pollock’s first appearance in New York, and as the place where Pollock met Krasner, his future wife.

De Kooning once remarked that he was lucky on his arrival from Europe in 1926 to meet Graham, Davis and Gorky, “the three smartest guys on the scene.” In the eight works here by the recent émigré, one senses him responding to Davis’s egg-beater paintings from 1927-28, a series that stripped down objects to floating geometric shapes of saturated color, and to Gorky’s lyrical, amorphic abstraction. Graham’s presence is harder to detect. In fact, the influence may have gone the other way, with de Kooning’s figures of ferocious women from the early 1940s charting yet another direction for the elder’s painting to go.

David Smith might never have turned from painting to sculpture had Graham in 1932 not shown him photographs in art magazines of what Picasso and Julio Gonzáles and Henri Laurens had done in metal. The next-to-last gallery has an outstanding selection of small-scale Smith sculptures from 1938-39, including one of the first he ever sold, “Structure of Arches,” now at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. (This show was organized by Addison and will be its last stop in the fall of this year.)

Mr. Agee’s catalog essay argues that the classical education in drawing by Graham, de Kooning and Gorky combined with the anything-goes attitude of their adopted country to give American modernism in the 1930s a flavor distinct from Europe’s. But, of course, over the horizon can be seen the postwar triumph of Abstract Expressionism and the New York School. That teleology surely governed some of the selections here.

Figures who would become players in that later period make guest appearances. Gottlieb, born in 1903, a year before Gorky and de Kooning, was slow to feel the pull toward abstraction. One wall inserts a painting of his from 1938 of dingy fish houses in Gloucester, Mass., between three buoyant Davis abstractions from the same period. It’s a shock to turn the corner and then face Gottlieb’s “Pictograph” from 1942. The Ashcan School documentarian is now a Jungian symbolist. As the canvas hangs between two small Graham pattern paintings from the early ’40s, each done under the stimulus of Islam and African art, one can only conclude the Ukrainian exile was responsible for the middle-age New Yorker’s conversion to a more modernist program based in primitive art.

Among the many ironies of Graham’s erratic career is that he is now better known for the carnivalesque portraits he painted after the ’30s, when he renounced Picasso in favor of Poussin and Ingres. For a planned second edition of “System and Dialectics,” he omitted the names of Pollock and other young Americans he had once promoted.

This censorious revisionism, typical of the Soviet Union he had run from, backfired. By jumping off the Modernist express before it reached its destination, Graham was barely mentioned for years in surveys of the New York School. “American Vanguards” enlarges our sense of its prehistory in many ways, not least by giving his curious art and pivotal role as tastemaker their due.

Mr. Woodward is an arts critic in New York.

A version of this article appeared February 23, 2012, on page D4 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Waiting for Picasso.