A simultaneous interview with the co-owners of San Diego’s fourth largest private employer is nearly impossible. Neither the 53-year-old kid who spent his junior high years walking the beaches of Tripoli nor the 53-year-old kid whose family ran a business on the Las Vegas strip will let the other complete a story without jumping in to finish a sentence or offer a right-angle observation. Nearly everything leads to a joke, a mild tease or other distractions.

Such are the lives of Manpower of San Diego’s Phil Blair and Mel Katz as, under their stewardship the region’s leading temporary employment firm nears its 25th anniversary. It is a milestone likely to coincide with reaching, perhaps hurdling, the $100 million mark in annual business.

This year the firm will do about $94.5 million in business, send out 15,000 W2s and, on any given day, have about 3,700 people on the job with employers countywide. All this from an operation that had 43 employees and revenue of $331,000 when the two Phoenix fashion buyers in 1977 walked in as owners

When not landing, or losing, the town’s choicest employment contracts — or irritating local labor leaders with their success — the pair demonstrate an extraordinary commitment to the community. Whether chairing the largest civic organizations or advocating for better libraries, new museums or a revived symphony orchestra, Mel Katz and Phil Blair probably are involved.

Still, after 30 years as best friends and decades as neighbors, with families that are best friends and carpooling daily, you’d think the two would get on each other’s nerves. They don’t. “They are just a couple of darn likable guys when you get to know them,” says Alan Abendschein, the vice president of human resources at Kyocera Wireless. “It is always a kick to be around them. They have this bond, this unique personal friendship and they also work together. I have never seen a tense moment.”

Not Everyone Is A Fan

Asked about Katz and Blair, Jerry Butkiewicz, secretary/treasurer of the San Diego Imperial Labor Council, answers a question with a question. “I guess there are two ways for me to look at it: Do I like them personally and do I like temporary agencies?”

Butkiewicz has worked closely with both men. He and Blair are on the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce board and he dealt with Blair while Blair filled a vacancy on the San Diego City Council. He likes the men, but is unequivocal in his dislike of their industry’s evolution.

“The whole concept of temp agencies I don’t think is a good one,” Butkiewicz says. “I feel a lot of employers just use them to get around paying people livable wages with health care and retirement benefits. There is a place for temp employees, but it is where we knew them years ago. Where they stepped in for women on maternity leave, when a person was out with surgery or someone was out for a major amount of time.”

Blair and Katz are quick to defend the business, noting that it is not an employee-leasing outfit where the workforce has no expectation of ever joining the full-time staff.

Rather, Blair notes that in today’s cycle-based economy, employers need the flexibility when they plan for a year to bring in a large group of workers as a project gears up, then release them when it winds down.

Doing so, he says, is not inexpensive.

“One of the criticisms we get is that people use temps to save money,” Blair says. “That’s not true. It is not cheaper. It is more expensive.”

Blair terms the concept, “Try before you buy,” and says that 42 percent of Manpower’s temporaries get permanently hired by the companies they go to work for. For example, of the 150 employees that Manpower had working at Callaway Golf Co. in October, 87 were hired on as fulltime.

“There is no substitute to having someone on your permanent staff,” Katz says. “Having (temps) get full- time jobs is a good motivator for other temps. They know if they work hard and don’t miss too many days they can get that too.”

Don Cohn, political director of the Labor Council, says the trend toward temporary employment worries him.

“The issue is not that people work through temporary agencies,” Cohn says. “Temporary agencies have a role. The issue is, ‘Are jobs becoming permanently temporary as a way to make businesses more nimble, as a legitimate response to competition?’ These less than permanent jobs have a huge impact on workers’ mobility and wage progression. If employers are simply using temporary agencies to deny their fundamental responsibilities as employers, that is wrong.”

Blair is proud of the benefit package offered to Manpower employees — it includes subsidized health care insurance and a week of vacation the first year — but would like to see better health care benefits for all employees in general. He is wary of who should bear the cost but favors requiring more of small business.

“I’m not sure small business can’t afford to pay for part of their employees’ health care,” says Blair, who proposes something along the lines of having the employer pay a third, the employee a third and the government a third.

Humor As A Management Tool

Blair and Katz — more so Blair — cultivate a culture of humor surrounding them, whether at the office, at an employee’s home during a book club dinner where what’s cooking is an issue or at civic meetings.

“One of my first conversations with Phil was, ‘Heather, do you have a good sense of humor?’” recalls Heather Whitley, Manpower’s director of human resources. She had that talk in 1989 when, as a temp, Whitley started as the office receptionist. She was promoted to executive assistant, then cajoled by Blair and Katz into getting a human resource management certificate and now is getting a degree.

With their sense of fun, Whitley says, comes a sincere interest in employees.

“They know your husband by name and your kids by name,” she says. “They put up a wall in the back for the kids’ artwork. Whenever there is a new baby around here, they go all out. They work very hard to make work fun. They are the kind of people you would work for at any length or do anything for.”

So who is the silliest?

“They trade it off,” Whitley says. “Mel has tracked every boyfriend I have had while here. He remembers them all by name and whether they passed the Mel test. I had a boyfriend who was working in Washington, D.C., and Phil made arrangements to meet him for breakfast. There are very few more nerve-wracking things than having Phil have breakfast with your boyfriend 3,000 miles away.”

Blair appreciates a good tease, and there are few better at delivering than Midge Costanza, a public speaking trainer, bank director and former press officer with the Carter administration. The two met in the early 1990s.

“I was doing a presentation at Downtown Rotary, significantly on Secretaries Day, and Phil was the emcee,” Costanza says. “I looked over and I said, out loud, ‘Whoa, what a neat pair of legs.’ Well of course, Phil has followed me everywhere since. He is so much fun.”

While Costanza is effusive about the good the Blair and Katz families do in San Diego, she says the men should more frequently seek her advance counsel about how they are publicized. In particular she singled out a feature in the San Diego Union-Tribune that showed the two during their morning workouts.

“I’m glad they never mentioned the exercise club they went to for years, because the club would have been out of business,” she says. “Instead of looking like they belonged (to a club), they looked like they needed one. I have to ask them whether that fitness club ever asked for their membership cards back.”

Beneath The Bios

The exploits and accomplishments of Blair and Katz have found their way quite well into San Diego’s media. But, as the lawmen said about Newman and Redford in “Butch Cassidy”: Who are these guys?

Starting with Blair seems right. Not that his accomplishments are greater, but he does hold the president’s title and is one of San Diego’s most handsome executives, albeit still happily married to his college sweetheart, Catherine.

Phil Blair was born in Great Bend, Kan., into an oil business family. He went to elementary school in Caracas, Venezuela, and junior high in Tripoli, Libya. “We lived right on the Mediterranean,” he recalls. “There was a lot of sand, as far as you could see.”

The global lifestyle offered an enticing future when he enrolled at Oklahoma State University.

“I thoroughly enjoyed it and planned on living internationally myself,” Blair says. “That was until I fell in love (at college) with a girl who had lived her whole life in Tulsa, Okla.”

In 1971, a week out of college, he and Catherine were married. The couple gave themselves a month to “goof off,” as Blair puts it, so he painted dorm rooms while she worked as a receptionist. They then moved to Tulsa, where he worked in the men’s area of a Diamonds department store while Catherine worked for an advertising agency. After a series of promotions, Blair was offered a slot in the Phoenix-headquartered Diamonds’ training program.

Katz had just graduated from the same six-month program.

If Not For Mel Katz’ Father ...

Mel Katz, vice president of Manpower, was born in New York City, living when he was young in Long Island’s Oceanside community where his father owned two men’s and boy’s clothing stores. But a friend of his father owned a hotel on the Las Vegas strip and wanted someone to look after it. So the friend and Katz’ father bought an answering service business in Las Vegas and the family, when Katz was 13, headed west.

The first year in Las Vegas his father, Michael Katz, saw an ad in the Wall Street Journal for a Manpower franchise. He bought it. Today, 38 years later, it is run by Katz’ brother for his mother. His father died six years ago.

Katz spent his formative years in Las Vegas, working as a pool boy, cruising the strip for girls as a teen and finally enrolling in the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. After graduating at age 21 with a major in general business and a minor in marketing, he went to work for Diamonds and quickly was promoted into the Phoenix sales training program.

When Katz completed the program, he became a buyer of women’s fashions. Blair’s first job after finishing the training was as Katz’ assistant.

“I bought polyester sportswear,” Katz says. “He (Blair) got a job four months later for budget dresses. It was a great learning opportunity. We were buying for nine stores. I was buying $1 million in clothes each year.”

Why men for women’s clothes?

“Because men tend to have a more skewed eye than women,” says Blair. “They don’t think, ‘Oh, I never would wear that dress or that color doesn’t look good on me.’ The buying decision is more mechanical.”

Being buyers meant traveling, sometimes as often as every six weeks to New York City. Those trips cemented the friendship. “We were given a per diem,” Blair says. “We quickly found out if we shared a room our per diem would buy us a lot more fun.”

After four years, the fun of the job started to wear off. Blair was tired of having to frequently leave his wife for the trips; Katz saw formulas replacing creative decisions. “When we started you really were able to make buying decisions,” Katz says. “By the time we were ready to get out we were just reorder clerks.”

Before Katz left, however, he met Linda, his final assistant. It was not love at first sight. “It was sort of at the tail end of my infatuation with buying and Linda felt that she was covering my ass and doing most of the work.”

Was she? “Yeah,” Katz says. “Phil and I would take off to go ‘branching,’ visiting one of the stores. Instead we would go to a tennis club and play tennis. If we ever had employees who did what we did, they’d be canned.”

Clockwise from top left, Katz and Blair take a meeting at the beach for the January issue of a corporate in-house magazine; Blair hosts a radio show; the pair, with longer hair, work Washington, D.C.; and some early publicity, circa 1985, in the San Diego Union.

Time To Change Careers

Blair recalls listening to Michael Katz discuss the future of his businesses. “I said to Mel, ‘Imagine if he is doing that well. If we went into business together we could kick ass.’”

The pair pondered a Wendy’s hamburger franchise, a travel and tour operation, and an ice cream and pinball store. Michael Katz got wind of their desire to go into business as a team and told them to consider a Manpower franchise. It was something Mel Katz had never considered. “I always thought it was important to get my own job and do my own thing,” he says.

Blair and Katz were familiar with San Diego, having on occasion taken a detour back from a Los Angeles buying trip to visit the city’s beaches. The two couples also had vacationed here, staying at the Catamaran. Katz recalls a drive through Point Loma neighborhoods and seeing streets with light standards down the middle. “We said, God, if we ever could make a living in this town, there would be nothing better.”

Michael Katz set up a meeting with the president of Manpower International, Mitchell Fromstein, and the pair made a pitch to buy the San Diego franchise. The office had been here 22 years, but was considered a loser stuck in a sleepy military town.

“Over a two-to-three hour period we did our best sales job,” Blair recalls. “We said, ‘hey, if we fail, you get it back.’”

Fromstein was skeptical.

“Basically he said, ‘You are going to tell me you don’t have any money to put down and you want me to lend you everything,’” Katz says. “We said ‘yes,’ and that is basically what happened.”

For less than $100,000, the franchise was theirs, along with a five-year note they paid off in just six months.

With Mel and Linda Katz engaged to be married and Catherine Blair eight months pregnant, the two couples caravanned to San Diego, with one driving a U-haul that towed a car and the other three driving separate vehicles. “I remember thinking, ‘how Okie,’” Blair says.

For operating capital, the partners had $10,000. In addition, Michael Katz came to San Diego and introduced the budding businessmen to Tom Sefton, president of San Diego Trust & Savings. With Michael Katz providing the guarantee, Sefton opened a line of credit for the new Manpower owners.

“May 2 was our first day,” Blair recalls. “I remember walking in. We let the manager go and inherited two employees. One left in a month or two; she didn’t like working for these young hotshots. The other was a woman who stayed with us for two or three years and really taught us the business.” Success was hardly a given. One of Michael Katz’ associates lectured him on the foolishness of expecting the San Diego franchise to support two families.

However, the partners began to learn their new business, one they figured needed to pay each family a $25,000 salary. Blair learned from the retired executives at SCORE how to calculate payroll taxes while Katz perfected the single-finger method of typing paychecks.

Asking For The Order

The first big break came when Blair was on the telephone with a General Dynamics human resources person who used Manpower for some janitorial jobs. Blair had seen a newspaper article that the company was growing.

“In sales you always ask for the order,” he says.

So he did. And the person asked if Manpower did technical, specifically avionics, engineers.

“Well ‘sure we do,’ I said,” Blair recalls. “I wrote (avionics) down quickly and was smart enough to know not to ask how to spell it.” Flipping through old résumés and placing a classified ad in the newspaper brought in job candidates. Eventually Manpower developed a strong relationship with Navy engineers who were nearing retirement and kept sending their friends over for the General Dynamics jobs.

The first year revenue hit $831,000. The second year more than $2 million and the third it passed $3 million. When the company hit $50,000 in weekly sales, the partners celebrated with a $60 bottle of Dom Perignon. When it hit the $2 million a week mark last year, the achievement prompted a staff party. Souvenir Manpower dress shirts with 2M$ embroidered on the cuff were given to staff that were working the key week.

Accomplishing such growth has taken more than just Blair’s relentlessly upbeat charm or Katz’ hiring and back-office savvy.

Under the auspices of Manpower International, the local office has steadily strengthened and expanded its training programs. Those efforts started when IBM Selectrics were replaced by the Wang Writer and other word processors, leaving much of the business world’s clerical staff baffled. Today the program is enormous, having moved in recent years from training CDs that potential employees took home and put in their computers to the Internet. Today’s Manpower temps equipped with a password can take, and be certified as having passed, dozens of courses via the Global Training Center.

More local and unique to this office, Manpower San Diego made a key decision in the mid-1990s when it decided to emphasize its service to large volume users in the telecom and technology industries. “You didn’t have to go to many lunches where Irwin Jacobs spoke to know, ‘I think he’s got something here,’” Blair recalls.

The company leased space in Miramar’s pyramid building and in 1998 opened a center that teaches a range of hardware and software skills related to wireless devices. Temps who come out of that program earn from $8 to $60 per hour. Clients who hire them include Qualcomm, Ericsson and Kyocera. “They are actually training people how to assemble phones in their facility, and how to repair phones,” says Kyocera’s Abendschein who, with 900 temps, is Manpower’s biggest client. “They do all of that for us in advance of the person coming in to work for us.”

Blair sees training continuing to grow in importance.

“Training has evolved as the way to keep good employees,” says Blair. “When we first got into this industry it was the ‘emergency business.’ Now people plan their years around temps and ramp up hundreds of jobs on account of them.”

Manpower’s Future Plans

The terrorist attacks have not been unnoticed at Manpower.

“In August the economy was starting to hum and the prime was coming down,” says Katz. “Then came Sept. 11. We didn’t get gross cancellation of orders. People did decide to hold tight for a few days or weeks. Now we are seeing people saying it is OK.”

Still, the events of 9-11 are what will keep Manpower from hitting the $100 million mark this calendar year. The unexpected dip isn’t costing any corporate Manpower employees’ jobs.

“We have had a philosophy for 25 years, and it continues, that we never lay any staff team member off because of bad or slow business,” says Blair. “You are loyal to us and we are loyal to you. Now of course we do lay off people for poor performance or not giving 110 percent, and we reassign staff to new functions and we do use temporaries in our own offices, both as temp to hire, and as an escape valve if business does slow down in a specific office or department. So we cut back on temps, as we tell all of our customers to do, but we have never laid off staff due to slow business. We have only had years that were minimally below the year before, never a major drop.”

Whatever happens, don’t expect Blair and Katz to sit still.

The pair say they will still carpool together from Scripps Ranch nine out of 10 days, and Blair will likely look harder at politics, especially now that his children are grown.

“There is clearly an interest,” Blair says. “But it is like everything else in life; timing is everything. It has to be the right position at the right time. It is not a burning desire to run for the first office that is available.”

Katz sees opportunities to grow the business by buying new territory.

Both wax proudly about the difference their business can make in peoples’ lives, and Katz offers a recent letter from an Arab immigrant as evidence.

“I know that you really wanted to help us because we just arrived in the United States,” the letter says near its end. “Again and again, thank you.” In all caps, at the end, is written “God Bless America.”

“That is what it is all about,” Katz says. “That feeling was there 25 years ago and it hasn’t lessened at all.”