Leadership

Will Congress Make 2015 A Happy New Year for Manufacturers?

Dec. 15, 2014

In spite -- or because of -- their differences of opinion, American business leaders must participate in public-policy conversations.

John McClenahen

A new Congress, the 114^th in U.S. history, won’t make 2015 a happy new year for American manufacturers.

There are at least two significant reasons. One involves the drama—you choose whether to call it comedy or tragedy—of partisan politics. The other is the fact that American manufacturers have never been of one mind and one voice—not from the first days of the republic. Not now.

Start-up enterprises have different priorities from established firms. Multinationals have different priorities from domestic companies. Some manufacturers focus on established markets. Others direct their attention to emerging markets. Many manufacturers are publicly traded companies. Others are privately held.

American manufacturers have never been of one mind and one voice—not from the first days of the republic. Not now.

The list goes on, and as it lengthens, it can get rather complex. Consider, for example, a domestic American manufacturer whose management pursues both established and emerging markets both at home and abroad from both foreign and domestic production and distribution sites. Its economic, political, and social environments—and financial needs—can and do vary, and wants and priorities may be at odds—all within the company’s boundaries.

Along the boundaries between business and government, no single broad-based business lobby, however admirable its stated intentions, can effectively advocate all of the interests of all of the corporations, companies, and partnerships that are its members. What’s more, not every company is comfortable being just anywhere under an “umbrella” lobby. Some want to be at the absolute center of action; other prefer to be closer to the edge.

In efforts to promote their perceived particular needs, thousands of American businesses, from the makers of airplanes and automobiles to the miners and processors of yellowcake, have joined hundreds of trade associations across the country. But even among the members of such seemingly like-minded organizations, the policy voices tend not to be in unison. Sometimes the differences are nuanced; other times, not so nuanced.

Certainly, the managers and employees of American manufacturing companies are not of one mind or one voice when the issue is the Affordable Care Act. For example, some manufacturing executives continue to decry almost any employee healthcare plan as a job-destroying business burden, while other manufacturers pursue progressive healthcare plans to attract and retain skilled employees and still other manufacturers see in the provisions of “Obamacare” opportunities for new lines of business.

The healthcare debate will not end in 2015. Obamacare legislation is still very young. Some regulations are likely to be altered as both employers and employees gain experience with the act’s requirements. And the financial impacts of the legislation on employers and employees have yet to be meaningfully measured.

Nevertheless, I believe that the men and women of business, in concord or in conflict, would be well advised to continue think about the conditions of their social, economic and political environments and to advocate public policy positions with clarity and vigor. For the people of American businesses not to take their places at the tables of public-policy conversations—for their voices not to be heard—would make for the unhappiest and unhealthiest of new years for everyone.

This is another of a series of occasional essay by John S. McClenahen, an award-winning writer and photographer who retired from IndustryWeek as a senior editor in 2006.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.