National Association of Manufacturers
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Founded | 1895 |
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Type | Advocacy |
Focus | Manufacturing and Small Business Advocacy |
Location | |
Area served | United States |
Key people | Jay Timmons, President & CEO |
Website | nam.org |
The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) is an advocacy group headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, with additional offices across the country. It is the nation's largest manufacturing industrial trade association, representing 14,000 small and large manufacturing companies in every industrial sector and in all 50 states.[1] Jay Timmons has led the organization as President and CEO since 2011.
A 2018 article by Business Insider described the NAM as "a behemoth in the US capital, receiving unfettered access to the White House and top lawmakers on Capitol Hill."[2] In 2018, House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady commented that passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would not have happened without leadership from the National Association of Manufacturers.[3]
President Donald Trump addressed the NAM board in 2017.[4]
Policy issues
The NAM's policy issue work is focused in the areas of labor, employment, health care, energy, corporate finance, tax, bilateral trade, multilateral trade, export controls, technology, regulatory and infrastructure policy.[5] The organization emphasizes four pillars that make America great: free enterprise, competitiveness, individual liberty, and equal opportunity.
The NAM releases a Manufacturing Outlook Survey every quarter. As of the second quarter of 2018, according to the NAM, 95.1% of manufacturers registered a positive outlook for their company, “the highest level recorded in the survey’s 20-year history.”[6] The same survey found that manufacturers rated “the inability to attract and retain a quality workforce” as their top concern. President Donald Trump mentioned the NAM’s survey in an event at the White House in April 2018.[7]
The NAM’s Manufacturing Institute is a 501(c)3 dedicated to developing a modern manufacturing workforce to help manufacturers get skilled, qualified and productive workers to remain competitive. The Institute sponsors Manufacturing Day on the first Friday of October, a nation-wide event for manufacturers to host students, parents, and policy-leaders and “address common misperceptions about manufacturing.”
In 2017, the NAM launched the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project (MAP), a campaign run through the Manufacturers’ Center for Legal Action (MCLA) to combat frivolous, politically-motivated lawsuits against energy manufacturers. As of August 2018, three of those lawsuits have been dismissed from court.[8]
According to NAM, manufacturing employs nearly 12 million workers, contributes more than $2.25 trillion to the U.S. economy annually, is the largest driver of economic growth in the nation and accounts for the lion's share of private sector research and development.[1]
Legislation
NAM supported the EPS Service Parts Act of 2014 (H.R. 5057; 113th Congress), a bill that would exempt certain external power supplies from complying with standards set forth in a final rule published by the United States Department of Energy in February 2014.[9][10] The United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce describes the bill as a bill that "provides regulatory relief by making a simple technical correction to the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act to exempt certain power supply (EPS) service and spare parts from federal efficiency standards."[11]
Board of directors
The NAM's Board of Directors includes Chairman David Farr, CEO of Emerson Electric Company, President Jay Timmons, CEO of NAM; and Vice Chair of the Board David T. Seaton, Chairman and CEO, Fluor Corporation, among others.[12]
History
NAM was founded by Thomas P. Egan, late President of the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce and head of the J.A. Fay and Egan Co., woodworking and machinery company, not long after reading an editorial in the magazine "Dixie," out of Atlanta, Georgia, during the depression of 1894. This editorial urged the manufacturers of the time to organize and work together to improve business conditions nationally. Under Egan's leadership, organization began, and a group was created; they called themselves the "Big 50"; he invited them, and asked them to invite others, to Cincinnati. On Jan 25, 1895, in the Oddfellows Temple, where 583 manufacturers attended, NAM was created.[13] "The U.S. was in the midst of a deep recession and many of the nation's manufacturers saw a strong need to export their products in other countries. One of the NAM's earliest efforts was to call for the creation of the U.S. Department of Commerce".[14] The organization's first president was Thomas Dolan of Philadelphia[15] (not, as erroneously listed in some sources, Samuel P. Bush).
The early history of NAM was marked by frank verbal attacks on labor. In 1903, then-president David MacLean Parry[16] delivered a speech at its annual convention which argued that unions' goals would result in "despotism, tyranny, and slavery." Parry advocated the establishment of a great national anti-union federation under the control of the NAM, and the NAM responded by initiating such an effort.[17]
In an address at its 1911 convention, NAM president John Kirby, Jr. proclaimed, "The American Federation of Labor is engaged in an open warfare against Jesus Christ and his cause."[18]
The NAM also encouraged the creation and propagation of a network of local anti-union organizations, many of which took the name Citizens' Alliance.[19] In October 1903 the local Citizens' Alliance groups were united by a national called the Citizens' Industrial Alliance of America.[20]
NAM, in the late 1930s, used one of the earliest versions of a modern multi-faceted public relations campaign to promote the benefits of capitalism and to combat the policies of President Roosevelt.[21] NAM made efforts to undermine organized labor in the United States before the New Deal.[22]
NAM lobbied successfully for the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act to restrict unions' power.[23]
The advent of commercial television led to the NAM's own 15-minute television program, “Industry on Parade”,[24] which aired from 1950–1960.[25]
Presidents of NAM
- Thomas Dolan
- David Maclean Parry
- John Kirby, Jr
- Clinton L. Bardo (1934-1935)
- Robert Wason
- Henning Webb Prentis Jr.
- Sandy Trowbridge (1980-1989)
- Jerry Jasinowski (1990-2004)
- John Engler (2004 - 2011)
- Jay Timmons (2011 -)
Chairmen of NAM
- Charles R. Sligh, Jr.
- Stanley Gault
- Michael Campbell
- David Farr
Affiliates
The NAM has one affiliate. According to its website,[26] the Manufacturing Institute is the 501(c) 3 affiliate of the National Association of Manufacturers. The Manufacturing Institute describes its priorities as the development of a world-class manufacturing workforce, the growth of individual U.S. manufacturing companies and the expansion of the manufacturing sector in regional economies. The Manufacturing Institute is the authority on the attraction, qualification, and development of world-class manufacturing talent.[27]
Footnotes
- ^ a b About the NAM - National Association of Manufacturers
- ^ https://www.businessinsider.com/national-association-of-manufacturers-have-exploded-in-the-trump-era-2018-4
- ^ https://waysandmeans.house.gov/chairman-brady-marks-six-months-of-tax-reform-wins/
- ^ https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/09/29/trump-national-association-of-manufacturers-full-speech.cnn
- ^ Policy Issues - National Association of Manufacturers
- ^ http://www.nam.org/outlook/
- ^ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trumps-tax-cuts-energizing-american-employers-sizes/
- ^ http://mfgaccountabilityproject.org/2018/08/08/climate-litigation-scorecard-manufacturers-3-trial-lawyers-0/
- ^ "CBO - H.R. 5057". Congressional Budget Office. Retrieved 9 September 2014.
- ^ Hankin, Christopher (15 July 2014). "House Energy & Commerce Committee passes bipartisan regulatory relief for external power supplies". Information Technology Industry Council. Retrieved 10 September 2014.
- ^ "Committee to Build on #RecordOfSuccess with Nine Bills On the House Floor This Week". House Energy and Commerce Committee. 8 September 2014. Archived from the original on 10 September 2014. Retrieved 10 September 2014.
- ^ NAM Board of Directors
- ^ Hyatt, Harry Middleton (1970). Hoodoo-Conjuration-Witchcraft-Rootwork. Western Publishing, Inc., Hannibal, Mo. p. 6.
- ^ NAM website's history page
- ^ American industries, Volume 13 By National Association of Manufacturers (U.S.), May 1913, page 33
- ^ For more on Parry and his views, see The Scarlet Empire.
- ^ George G. Suggs, Jr., Colorado's War on Militant Unionism: James H. Peabody and the Western Federation of Miners. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1972, pp. 66-67.
- ^ Violations of free speech and assembly and interference with rights of labor: hearings before a subcommittee, Seventy-fourth Congress, second session, on S. Res. 266, a resolution to investigate violations of the right of free speech and assembly and interference with the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively. April 10–11, 14-17, 21, 23, 1936
- ^ Colorado's War on Militant Unionism, James H. Peabody and the Western Federation of Miners, George G. Suggs, Jr., 1972, page 67-68.
- ^ Stuart B. Kaufman, Peter J. Albert, and Grace Palladino (eds.), The Samuel Gompers Papers: Volume 6: The American Federation of Labor and the Rise of Progressivism, 1902-6. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997; pg. 193, fn. 1.
- ^ Burton St. John III, "Press Professionalization and Propaganda: The Rise of Journalistic Double-Mindedness, 1917-1941." Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2010; p. 12.
- ^ LJ Griffin, ME Wallace, and BA Rubin. 1986. "Capitalist Resistance to the Organization of Labor Before the New Deal: Why? How? Success?" American Sociological Review. 51:2:147-67.
- ^ Anna McCarthy, The Citizen Machine: Governing by Television in 1950s America, New York: The New Press, 2010, p. 54. ISBN 978-1-59558-498-4.
- ^ National Archives
- ^ Susan B. Strange and Wendy Shay, "Industry on Parade Film Collection, 1950–1960: #507", National Museum of American History: Archives Center, 10 September 2001.
- ^ Manufacturing Institute
- ^ "The Manufacturing Institute".
Further reading
- John N. Stalker, The National Association of Manufacturers: A Study in Ideology. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1950.
- Sarah Lyons Watts, Order Against Chaos: Business Culture and Labor Ideology in America, 1880-1915. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.
- Burton St. John III, "Press Professionalization and Propaganda: The Rise of Journalistic Double-Mindedness, 1917-1941." Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2010.
External links
- National Association of Manufacturers
- Shopfloor Manufacturing Blog
- Manufacturing Institute
- online description of historical NAM pamphlets, 1908-1969
- National Association of Manufacturers. World War I posters. 5190+. Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Martin P. Catherwood Library, Cornell University.
- Archival papers of the National Association of Manufacturers, Women's Department, 1895-, at Smith College.