Kickstart: Let's celebrate the best workplaces for 2020, 2021

Two companies that were among the Best Places to Work in the plastics industry for 2020 have also landed on Crain's Chicago Business' Top 100 Best Places to Work.

Distributor M. Holland Co., based in Northbrook, Ill., landed at No. 41 in the ranking and KI Industries of Berkeley, Ill., a supplier of decorative plastic and die-cast components, was No. 94.

KI Industries was No. 11 for Plastics News' ranking in 2020, while M. Holland was at No. 2.

Registration is now open for the 2021 Best Places to Work in the plastics industry. Click through to start the process.

And now I have an excuse to link this again. Back in the pre-COVID days, we put together a fun video celebrating the Best Places to Work to show at the Executive Forum. Before Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" became a meme on how to not to do social distancing — "Hands, touching hands, reaching out, touching me, touching you" — we asked companies to do a fun lip sync. Web Producer Erin Sloan then edited it down to a quick two-minute video.

Give yourself permission to take a break, check it out, then get your company submission going for 2021.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about plastics companies participating in the federal Paycheck Protection Program, with at least $1.6 billion provided to firms to help them operate during the pandemic.

Now our sister publication Rubber & Plastics News has the story from the rubber side of the polymer spectrum.

"Since April, the federal government has issued at least $287 million to 1,179 rubber and plastics-related businesses with fewer than 500 employees via the PPP, intended to buoy small businesses against the economic ravages of the coronavirus pandemic," Andrew Schunk writes.

The loans were aimed primarily at saving jobs by providing low-interest loans to help businesses cover payroll costs and other expenses.

The New York Times caught up with the family owners of Plaxall Inc., a plastics thermoformer that has been based in the Long Island City area of Queens since before World War II.

While writer Kaya Laterman mentions the unlikelihood of a manufacturing company that has retained its place in New York City, the story focuses more on how the company has pivoted multiple times to produce goods needed by the U.S.

During World War II, that was plastic planes to help train civilian defense volunteers and clear globes for training navigators. (The globes were later repurposed into Christmas ornaments for the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.)

When the pandemic began spreading through the U.S., Plaxall converted some of its packaging production to medical equipment, including face shields.

"Over the years, we've had many people ask us why we keep manufacturing in New York City," Matthew Quigley, one of the three cousins who help run Plaxall, told Laterman. When this public health crisis happened, we thought: "Maybe this is the reason we held out for so long. This is our moment, again."