Kickstart: Lobbying for LGBTQ employees, Berry growth and 'Buy America' in plastics

For years, Dow Chemical Co. has wanted to be a workplace with a good culture for LGBTQ employees.

In 2018, for example, when Jim Fitterling was named Dow's chairman and CEO, he became the first openly gay chief executive in the petrochemical industry. For more than a decade, Dow's been recognized for creating LGBTQ-positive environments. It has celebrated court cases recognizing same-sex marriage.

Now, it's working in Michigan's Legislature to codify that acceptance into state law.

Our sibling publication Crain's Detroit Business writes that Dow is part of a business coalition lobbying the state Legislature to "update the state's anti-discrimination law to protect LGBTQ residents, saying it is the right thing to do but also good for business."

A representative of the business groups told lawmakers that putting it in state law would send a clear message that "Michigan gets it, that we are a state where everyone is welcome."

Or, as Fitterling said in this 2021 Plastics News article explaining why support is also important to Dow's bottom line: "If we're going to be the most innovative, we have to be inclusive."

Crain's Detroit says Michigan's Supreme Court ruled last year that references to "sex" in the state's civil rights laws apply to sexual orientation as well as gender, but the businesses say they want a change in the law as insurance in case a future state Supreme Court changes its mind.

We've had two stories recently on plastic packaging giant Berry Global Group Inc. realigning for growth.

Besides having its CEO Tom Salmon step down after six years, the $14.5 billion company seems to be shifting from "large-scale acquisitions" more to bolt-on deals that can accelerate organic growth.

PN's Jim Johnson covered the change in thinking in this story. As Jim reported, Salmon told a recent call with analysts that the company is "in a unique spot right now."

"There's no large-scale acquisitions that we have to do to create scale. The real focus is on how we ultimately utilize bolt-on acquisitions as a means to accentuate organic growth," Salmon said.

Changes are also coming to Berry's tooling side.

Catherine Kavanaugh reported the company, which has 280 locations around the world, has created a new global tooling unit to try to reduce the third-party mold manufacturing its customers need.

The Evansville, Ind.-based company has 10 tooling plants around the world, in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.

The government has a few plastics-related questions for "buy America" purchasing requirements under President Joe Biden's infrastructure program.

Biden signed a $1 trillion infrastructure program in November 2021, including $550 million in new money, and included some requirements for purchasing of U.S.-made goods.

The Office of Management and Budget put out a formal notice Feb. 9 seeking public input around how to implement preference criteria for buying those U.S.-made products.

In particular, it asked how it should consider composite building products and whether they should be considered separately than plastic and polymer-based building products, and it had some definitional questions around plastic fiber-optic cables.

The government is taking public input until March 13.

Expect a lot of comments. The National Association of Home Builders wrote that it’s concerned, among several things, that the standards may stall road and utility projects needed by new home development.

Reuters said the OMB plan is an outgrowth of Biden’s State of the Union speech Feb. 7, and said the administration wants to raise the level of domestic content for federal purchasing from 55 percent currently to 75 percent by 2029.