Chamber accepting applications for 2016 Workplace Diversity Award

Each year, the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce teams with the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) of Greater Dayton to choose a business or organization that fosters an inclusive work environment for the Greater Dayton Workplace Diversity Award.

The chamber realizes the importance of bringing a variety of ideas to the table when running a business, and the growth that can be fostered when employees are inspired to contribute, drawing upon their different perspectives, backgrounds and experiences.

The award is presented at the NCCJ’s annual Friendship Dinner, which is scheduled for Oct. 24. The winner will be recognized at the chamber’s annual meeting in Spring 2017.

The winner will also receive valuable exposure through the Dayton Area Chamber’s e-newsletter, quarterly magazine and monthly television show.

Apply now at DaytonChamber.org or contact the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce for more information.

The application deadline is Aug. 1.

Wal-Mart Stores has been good to America’s great horned owl. Not the real bird — the plastic one.

As part of a much-hyped effort to bring factory jobs back to the United States, Wal-Mart persuaded tiny Dalen Products, of Knoxville, Tennessee, to shift production of the garden scarecrow back home from China. The only catch: Not many jobs followed.

And that’s often been the story of Wal-Mart’s campaign. As the world’s biggest buyer of thousands of factory items, from hunting rifles to bicycles, it’s in as good a position as any company to influence U.S. manufacturing — for better or worse: The retailer is widely blamed for sending hundreds of thousands of jobs overseas since the 1990s.

So when Wal-Mart announced in 2013 it would spend an extra $250 billion over 10 years on domestically produced goods, it also estimated that the shift would create 250,000 manufacturing jobs. The return so far is a fraction of that — a cautionary tale for Donald Trump, the presidential candidate who’s made even bigger and bolder pledges to bring factory employment back to the U.S.

“If you bring back a plant you aren’t going to bring back 100 or 200 people, you will want to automate it so it costs less,” said Gregory Daco, head of U.S. macroeconomics at Oxford Economics. “If you do that, there is really no direct benefit for potential employees.”

Something like that happened with the owls. Dalen made a fixed-headed version at its assembly line in Knoxville, but it shifted production of the swivel-headed owl to China in 1997. A previous effort to bring it back came to nothing because the company couldn’t find a way to do it without increasing the price, said Nancy Taylor, director of sales and marketing at Dalen.

Then, in mid-2013, WalMart said it would buy more owls if Dalen could make them in the United States. With a bigger contract from the retailer, Dalen could negotiate a better deal for its raw materials. Add in the savings on shipping costs and the math was starting to make sense — with one rub: the cost of labor.

In China, Dalen had several dozen employees assembling and hand-painting the owls, and it couldn’t afford to do that in the U.S.

It was the Knoxville employees who came up with a solution for re-engineering the assembly line, Taylor says. One worker developed a new tool to make it easier to mount the head, and others came up with ways to speed up the attachment of eyes and beak — the only parts that still come from outside the U.S. As a result, Dalen is now making hundreds of thousands more owls with only a couple of additional employees, though Taylor points to other gains; many Dalen staff who used to have a fourmonth summer layoff now work year-round.

It was a similar story when Wal-Mart approached Precision Thermoplastic Components Inc. in Lima, Ohio. The manufacturer was keen to join Wal-Mart’s initiative, but as its managers debated what could be made in America they focused on items that would make maximum use of existing machines and avoid hefty labor costs, according to executive Ashley Thompson. They ended up designing a range of mounted water bottles for cyclists, and setting up a new unit called 50 Strong, headed by Thompson, to make them — but only a few jobs were created.

Any manufacturing revival will come in small steps, Thompson said. “You may not have companies coming back and building facilities that employ 5,000 people, but if you have 100 different smaller companies that are adding 50 jobs right there, that adds up to your same number,” she said.

In Wal-Mart’s case, it adds up to about 7,000. That’s how many factory jobs its made-in-America program has directly created so far, according to an estimate by the Reshoring Initiative, an industry group that supports the return of manufacturing. Wal-Mart said that it doesn’t track the number of jobs, but that it’s likely to be significantly higher than the Reshoring Initiative’s estimate, which only includes companies that have publicly announced their extra hiring.

For the individuals and communities affected, even a few dozen jobs have a meaningful impact, said Cindi Marsiglio, Wal-Mart’s vice president of U.S. manufacturing. She says it’s tough to move the needle nationwide, but she’s confident Wal-Mart will eventually meet its job-creation goals.

The U.S. has lost about 5 million manufacturing jobs since trade with China accelerated around the turn of the century, so Wal-Mart’s efforts so far are a drop in the ocean. But even that is enough to put the retailer on top of this particular league. In second place is Ford with 3,000 jobs returned over six years, according to the Reshoring Initiative, followed by General Electric and General Motors with 2,000 each.