Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association

The Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association is a trade advocacy organization headquartered in Harrisburg, the capital of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Association was founded in Harrisburg on 9 October 1909 by Joseph R. Grundy, a manufacturer from Bucks County. The group’s original members were Pennsylvania individuals and companies engaged in the manufacturing of goods as well as trade and local associations representing the manufacturers.
The consortium began offering insurance products, providing workers’ compensation insurance in 1915 and fire and other casualty insurance in 1920. In 2004, PMA sold its insurance properties to PMA Capital Insurance Co. of Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, although PMA Capital retained the company’s name.
PMA remained concentrated on events in Pennsylvania until 1925, when it joined the National Industrial Council, part of the National Association of Manufacturers. Although PMA is primarily a trade advocacy group, it has also provided it members support during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, conducted workplace safety research projects on drug use affects in employees, supported trade with Taiwan, opposed federal tariffs, and developed programs re-purposing Pennsylvania’s many shut-down coal facilities.
==Founding and early history==
===Early days===
The Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association was founded on October 19, 1909 at the Hotel Senate in Harrisburg, PA. The organization’s founding chairman was Joseph R. Grundy, a successful textile manufacturer from Bucks County. A second meeting, held in Philadelphia with more interested parties, directed Grundy to form an executive committee to serve the group until the first official meeting of the Association in January 1910. The members of this executive committee - made up of Grundy and six others, are considered the official founders of the association.
The Articles for Agreement, adapted by the committee, called for the group “...to advance and protect the interests of its members.” There was a provision for two classes of membership: 1. Individuals and businesses engaged directly in manufacturing. 2. Trade and local associations representing manufacturers. The Executive Committee was empowered with management of the organization. The original membership, mostly textile and related organizations, were focused primarily on protecting their economic interests and the political system that had created their economy.The motto of the fledgling association was “Manufacturing is the Keystone of the Keystone State.”
The first few years of the PMA’s existence were challenging. Annual meetings in 1911 and 1912 were postponed due to lack of a quorum. When the Third Meeting was held, in 1912, Grundy reported that the association was specifically founded to "prevent, as far as possible, vicious, unfair, and unwarranted legislation in our State affecting the employment of labour," and that the Association’s members should pay more attention to the Pennsylvania Legislature. Grundy’s personal leadership held things together and, by 1913 the Fourth Annual Meeting was a success. Grundy continued to push for more members and, by 1917, every county in Pennsylvania was represented in the PMA. Also, by 1917, the PMA organized its first publicity committee which developed two important publications, the PMA Monthly Bulletin and the PMA Legislative Bulletin. Under Grundy’s leadership, the PMA was one of the early supporters of Worker’s Compensation and Child Labor Laws in the Commonwealth.
===Grundy's departure===
Grundy resigned his presidential posts in 1929, when he was appointed to serve in the US Senate, a position he held until December 1930. J.W. Rawle succeeded him, but Grundy kept his power by becoming chairman of the Executive Committee when his Senate term concluded. Grundy held the chairman post until he retired in 1947. Grundy died at age 98 in 1961.
===PMA Insurance founding and subsequent sale===
In 1915, PMA formed a committee to begin a casualty insurance company that could provide workers’ compensation insurance to the members. By late 1915, a charter was granted and on January 10, 1916, the first annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association Casualty Insurance Company was held, with Grundy as the company’s new president. By 1919, the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association Fire Insurance Company incorporation was approved and that company, again with Grundy as president, held its first annual meeting in January 1920.
In 2004, the Association exited the insurance business and sold the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association Casualty Insurance Company to PMA Capital Insurance Company of Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. The sold entity retained the names Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association Insurance Co. (PMAIC), Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Indemnity Co. (PMIC) and Manufacturers' Alliance Insurance Corp.(MAIC) In 2010, PMAIC, PMIC and MAIC were acquired by Old Republic International Corporation of Chicago, IL.
===PMA and NAM===
The PMA remained determinedly focused on Pennsylvania affairs until 1925, when it joined forces with the National Industrial Council, part of the National Association of Manufacturers|National Association of Manufacturers.
Membership grew steadily from 1920 through the 1950s, with the most members leaving the group at the height of the Great Depression in 1933.
==Activities==
According to the PMA, the organization “...works to improve Pennsylvania’s ability to compete with other states for investment, jobs, and economic growth. The future of Pennsylvania is our business.”
===Covid Pandemic===
In 2020, the organization, collaborating with other organizations and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, engaged in promoting public health safety and diminishing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic by offering an online “Manufacturing Call to Action Portal,” which offered manufacturers access to data that would enable them to quickly get into producing medical supplies to fight the healthcare crisis.
===Pennsylvania Society===
The Pennsylvania Society(independent from the PMA), founded in the late 19th Century by Pennsylvania business leaders who worked in New York City, re-initiated its annual Pennsylvania Society Dinner in Manhattan. The event was cancelled in 2020 because of the pandemic. In 2021, the Pennsylvania Society event returned to Manhattan after the one-year Covid hiatus, closely resembling its original occurrence in 1898 when Pennsylvania emigrants to New York began gathering to “wheel and deal and catch up on happenings in their home state.” The annual dinner celebrated Dr. Ala Stanford of Philadelphia, founder of the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium. The other attraction for the Society gala is the PMA independent, annual, invitation-only seminar and luncheon at the Manhattan Metropolitan Club.
===Electric power competition===
The group opposed bailouts proposed for rescuing the nuclear power industry, specifically in plants owned and operated by FirstEnergy Corp. and Exelon Corp., supporting the commonwealth’s natural gas industry.
===Workplace safety===
In 2014, the organization conducted a research project with 200 Pennsylvania manufacturers to determine the effects of drug testing on hiring practices. The survey found that one in three job candidates either fails or refuses to take the drug test. 
19% of applicants skip the test; 13% of those who take the test, fail it. This undermines the ability of manufacturers to find willing employees 
===Natural Gas Synthesis===
In 2020, the organization supported a proposal to develop a $400 million natural gas synthesis plant in West Keating PA. The plant would provide 800 construction jobs, 150 permanent jobs and $260 million in total economic outlook.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) opposed the project, stating air quality concerns. Subsequently, it was determined that DEP set its restrictions at too high a level and admitted it did not “know why that happened.” As of September 2022, the project is moving forward.
===Federal tariffs 2018===
PMA opposed tariffs imposed by the Trump administration mainly because they applied to trading allies such as Canada and Mexico. China, the group pointed out, had saturated the US market with inexpensive, government-subsidized steel products. Canada in particular, is heavily integrated with Pennsylvania manufacturers, the commonwealth exports more to Canada than any other country.
===Taiwan Trade===
PMA endorsed the commonwealth’s proposed 2022 budget particularly because it contained funding to open the state’s Office of Trade and Investment in Taiwan, previously abandoned. The group foresees future investments in the wake of changes and political unrest in East Asia, citing a $12 billion microchip factory in Arizona as typical of investments that might be expected.
===Redevelopment of coal-fired plants===
Since 2005, 14 coal plants have been closed in Pennsylvania. To address that, the state has developed a “play book” to find new uses for the properties using a federal grant to initiate plans to encourage a speedy process. The PMA’s position was that brownfields were assets rather than liabilities to the state. With the program in place, potential buyers and redevelopers would know what was required to renovate and make the closed plants into viable entities. “One of the really positive things we have in place in Pennsylvania are the rules about the redevelopment of brownfields,” the group stated.
===Partnering with NAM===
In 2019 The National Association of Manufacturers joined forces with the PMA in a plan to educate legislators and policy makers in Congress on key issues facing manufacturers. Many Pennsylvania manufacturers joined in the program, called “Manufacturing Means Jobs.”
Category:Trade associations
Category:Companies established in 1909
Category:Companies based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania