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ACC Targets Smaller Chemical Makers in Effort to Boost Advocacy Efforts

2:49 PM EST | December 14, 2009 | Robert Westervelt

ACC says it will offer a three-year dues waiver to small and medium-sized chemical makers as part of an initiative to grow the ranks of member firms and the group’s influence. The effort seeks to broaden adoption of ACC’s Responsible Care environmental, health, safety and security standards and boost the number of industry CEOs and employees, particularly in key states and Congressional districts, ACC officials say.

CApitol Gains: Targeting ‘persuadable’ legislators.

“Smaller companies are much more embedded in the social and political fabric of communities where they operate,” says ACC president and CEO Cal Dooley. “We need to do a better job of bringing those companies under our umbrella and have them as part of our advocacy efforts.”

Dooley says the effort is partly driven by his own experience in Congress where he found that smaller, family-owned businesses were more effective advocates. “For larger companies, the plant manager is often the primary point of contact in a local community,” Dooley says. “These managers are often rotated every two to three years at larger companies. They don’t have the opportunity to become as embedded in communities as officials at smaller companies, many of which are family owned and have operated for two, three or four generations.”

The effort will target firms nationwide with an emphasis on ten target states. “We have an opportunity to build a more comprehensive relationship in areas that are represented by elected officials that we know are persuadable,” Dooley says. “We have an opportunity to make them more supportive and aware of our policy agenda.”

ACC currently has about 135 members, representing 80%-85% of industrial chemical production by revenue. ACC hopes the effort will grow its ranks by a couple of hundred members eventually, targeting the thousands of smaller chemical manufacturers that exist in the U.S.

“We need the membership base to expand to increase the performance of our industry through implementation of our Responsible Care program,” says Sunil Kumar, president and CEO of ISP Corp., and head of ACC’s membership committee. “And the new members will enhance our advocacy efforts by making their voices amplify the current ACC message.” Small- and medium-sized companies “have enormous clout in Washington as well as state capitals, which are of particular focus for ACC.” A key driver behind the effort is improvement of advocacy in the states, Kumar says. ACC will seek to work with existing state industry councils—such as those in California, Illinois, New Jersey, and Texas—to bring in members there that aren’t affiliated with ACC.

Kumar says he hopes the effort expands ACC’s ranks by 100 members within three years. “These are going to be small to medium companies as all the big ones are already part of ACC with a few notable exceptions,” Kumar says.

Dooley: Smaller firms are more effective advocates.

The dues waiver is designed to help smaller companies pay for Responsible Care implementation and offset the impression that compliance for smaller companies is too expensive, ACC officials say. The goal is to make it possible for smaller companies to invest the time and money, with active help from ACC and mentor companies, to install Responsible Care within three years, Kumar says. “We will waive dues for three years as long as they’re on path to becoming certified and meeting annual benchmarks,” Dooley adds. Broader adoption of Responsible Care will also lift industry’s overall health, safety and environmental performance. ACC is also expanding services targeted at smaller firms, particularly around regulatory compliance.

ACC’s 2010 budget devotes nearly 60% of resources to advocacy, up from 27% in 2008. ACC’s budget over the time period has decreased by 11% to about $70 million. Much of the shift has come from the curtailment of ACC’s essential2 campaign, which cost about $20 million, with those dollars being shifted to support ACC’s advocacy priorities.

“We do policy development very well,” Dooley says. “ACC staff has the strongest and most credible relationships with regulatory agencies and are very well respected on Capitol Hill. What we haven’t done as well is advocacy.” The kind of engagement also needs to change, Dooley says. “There’s too much focus on quantity of engagement, which has become less valuable,” Dooley says. “Members of congress got almost 4 million emails last year. It’s a saturated medium. We have to move from quantity of engagement to quality of engagement. The quality is built on credible relationships that industry and its supporters have with elected officials. And we need more small companies who can build quality relationships.” ACC recently created a department of political mobilization, a field-oriented team that will focus on building political relationships with key members of Congress in their home states and districts.

ACC says it will also change its “Membership Rule” to enable non-ACC chemical manufacturers to participate in the ACC’s self-funded product groups as another way to broaden advocacy ranks. ACC says it will also seek closer coordination with partners that do not manufacture chemicals by creating new affiliate and associate membership categories.

Dooley says the effort is not designed to encroach on Socma or other industry organizations. “There are thousands of companies who do not belong to either organization and each has its own role,” Dooley says. “We will continue to increase collaboration with all of our partners. There’s no one silver bullet to address industry’s challenges. We have common and shared interests we need to address.”

Socma president Joe Acker says that ACC and Socma serve different needs. “Batch chemical manufacturers [in Socma] have a lot of different issues than the continuous processing folks [in ACC],” Acker says. “We have 20 some members that belong to both ACC and Socma. Our membership remains pretty steady. I don’t feel we’re in competition with ACC.”

Policy challenges and more aggressive posture by EPA has reinforced the need to build a more effective advocacy effort, Dooley adds. “The business of chemistry is facing an unprecedented number of global and domestic policy challenges—from product attacks, to chemical management reform, to climate change, facility security and rail competition,” Dooley says. “Responsible Care … provides our industry a strong credible base of performance from which to advocate our positions.”

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