Reopening Tour Tracks Industry’s COVID Comeback

Covering nearly 7,000 miles motoring through U.S. cities with the greatest abundance of TRSA members, the 2021 Reopening Tour completed its final segment on Nov. 5 in Boston. TRSA staff covered 28 states since the year began, highlighting the reopening of the economy in the wake of COVID-19 and its impact on the linen, uniform and facility services industry. TRSA underscored how members’ workforces deliver the industry’s essential services, supporting critical infrastructure from healthcare to food processing, manufacturing, logistics and other industries.

More than 70 member companies were engaged, either through visits to more than 80 of their workplaces and customers’ locations or Town Hall discussions in Los Angeles, New York and Sacramento hotels. The road trips generated unprecedented information-sharing through personally reporting these gatherings’ highlights to members at subsequent stops on each tour segment and generating social media posts for industry stakeholders to view everywhere as the trips proceeded.

Posts for the four tour segments (Southeast, Midwest, California, Northeast) totaled 600, generating more than 250,000 impressions, views, likes and comments. See them on TRSA’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn pages.

The tour’s final segment, including the most populous Northeast metropolitan areas, featured the Nov. 3 Town Hall in New York. TRSA President & CEO Joseph Ricci brought participants up to speed on TRSA’s latest work, including:

• Observations from the tour, noting that the industry was at peak performance before COVID-19, adding capacity only to see it unused initially as the pandemic proceeded. TRSA has tracked the return of revenues as the economy has reopened, with members’ bottom lines recovering although tempered by labor and supply chain issues.
• TRSA’s Market Recovery and Expansion Research, which will gather and quantify the why and how behind the textile industry to empower members to use insights for business recovery and expansion. Findings are based on surveys of 1,000 consumers and end users of the industry’s services, fueling development of profiles (personas) of prototypical buyers in key customer industries that reflect their COVID-19-influenced business priorities.
• Growth of Hygienically Clean certification, with 200 laundries having earned the Healthcare designation and 100 with Food Safety.
• The return to TRSA in-person events, most recently the Annual Conference in Carlsbad, CA, where the largest session, the Industry Awards dinner, drew 170 participants. Next up: Healthcare and Marketing & Sales events Nov. 16-18 in Plano, TX, and the F&B, Hospitality and Industrial/Workwear Conference, set for Feb. 1-3 in New Orleans.
• Steady expansion of TRSA.org, especially On-Demand Learning, which enables members to train staff in various functions and view recordings of webinars and virtual events. You’ll also find data to support your efforts to serve and sell various customer industries, including the recent project aimed at building the industry’s business in long-term care.

The Northeast Town Hall also featured Kevin Schwalb, TRSA government relations VP, who anticipated the enactment of OSHA’s emergency temporary standard (ETS) on COVID vaccination and testing for employers of 100 or more. He covered the latest developments on federal tax increases, infrastructure spending and regulation of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in wastewater.

Schwalb explained TRSA’s advocacy for development of federal guidance on reusable vs. disposable personal protective equipment (PPE) in healthcare facilities; that half their operating stock of items such as isolation gowns and scrubs should be reusable. Before COVID-19, the norm was 90% disposable. Reusables gained ground as cases grew then lost share as the declined. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) has expressed keen interest in this issue. At a Washington hearing Nov. 5 on pandemic preparedness, he asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to consider recommending reusable stockpiling.

Other federal advocacy priorities include:

Promoting leaving uniforms at work for outsourced laundering. Given the variety of the industry’s processes that ensure their hygiene better than home laundering, TRSA is publicizing recent findings regarding industrial-scale laundries’ effectiveness in killing COVID-19. Healthcare facilities are the primary target for prompting scrub wearers not to bring these garments home. While shifting this practice would increase many such facilities’ costs, a CDC recommendation or tax incentive might be enough to foster such shifting. A regulatory solution would be difficult to attain.

Persuading the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to declare the industry essential in natural disasters. This would prompt FEMA to consider linen, uniform and facility services among the list of businesses that, for example, should be given priority for power grid restoration in such disasters. The pandemic highlighted the industry’s importance to maintaining community hygiene. In natural disasters, it can play a vital role when residents are displaced from their homes and need linens where they shelter, such as hotels.

Activity on the state and local level discussed at the Town Hall (see Nov. 8 TRSA report) included a likely eastward-spreading trend from California, where electric vehicles are mandated for delivery fleets; and New York’s plans to attempt to curb traffic congestion by adding $25 per trip to deliver into Manhattan. TRSA has lobbyists in both states.

Another California issue: requiring laundries to filter microplastics from wastewater. TRSA has worked with supplier partners to curb such state legislation in recent years, but it could arise again. TRSA has successfully argued that consumer discharges are responsible for the vast majority of microplastic waste in the environment and regulators need to focus on these.