TRSA Dinner Features Advocacy Focus
A group of nearly 20 linen, uniform and facility services operators and supplier executives gathered on Oct. 16 at a restaurant in downtown Philadelphia for the latest in TRSA’s series of networking dinners. This event, which followed several TRSA-sponsored dinners earlier this year on the West Coast, included an overview of advocacy issues presented by Kevin Schwalb, the association’s vice president of government relations.
These industry leaders engaged in an evening of socializing, dining and comparing notes on a variety of operational issues facing them, including a growing shortage of qualified hourly employees, rapidly consolidating customer markets, costly and unworkable wastewater regulations and more. All the attendees enjoyed a spirit of camaraderie during the dinner, which was held a former bank that featured vaults and other once-secure areas converted into dining rooms.
“As a new member to TSRA, I found the event to be extremely valuable, especially learning more about the rich history of those organizations that attended,” said Peter Castagna, president & CEO, Hospital Central Services Inc. (aka HCSC), a launderer based in Allentown, PA. “Getting to spend some time with leaders of those companies here in the region, discuss our challenges and share them with the TSRA team can only improve our ability to have a unified voice for advocacy. The healthcare market is going through significant changes, and as suppliers, we are having to manage the challenges that are arising from consolidation, cost pressures and evolving service requirements.”
Another attendee, Kristin Dempsey, vice president, Dempsey Uniform & Linen Supply Inc., Jessup, PA, praised the spirit of camaraderie that prevailed at the event. “I enjoyed TRSA’s dinner program for operators on Monday in Philadelphia,” Dempsey said. “There was great networking and a spirit of unity as we discussed issues, including changes to overtime and joint employer rules.”
TRSA Chair David Potack offered brief welcoming remarks to the attendees. TRSA President and CEO Joseph Ricci introduced Schwalb, who gave a quick overview of the industry’s advocacy agenda on Capitol Hill and with federal agencies such as the Department of Labor (DOL) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). While partisan divisions has slowed progress on the congressional side, including healthcare and tax reform – especially in the U.S. Senate – President Donald Trump is moving forward on the regulatory side with several moves that are favorable to the business community, Schwalb said. For example, newly appointed NLRB commissioners are moving to scale back President Barack Obama’s rule on joint employers that made it difficult for laundries to manage their employees working on-site with customers, such as those stationed in hospitals to help healthcare staff manage their linen departments. Under Obama’s reforms, laundry employees working in a hospital or other customer workplace would come under the hospital’s personnel rules, including union representation if the employees at that site belonged to a union.
Another issue where progress is visible is with the Obama administration’s restructuring of overtime rules. The previous administration’s changes would have raised the level required for a manager to gain an exemption from overtime rules to a salary of $47,476 per year. That’s nearly double the figure of $23,660 that was in place before the rule change. The rule drew a legal challenge last year, and a Texas judge had delayed implementation of the change. The Obama administration had sought to overturn the stay, but the incoming Trump administration later dropped the appeal. Meanwhile, rather than scrapping the rule change altogether, Trump’s Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta is likely to reduce the increase in the exemption threshold to a figure in the vicinity of $30,000. “That’s a little more manageable,” Schwalb said. “Not nearly as harmful as it would have been.”
While the Trump administration’s shift away from adding regulatory burdens to business at the federal level is helpful, Schwalb warned that a side effect of this trend is that some states and localities in some areas are stepping up their efforts on the regulatory front.
When Obama was president, Schwalb said he dreaded looking at the latest edition of the Federal Register because he expected more draconian regulations coming down the pike from the EPA, NLRB, DOL and other agencies. Now what keeps him awake at night is the prospect of regulatory issues arising from jurisdictions outside Washington, DC. “We’re looking at state and local issues,” he said. “On defense sometimes; on offense sometimes. There’s definitely more state activity.”
Additional TRSA dinner programs scheduled for the balance of 2017 include events planned for:
- Oct. 30 in New York
- Nov. 27 in Chicago
- Nov. 28 in Milwaukee
Contact TRSA President & CEO Joseph Ricci at jricci@trsa.org for details, or click to the “events” section of www.trsa.org.