The haphazard way we’ve managed the pandemic continues to add new wrinkles to manufacturing’s workforce challenge. The latest is the trend of parents leaving work for good to stay home with kids as schools remain shuttered. A month ago, it was only a possibility. Today, it’s a reality. Companies are losing key employees.

Whether schools would reopen wasn’t supposed to be a variable in the fall of 2020. But there’s good news ahead: Kids will go back to school. And communities will turn to science to keep the public safe. They’ll have to. “If we don’t test, we won’t have more cases,” is a ruinous path.

In fact the science seems straightforward: Test more and faster, and innovate to make places safer. Until there’s a vaccine, and even after, how we interact with each other will change.

Manufacturing’s role will be threefold: 1) Make and assemble the solutions that will help us manage social interactions in our places — tools that measure and monitor biometrics, distance, density, etc.; 2) Deploy those tools in our factories, as stores, bars, restaurants, and schools do the same; 3) Lead a workforce wellness movement that highlights the healthiest and safest locations in our community. Our maker spaces and places should lead the way. It’s a natural corollary to manufacturers’ role as essential businesses.

The outcomes for business will mean everything. Companies able to create safe spaces will do more than just keep employees healthy and happy, they’ll be at the center of a new focus on wellness that distinguishes communities and its best companies. The ubiquitous “best companies to work for” contests will take on new meaning as the stakes become higher.

The flip side is that companies that don’t take steps to ensure employee health will lose out in the long run. Innovation in workforce wellness will become as important as investments in the latest production equipment and technology. To put it another way, IoT and Industry 4.0 is today changed forever, to include the monitoring and management of human capital.

Successful companies will win the competition for employees as they change our public places. Manufacturers can lead, or lag. There’s no doubt the sector will lead. American manufacturing has a long and distinguished record of transforming a crisis to a new more productive society.

A guns-to-butter moment has again arrived.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Reach him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

If you wish hard enough, maybe it will go away.

That seems to be the approach of Colorado Springs mayor John Suthers, who argued recently to prevent voters from deciding whether recreational cannabis could be sold in the city. His “sharp criticism” of the option dissuaded the city council from approving a ballot measure this fall.

Suthers position was summed up by the Colorado Springs daily newspaper, The Gazette:

“Suthers also argued the promises made by recreational marijuana proponents when it was legalized statewide in 2012, such as reigning in the black market, have not been kept. ‘We are spending infinitely more time and effort regulating marijuana than when it was illegal,’ he said.”

It’s an obtuse statement for the ages. We’re spending more time regulating marijuana, because we’re regulating marijuana. Plus, not only have proponents kept their promises, the dark, dystopian future forecast by opponents of legalization hasn’t materialized.

Suthers shouldn’t be held to account for opposing legal marijuana. He’s been consistent in his opposition to it. That the mayor would instead relegate a billion-dollar industry to the black market is unconscionable for the leader of Colorado’s second largest city. Meanwhile, Colorado’s cannabis locomotive rolls down the track. Every month, the state’s residents demonstrate new and unwavering support for the industry’s products.

It’s a sparkling industry at that. Tomorrow we’ll announce the winner of the second Colorado Manufacturing Awards Cannabis Manufacturer of the Year. One of the finalists, Hemp Depot, is a Colorado Springs company that’s brought dozens of jobs to the city. They’re a national leader, one of a select few cannabis companies to receive an FDA-endorsed GMP certification for professional operations. They bring much needed science, transparency, and operational acumen to a legal hemp CBD market that further legitimizes the cannabis space.

Not that the mayor would know the difference between THC and CBD. For cannabis deniers, it’s all the same.

For the city, it’s more of the same. The professed need of denying citizens their vote is to protect the defense economy. Or as The Gazette surmised, “Opponents argued legalizing recreational marijuana could hurt the town’s chances of becoming the next permanent home for U.S. Space Command because the military would likely weigh the drug laws in competing communities in its decision.”

Left to generals, the U.S. military would do no such thing. Time and again, military brass sloughs off a conservative stereotype with progressive, modern leadership that reflects the makeup of their standard bearers — soldiers, sailors, airmen and women, and scientists. If the U.S. Space Command seeks a cannabis-free zone to host operations, they’ll need to look outside the U.S.

In the real world, if those in Suthers’ camp would embrace regulation and not work to undermine the industry with misleading nonsense, the black market would fade away.

Wish for it. Maybe it will come true.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Email him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

The same day this week the Washington Post reported the Trump administration was “trying to block billions of dollars for states to conduct testing and contact tracing in the upcoming coronavirus relief bill,” Colorado Governor Jared Polis was encouraging the opposite, stating flatly, “The national testing scene is a complete disgrace,” while slamming the federal testing strategy as “almost useless from an epidemiological or even diagnostic perspective.”

For a Western governor to be sideways with President Trump isn’t unusual. From Oregon to California to New Mexico, COVID-19 continues to widen the Grand Canyon-like political divide in the West.

Ironically, COVID also provides a means for political adversaries to rally around shared interests. Manufacturing has emerged as one. However unlikely it is that President Trump will work with Polis, or California Governor Gavin Newsom, or New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham in an election cycle, in theory each state has much to offer a Trumpian “get tough” strategy on China, namely by helping companies locate more production here.

Governors can’t set U.S. trade policy, but they can provide a road map for federal policymakers. Here are three things western Governors can do to support local manufacturing and chip away at China’s stranglehold on hosting U.S. companies.

1. Work with local companies, one by one, to develop domestic productions strategies. America’s governors are in a unique position. They interact with influential companies — every day. It’s part of the job description.

What’s been lacking are sustained conversations about why local companies and brands offshore production. If this wasn’t the case, there would be more local manufacturing.

A new approach would first acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that U.S. brands have made China a manufacturing superpower. If U.S. companies and brands were key to China’s manufacturing ascendance, so too are they at the center of any American renewal.

Governors can be local manufacturing’s most powerful advocates. One company at a time.

2. Make manufacturing-related R&D a priority. America’s research ecosystem is formidable, but to assume technology acumen translates into manufacturing-related leadership in automation and robotics is misguided.

Arthur Herman’s Wall Street Journal op-ed this week referenced a 2015 Strategy& and PwC study that found “found that U.S. companies were steadily moving their research-and-development centers to China to be closer to production, suppliers and engineering talent.”

It’s a troubling conclusion. The lesson for governors is that a strong manufacturing base is vital to maintaining a world-class R&D ecosystem.

Ensure there’s a connection between universities, labs, and manufacturers. Host events. Facilitate conversations. Put our R&D ecosystem to work for manufacturing.

3. Encourage and subsidize local buying. Products made in the U.S. are often more expensive than those made offshore. Why? Because labor is less expensive.

But the cost of not supporting jobs and infrastructure here, to save a few dollars, can’t be measured. Governors have a bully pulpit to educate and rally citizens to buy locally made products and legislators to subsidize local production. They should use it. It’s a winning, bipartisan issue.

“Getting tough” on China is election-year sloganeering. Deep, strategic partnerships shape Sino-American business and economic ties. Yet for every U.S. brand that leaves China to invest in American workers and communities, China’s influence wanes.

Presidents Obama and Trump both used the office to advocate for domestic production. It’s left to governors and local officials to fill in the gaps and drive a U.S. manufacturing resurgence that works to shift the balance of economic power to America’s shores.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Reach him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

We’re all righteous in our indignation.

Last April, after years of encouraging former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper to lean on his industry experience to take up the cause for manufacturing, I gave up. At the time, Hickenlooper’s presidential campaign, devoid of even a mention of his manufacturing experience, had crashed.

I lamented the missed opportunity: “John Hickenlooper was a craft-brewing pioneer. He helped reimagine craft manufacturing in Colorado and make it fashionable again, demonstrating its power to reshape urban economies, create opportunities for passionate entrepreneurs and reshape entire industry sectors. . . . I envisioned talk of the virtues of shortening supply chains to bring jobs home, of providing pathways for families and kids into the trade, and of a new economy where U.S.-engineered and -designed products are increasingly made here.”

But I was wrong about Hickenlooper’s affinity or connection with manufacturing. If not wrong, judgmental. Advocacy for manufacturing is a cause I share with some, but not everyone.

Today, candidate Hickenlooper harkens back to his “restaurant experience,” not his beer-making chops, when talking of his business acumen. He identifies with his service background more than any manufacturing pedigree.

And that’s OK. I look back on my rather harsh pronouncements and cringe a bit.

Would a Hickenlooper campaign focused on manufacturing be relevant and powerful now? Yes. COVID-19 has thrust these very issues to the forefront of the national conversation. A different choice in 2019 might have positioned him perfectly for a Senate run.

It is heartening, I admit, to witness the wave of legislative efforts and business initiatives to reshore manufacturing, or promote more domestic production, in light of COVID-related disruptions. Tariffs, or IP theft, or other challenges that companies encounter managing global supply chains might have been the trigger, but weren’t. Whatever it takes.

For those inclined to jump the bandwagon, I’d encourage a wide view. Sure, rebuilding America’s manufacturing supply chain is about competing with China. But more, it’s about investing in American towns and cities and workers; about recapturing the unseen virtues of family-owned companies that span generations; about supercharging American ingenuity and sustaining a legacy of invention and innovation that only manufacturing fuels; about Ford and John Deere and Hewlett-Packard and Coca-Cola and the hundreds of American-made brands that brought us this far.

It’s these positive attributes that must shape our perspective on U.S. manufacturing, just as incentives, not tariffs, should guide efforts to convince American companies to reshore production, or cite it here in the first place.

We won’t be endorsing a particular candidate for the Senate, or for president for that matter, but we’ll certainly point out when elected officials distinguish themselves as manufacturing advocates, or not. It’s not too much to ask of any elected official to articulate their strategy to sustain manufacturing, both nationally and in our local communities.

For my part, more support and less snark seems an appropriate tactic, given the times. A different outcome would be a just reward.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Reach him at btaylor@companyweek.com