MUSINGS OF A CEO

The faces of Emerald Packaging have changed beyond recognition from our founding. White men in shirts and ties ran the factory. They had a firm hold on management. Factory workers weren’t any different. Bookkeeping belonged to the lone woman. She could have run sales as well as or better than any male had she been given training.

Today? A woman from India holds the second most important position in the company, chief operating officer. Our prepress director immigrated from the Philippines, our printing manager left El Salvador as did our human resources director. Our head of technical sales moved from Mexico. So too our innovation director. One of our customer service agents comes from Afghanistan. Our maintenance director’s mother immigrated from Mexico. Our factory employees hail from countless different nations including Ukraine, Cambodia, Philippines, Mexico, Thailand and India to name a few.

I recall a few years ago coming into the office only to see a Hindu, Muslim and a Hmong decorating our Christmas tree. Sounds like the beginning of a good joke but reflected our diversity. Our company wouldn’t be successful today without the many minds and hands from other countries. We owe most of our quality control procedures to our chief operating officer who implemented them when she was a process control engineer. We couldn’t operate without the nimble mind of our plant manager who oversees our chaotic schedule. Our innovator led us into laser microperforation, developed our first pricing programs, and pushed us to expand into new markets. Our factory employees, like their compatriots from the 1970s, remain industry leaders.

I do think family history plays some role in my openness to other cultures. Our Irish grandparents immigrated in the 1920s, one set leaving poverty and the other civil war. My paternal grandfather had no special skills when he arrived at Ellis Island. He became a bricklayer in New York, put his kids through school, one of whom founded this company. Not much different from many of those who work here today. I also know I’m more open to women managers than my predecessors, perhaps because I worked extensively with them in a previous job.

More importantly the workforce changed and if we didn’t Emerald would not be here. Diversity defines the Bay Area. Whites make up a much smaller percentage of the labor pool, especially in manufacturing, than three decades ago. Women, immigrants, minorities have the engineering and technical skills necessary to build a successful company. If you don’t hire them ultimately you lose.

We don’t make it easy for women though. The expense of child care eats into wages. No matter what progressive men think women continue to shoulder the burden of child rearing and chores. I think this makes them more efficient with their time, accomplishing in eight or nine hours what men may take 10 hours to do. But it also sometimes distracts from the job, especially when they have to stay home with sick children.

Immigration policy has also started to gum up the works. Our country succeeds because it has opened its doors generation after generation. Slamming shut those doors or failing to put a sane system in place only weakens us. Foreigners account for a disproportionate share of start-ups and patents in Silicon Valley yet we gut the H1-B visa system that allows them to work here. Similarly not rebuilding our agricultural and manufacturing workforce with immigrants who want the jobs simply raises costs and forces companies overseas. We’d welcome underemployed factory workers from the Midwest but they won’t move. Labor mobility collapsed ten years ago and remains stuck at its lowest rate in decades.

White men continue to hold important positions in our company. We succeed because of them, too. But it’s the combination of their talents and those of many non-traditional employees who either weren’t welcomed in manufacturing or whose people hadn’t immigrated yet that drives us. I often wonder if we wouldn’t have been a more successful company if our bookkeeper had moved up the ladder. Well, her spiritual heir has. Our new plant manager, whose parents immigrated from Laos, started as a receptionist, became a customer service agent, and succeeded as our scheduler. I am thankful she’s an American.