Luis Blanco Urgoiti – General Secretary – March, 1st, 2021.
From time to time, one transnational company, with a production plant in our surroundings, asks to the local plant manager, human resources officer of the facility or, even to the local HS&E officer to justify why is interesting to keep the membership of the territorial chemical business association, to provide arguments to demonstrate it worth to pay the fee.
Beyond the traditional role of employers’ association and the fundamental contribution of big companies and SME to the negotiations of the collective agreements, the modern business associations have deployed a wide range of services, mainly advisory services, as their affiliated companies have demand them.
In 21st century, access to information is not a problem anymore. Two o three clicks away, every professional, every technician has the possibility of reach almost all the knowledges created by humans. At his service, they have a continuous and sometimes violent stream of information, of political decisions, law proposals, interpretations, technical news with potential influence in their facilities flowing all over the Internet… they only need time to process it.
In our time, to be informed of any menaces or possibilities arising to our business is a cornerstone of competitiveness, the only way to keep our site running in the time we are living, in this volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous days.
The point is, today, the main task of business organizations is maintaining an oversight of the knowledge, skills, conduct and practice of the sector and companies, and, moreover, to sieve information, transforming information in knowledge, understanding “knowledge” as the portion of information a professional technician can process for his everyday job.
Useful information has to flow in both senses. A democratic society needs organizations that hear business’ worries and necessities, organizations that keeps open wires between day-to-day economy and politics. Like it or not, companies create wealth and jobs, pay salaries, generating tax to pay health and education. To keep them open and running must be a social goal, as legitimate as any other.
Finally, with all due respect to antitrust legislation, companies must cooperate to reach a true sustainable development. It’s obvious to say in the case of SMEs, but, with the specialization level required in some fields of technical and legal knowledge, big companies may be not so far: the best politics to confront the future challenges is to put means in common. Is easy to understand that hiring a professional team of lawyers and engineers, working together for the best performance in environmental and safety law enforcement or advising with the last requirements of anti-COVID19 policies, is just a business association.
