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Following a successful presentation and webinar by High Road Strategies’ Joel Yudken on April 14, 2011, the report, Manufacturing Insecurity: America’s Manufacturing Crisis and the Erosion of the U.S. Defense Industrial Base, featured in the event, was cited in a Bloomsberg Businessweek article (May 5, 2011) on the declining availability of U.S.-made products for fulfilling defense needs.  The presentation was conducted before a standing-room only audience of 70-80 business, labor, and government representatives—another 30 participated online—on April 14, 2011, held in the President’s Room of the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C. Dr. Jerry Abbot, current faculty member and former director of the Industry Studies Program, Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University, and Owen Herrnstadt, director, International Department, International Association of Machinists, also appeared on the panel.

The AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council (initially in conjunction with the U.S. Business-Industry Council) commissioned the report, and sponsored the event, along with the Coalition for a Prosperous America, the AFL-CIO Metal Trades Department and the Alliance for American Manufacturing. The High Road Strategies report received other important public attention as well. For example, it was extensively mentioned in—and submitted along with—testimony by United Steel Workers Union president Leo W. Gerard before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on May 11, 2011, and was quoted in the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation report, The Case for a National Manufacturing Strategy (April 2011). In addition, Dr. Yudken presented the findings of the study at a meeting of the National Materials and Manufacturing Board of the National Academies (on which he had served in the last decade), on May 19, 2011, and discussed the report in a meeting with key staff of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress. For more information about the research study and report click here.