Dan Rodricks: A Baltimore manufacturer pivots and grows in a global market | STAFF COMMENTARY

I take “We Are Hiring” as a good sign for the U.S. economy, even as the job market starts to cool after a long, robust expansion following the pandemic.

With the nation’s unemployment rate at 3.9%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Tuesday reported that private employers had posted more than 8 million job openings in April. That’s down from last year at this time but still represents a lot of opportunity for job seekers. FYI: There’s a “We Are Hiring” sign at the entrance of Marlin Steel Wire Products, across the CSX tracks along Hollins Ferry Road in southwest Baltimore.

Drew Greenblatt acquired Marlin in 1998, when it was based in Brooklyn, New York, and known primarily for one product — wire baskets for bagel shops. The company had 18 employees making minimum wage; two had lost fingers and two had lost eyes in on-the-job accidents. “The health insurance plan was ‘go to the emergency room,’” Greenblatt says. “It was like something out of a Charles Dickens novel.”

So he moved the company to Baltimore, increased pay and benefits, and expanded Marlin’s product line into an array of stainless steel products for clients in several industries. The company now has plants in Michigan and Indiana. Greenblatt has 80 employees between those two operations, and 35 in Baltimore.

“We are growing and have a large backlog,” he says. “Our biggest choke point is finding people. We want to hire more people in Baltimore — welders,  machine operators and a quality manager. … If I had a magic wand, we would hire 13 people today.”

Fact: There are nearly 200,000 more manufacturing jobs in the U.S. today than there were before the pandemic, according to the BLS. That’s an impressive recovery, and then some, representing close to 13 million workers.

Another fact from the BLS: Of the 8 million job openings across the country, about 570,000 are in the manufacturing sector. That’s fewer than what was available last year but still represents opportunity for anyone interested in earning, on average, $33.61 an hour, according to the National Association of Manufacturers.

One more data point from NAM: While we still have manufacturing giants, most of the nation’s 240,000 manufacturers have fewer than than 100 employees.

Greenblatt always has been bullish on the potential of small manufacturers to produce middle-class jobs, especially in places, like Baltimore, hit hard by the seismic changes that took place in American industry in the late 20th Century.

I first met Greenblatt during the Great Recession, when he refused to sound retreat and actually gained market share while some of his competitors lost ground.

The key was thinking big about what could be done with the American-made steel Marlin purchased from mills in the Midwest.

When China’s cheaper exports took what remained of the bagel basket market — after Americans started consuming fewer carbs — Marlin Steel turned to fabricating products for the aerospace industry, for food processing and the automotive industry.

There are still a lot of baskets — all shapes and sizes — but they are not for bagels and not easily seen by consumers. Marlin’s customers use them in a plant that processes Pacific salmon, in a shop that disassembles and cleans jet engines, in a lab that conducts medical tests.

The latter business came about during the pandemic, when orders for Marlin’s major customers suddenly stopped and Greenblatt was faced with laying off employees.

“We pivoted to medical,” Greenblatt said, when I asked how the company fared during the Covid-19 shutdowns. “We found three very good markets. The first was test tube racks. The second thing was hand sanitizer stands [made from] sheet metal. China stopped shipping them into America because they wanted to keep them in China. So we leaned in on that. … And the third market was [intravenous] poles.”

The pivot happened quickly, and it has lasted. During my visit to Marlin last week, I saw employees using sophisticated machinery to assemble baskets to hold vials of blood. Marlin has a contract to produce steel baskets to hold surgical implants — for hips and knees — that must be kept sterile until they’re used.

Business in this kind of advanced steel fabrication is good, but could be better, Greenblatt says, if U.S. policy on Chinese imports changed. The tariffs instituted by the Trump administration and kept in place by President Biden are misguided, Greenblatt believes, because, while they protect steel manufacturers, they hurt steel fabricators, companies that make everything from dishwashers to test tube trays.

“Tariffs on Chinese [raw] steel sounds good to an audience,” he said. “You’re in front of a thousand steelworkers, all yelling and screaming how great you are, right? But [tariffs] are hurting fabricators, which employ far more workers than steel mills.”

The tariffs on raw steel from China, Greenblatt says, only result in price increases for the domestic steel he buys for Marlin, and, because he’s in a global market, he’s already felt the pinch from less-burdened competitors in some sectors of his business.

Greenblatt believes there should be increased tariffs on both imported raw steel and fabricated steel products.

“You either do both or do neither,” he says.

A change in policy would keep American fabricators competitive with those in other countries, Greenblatt says, and that would mean hiring even more workers to fill all those job openings, with a promise of a solid middle class life.