Cornered: August
From August 2005
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Watching his father eventually close his doors due to competition from larger markets that moved into the area and seeing firsthand the decline of the steel industry influenced Zaremberg in later years, making him acutely aware of the difficulties and sometimes minute-by-minute challenges faced by the business owners who make up the chamber’s membership.
“You can kill the goose that lays the eggs by asking for more than the industry or the companies can afford,” he says. “That’s clearly what happened to the steel industry. And unfortunately for the communities around Pittsburgh, they have yet to recover, 25 years later.”
Entrepreneurs undertake massive risks — both financial and otherwise — to launch businesses and create money-making operations upon which their families can depend in the future.
But such boardroom boldness rarely translates to risk-taking in politics. Business leaders are either too consumed with running their companies or wary of engendering the type of negative publicity that could hurt sales to even pressure lawmakers to address issues vital to the corporate community.
No Time for Pleading
And then there’s the roughly 80 percent of the chamber’s 15,000 members with fewer than 100 employees, many of whom can’t afford the time to walk the halls of the Capitol pleading with lawmakers not to sign bills that will increase the cost of doing business, let alone afford the money to hire high-priced lobbyists.
But that’s OK, Zaremberg says, because that’s what his members pay him to do.
“I look at that as part of my job,” he says. “That’s one of our messages because, A, you can’t afford your own lobbyist because you’re a small business, and, B, you can’t take time out from your business.
Continued...
“You can kill the goose that lays the eggs by asking for more than the industry or the companies can afford,” he says. “That’s clearly what happened to the steel industry. And unfortunately for the communities around Pittsburgh, they have yet to recover, 25 years later.”
Entrepreneurs undertake massive risks — both financial and otherwise — to launch businesses and create money-making operations upon which their families can depend in the future.
But such boardroom boldness rarely translates to risk-taking in politics. Business leaders are either too consumed with running their companies or wary of engendering the type of negative publicity that could hurt sales to even pressure lawmakers to address issues vital to the corporate community.
No Time for Pleading
And then there’s the roughly 80 percent of the chamber’s 15,000 members with fewer than 100 employees, many of whom can’t afford the time to walk the halls of the Capitol pleading with lawmakers not to sign bills that will increase the cost of doing business, let alone afford the money to hire high-priced lobbyists.
But that’s OK, Zaremberg says, because that’s what his members pay him to do.
“I look at that as part of my job,” he says. “That’s one of our messages because, A, you can’t afford your own lobbyist because you’re a small business, and, B, you can’t take time out from your business.
Continued...
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