New technology widens market for acrylic sheet Development of new low-cost techniques to fabricate acrylic sheet at American Cyanamid and Polycast Technology Corp. could spell wider markets for the plastic. Cyanamid's system, specifically for acrylic sheet backed with glass-fiber-reinforced polyester resin, was shown last week at the conference of the Society of the Plastics Industry's reinforced plastics/ composites division in Washington, D.C. Polycast revealed in New York City that it can considerably expand straight acrylic sheet production by its continuous casting process. Cyanamid's composite sheet gets its cost advantage by avoiding the gelcoat procedure typical in making reinforced plastic parts. The company says this traditional routine ties up a mold for five to 13 hours with two curing stages and requires six to 13 man-hours of work. The new process takes only three to six minutes mold time to thermoform the acrylic sheet. The sheet is then placed between simple supports and sprayed with resin and glass fiber. Man-hours come to one to one and a half. The Cyanamid composite features a modified acrylic composition, which the company states is tougher than a gel coat. Impact resistance is three to four times that of gel coat. Markets open to the composite include boats, cartop carriers, dune buggy bodies, campers, tubs, shower stalls, and trailer components. Cyanamid labels the thermoplastic Rigidite modified acrylic sheet and also sells a Rigidite polyester spray-on material. Low capital cost. Polycast Technology, reorganized in mid-1968 from an old company called Polycast, has been rapidly expanding sales of continuous cast acrylic sheet in the past three years. Features of the casting process include low capital cost ($30,000 per $1 million sales), fast construction time of 30 days, and elimination of a formerly used cooking step in preparing the monomer for the mold. In the new process, monomer is mixed with additives and poured directly into the mold. Polycast lists considerable labor savings from the new process. The old process required 210 men to make about $5 million worth of salable acrylic sheets; the new one, 27 men. Most of Polycast's production to date has gone to government buyers. The company states over three fourths of the Government's acrylic sheet came from the Polycast process. However, the company is eyeing increased commercial markets in outdoor signs, floor mats under office chairs, and furniture.
WORLD TRADE
By EARL ANDERSON Senior Editor
Labor changes its tune When the House Ways and Means Committee finally gets around to holding hearings on President Nixon's trade bill, some of the most vocal witnesses will come from the labor movement. U.S. labor, and particularly organized labor, has taken a long, hard look at the U.S. trade posture since the Kennedy round and it doesn't like many of the things it has seen. Its attitude toward expanded trade, which is a popular euphemism for freer trade, has changed, just as it believes that the world has changed, since labor gave its enthusiastic support to the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. One of the pillars upon which labor support of the 1962 trade act was based was trade adjustment assistance. The principle behind trade adjustment assistance is simple: If the Government adopts policies that will benefit the welfare of the nation as a whole, it also has the obligation to help those that are penalized by those policies. In 1962, AFL-CIO president George Meany told the Ways and Means Committee that, because the trade bill honestly accepts what has always been true (that some people are hurt by increasing imports) and because it provides adjustment assistance for those who may be hurt, "We support it with a special enthusiasm." Six years later, Andrew Biemiller, director of AFL-CIO's department of legislation, who sat beside Mr. Meany when he made those remarks, called the trade adjustment assistance program a "shameful mockery, a fraud on the American people and the American worker." This change in attitude is understandable. Until November of last year, the Tariff Commission, which has the responsibility of ruling on eligibility for assistance, had turned thumbs down on every case brought before it. In last year's change of heart, the commission ruled favorably on three cases, but labor sees this as too little, too late. Trade adjustment assistance remains a prerequisite for labor support of any trade bill, but the provisions must be much more realistic than those contained in the 1962 trade act. President Nixon's trade bill meets these qualifications; it provides easier access to government assistance and transfers the decision making to the executive branch. Now, however, labor leaders seem more concerned with preventing damage from trade policies than with compensating for it after the damage is done. The confidence in the early 1960's that American productivity could more than compensate for higher American wages has dwindled, if not disappeared. Labor leaders haven't been able to find the increase in jobs that was supposed to be generated by expanded trade, and although they have no statistics to prove it, they feel that imports have cost more jobs than exports have generated. Consequently, labor's testimony before the Ways and Means Committee will undoubtedly urge a tougher U.S. stand on trade affairs. It will soft-peddle increased tariff-cutting authority and emphasize increased and more effective application of the safeguard laws that already are on the books. Labor will point to the balance-of-payments deficit and to the slim trade surplus, then pin much of the blame on U.S. multinational companies and their foreign direct investments. Despite industry disclaimers, labor will argue that American international business practice has cost American jobs by transferring technology (productivity) abroad, by decreasing export potential, and by increasing imports from foreign subsidiaries. Although foreign investment and foreign trade may not be the same, they are interrelated, and labor will emphasize this relationship. Although labor and management will agree in much of their criticism of present trade policy, they will part company when it comes to foreign investment.
FEB. 9, 1970 C&EN
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