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The National Energy Management Institute
The National Energy Management Institute, a non-profit lobbying and business development group jointly created by unionized sheetmetal workers and sheetmetal contractors, is one of Big Tobacco's key entries to trade unions.
How does NEMI serve Big Tobacco?
- Big Tobacco considers NEMI its conduit to organized labor on ventilation issues.
Example: A 1991 tobacco industry memo on relations between NEMI and operatives for Big Tobacco's aptly-named Labor Management Committee (LMC) observes:
Our attendance [at the NEMI meeting] should help us to build stronger relationships with Sheet Metal locals in targeted states, which can then be approached on LMC issues for grassroots support. This is consistent with the plans previously laid out for expanding NEMI's role and relationships with LMC representatives.
- NEMI represents Big Tobacco's views in ASHRAE proceedings.
Example: A 1994 Philip Morris email plots NEMI's strategic role in influencing ASHRAE ventilation standards for smoking lounges, and shows how Big Tobacco hides behind its allies:
The approach I am urging is that NEMI (Sheetmetal Workers, etc.) be prepared to endorse a mid ground approach separate and apart from tobacco... There are two problems with this approach 1)an argument that a smoking section is likely to have a higher concentration of smokers than "moderate smoking" would permit, and 2)NEMI is comprised of engineers not health specialists. Therefore, NEMI's "expertise" needs to be supplemented with health expertise...
- NEMI provides testimony against smokefree measures. (After all, 100% smokefree measures need no costly ductwork.)
Examples: In 1991, the Tobacco Institute budgeted $20,000 for NEMI to sketch an "indoor air quality" protocol. In 1994, it paid a NEMI consultant $36,000 to participate in an OSHA hearing.
A 1990 Philip Morris memo anticipating the devastating U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report on secondhand smoke, which the industry insists on calling Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS), lays out Big Tobacco's political plan:
When the EPA issues its report on ETS - there is probably little we can do to prevent the antis, certainly at the local level, from introducing workplace and restaurant bans. There are, however, some things we can do to parry, if not blunt the attack...
- Work with ASHRAE and NEMI to develop and disseminate understandable brochures about improving ventilation
- Develop IAQ consultancy: Expedite the development of an integrated indoor air consultancy for business with a focus on accommodation...
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