NCTO faces textile challenges
By Susan M. Andrews -- Furniture Today, April 5, 2004
WASHINGTON — Formation of the National Council of Textile Organizations, a broad-based lobbying group first reported March 1 in Furniture/Today, was formally announced at a press conference here last week.
NCTO will fight what it says are unfair trade policies affecting nearly 1 million U.S. workers in the fiber, textile and supplier industries. Thirty companies are charter members, including American Silk Mills, Glen Raven, Invista, Sunbury Textile Mills and Waverly Mills.
Allen Gant, president and CEO of Glen Raven, is chairman and Jim Chesnutt, CEO of National Spinning, is vice chairman.
"For the first time," Gant said, "the entire spectrum of the textile sector, from fiber producers to fabric manufacturers, from chemical suppliers to yarn spinners, from machinery suppliers to banks and power companies, will be united under one roof…. All have a stake in the survival of this great industry."
In a related development, the American Textile Manufacturers Institute has been dissolved and several staff members, including Cass Johnson, Robert Dupree and Scott McLeod, are now affiliated with NCTO.
Chesnutt said NCTO will work with groups in other countries.
"Today, textile and apparel groups around the world are rising up against the few large suppliers like China that seek to dominate world trade through the use of unfair trade practices," Chesnutt said. "In just the past three weeks, textile and apparel groups from more than 20 developed, developing and least developed countries have united under the Istanbul Declaration to demand action."
NCTO comprises four separate councils, each of which will have its own representation on the NCTO board. The Ferguson Group, a bipartisan Washington lobbying firm that represents more than 80 entities, has been hired by the group.
NCTO is headquartered in Washington and also maintains an office in the Gastonia, N.C., area.
