About LightNOW Blog
Welcome to LightNOW 2.0!
LightNOW, launched at Lightsearch.com in 2001, has been providing news and opinion to the lighting industry for nearly eight years. At first a webpage, then a newsletter, then a newsletter and a rough blog, now LightNOW has evolved to become a fully featured blog and monthly newsletter.
Here’s how it works. Check in daily to see new posts by Craig DiLouie and other experts in the lighting field including consultants and lighting designers.
Posts include news items to keep you up to date, short opinion pieces to make you consider another point of view, and links to new research and tools to help you design with light.
We also invite your feedback, so feel free to comment on any of the stories that appear here at LightNOW.
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LightNOW is owned and operated by Craig DiLouie, a veteran industry journalist, educator and marketing consultant. Besides editing and producing LightNOW as a service to the lighting community, Craig writes about lighting regularly for Electrical Contractor, The Electrical Distributor (TED), Illuminate, Architectural SSL, LM&M, Archi-Tech and other publications. He also develops educational programs with organizations such as IES, NEMA, Lighting Controls Association, Home Lighting Control Alliance, New Buildings Institute, NALMCO and others.
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Craig – As a small manufacturer working on our 32nd year of operation, I have two major problems that threaten the existence of my business that I cannot solve myself. One is the greed and inefficiency of UL and the other is the lack of protection from Chinese/overseas products. Every lighting manufacturer is being fleeced by UL because there is no real competition in the NRTL industry. There are really only three players and UL controls the other two because they write the Standards. They need to be reigned in but there is no oversight and nobody to talk to. The various government departments (Dept. of Commerce, OSHA, etc.) simply shuffle you from one to another without accomplishing anything. UL itself has layers of beaurocracy to discourage anybody from making waves. The industry desperately needs a voice with UL. UL is actually a detriment to the American economy because they make it too expensive to bring new products to market. As for China, everybody knows that China has killed untold numbers of manufacturing jobs in our industry. All I want is a level playing field so that I can compete on quality and service, not price. It is time to take care of the American worker. We would not be talking about a trillion dollar job security or stimulus package if American manufacturers were able to compete with China and elsewhere. There wouldn’t be enough warehouse/factory space or American workers to fill them if the playing field were equal. These are the two major problems in our industry and nobody seems to be doing anything about them. They are complex issues that many people do not feel qualified to speak about. All they know is what we have now doesn’t work. Personally, I do not think our economy will be strong again until we find a way to build up the manufacturing sector in this country. We all can’t buy and sell Chinese products to make a living. What happens if we have a political incident with China and they pull the plug on all those goods we import? We would be at their mercy. I do not know if these are issues you want to highlight in your blog, but somebody needs to.
At the turn of the 19th century, Underwriters Labs had a purpose. So much has changed since then in the lighting and electrical industries that the original purpose of UL can be challenged in 2010. The changes which have occurred in the practice of product liability law have made the function and necessity of UL obsolete. A UL approval does indicate compliance with safety codes, but it does not shield manufacturers from lawsuits for product liability. My point is simply that manufacturers pay high fees to UL and get very little in exchange, except admission into the status quo of arbitrary listings. The system in Europe is different and better. The imposition of mandatory UL / NRTL listings on European made products is a form of restraint of trade by artificial barrier.
[...] 23, 2010, by Craig DiLouie, LightNOW – Guest Post by Jim Brodrick, Department of [...]