Merchants and Manufacturers Association

Employers Group was founded as the Merchants and Manufacturers Association in 1896 in California. It has become a worldwide organization advocating for employers and giving guidance about employment laws and regulations, professional development, consulting projects, and compensation and workplace trends surveys.

When founded, the organization's goal was to secure the open shop in all workplaces in the city. In the latter half of the 20th century, the organization became a human resources consulting firm. In 1993, the Merchants and Manufacturers Association merged with the Federated Group of San Francisco to create the Employers Group. The organization's current president and chief executive officer is Mark Wilbur.

Employers Group was founded in 1893 in Los Angeles as the Merchants Association. Its goal was to promote local products, and manufacturing companies, railroads, shipping companies, department stores, breweries and food markets were some of its charter members. One of its most prominent members was the Los Angeles Times.

The association launched a number of civic projects early in its history. In 1897, it created the annual Fiesta de las Flores to promote locally produced goods and services. The festival eventually merged with the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California.

M&M's focus over its first three decades was primarily on industrial relations. The Merchants Association had acted primarily as a promoter of local industry. But when Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, joined the body in 1896, the association underwent a transformation. It adopted a new name (the Merchants and Manufacturers Association, or M&M), and began vehemently promoting the open shop. The nascent labor movement in Los Angeles collapsed, and Los Angeles remained largely union-free until the 1930s.

On October 1, 1910, a bomb exploded at a printing plant owned by the Times. Twenty-one workers were killed in the fire which followed. Otis declared the bombing the "Crime of the Century" and used his newspaper's large circulation to whip up public sentiment against unions. A second bombing at an iron works in the city on Christmas Day worsened the hysteria in the city. The M&M contributed $50,000 ($1.1 million in 2007 dollars) to a city effort to hire private detectives to track down the perpetrators. In April 1911, Ortie McManigal, a staff representative with the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, was apprehended by private detectives in Illinois. McManigal confessed to bombing the iron works and implicated the union's national secretary-treasurer, James B. McNamara, and his brother, John J. McNamara, in the Times bombing.

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