Archive for Labor
Employee Free Choice Act Gets Introduced
· CommentsThe Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) was introduced again yesterday in the U.S. House and Senate (the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee also held a hearing yesterday on the topic, and you can watch the video and read the testimonies here). According to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), “Just as the National Labor Relations Act, the 40 hour week and the minimum wage helped to pull us… Continue reading
I hate multi-tasking. Give me one task at a time, and sufficient time to accomplish it, and I’m fairly happy. But that rarely happens. Even so, my work life has to be easier than a warehouse manager’s. Their main job, of course, is to make sure that customer orders are fulfilled accurately and on-time every day. This alone is more than a full time job. But consider all the other… Continue reading
I came across a working paper recently from the Harvard Business School called “Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting.” Although hundreds of studies have shown that setting specific, challenging goals can drive behavior and boost performance in powerful ways, the authors of this paper argue that goal setting has been “over prescribed”. In their words, “goal setting has powerful and predictable side effects…and should… Continue reading
Last month, HighJump issued a press release that really caught my eye. It wasn’t so much the headline (“HighJump Software Offers Promotion Including Complementary ROI Assessment for Its Labor Management System”), but a sentence buried deep in the press release: “This special offer for HighJump Labor Advantage allows companies with constrained capital budgets to realize the benefits of a labor management system before paying for the license
The legal battle continues between the Federal Maritime Commission and the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. As I wrote about last month (“California and the Trucking Industry“), the ports had planned to collect the Clean Truck Fee starting November 17th ($35 per loaded twenty-foot equivalent unit and smaller; $70 for larger containers), but they delayed implementation due to legal action taken by the Federal Maritime Commission. … Continue reading
I’ve been writing a lot lately about labor in logistics. In fact, “maximizing the productivity of available labor” was one of the six attributes for success that I highlighted in my recent postings (“Attributes of Tomorrow’s Industry Leaders” and “Technologies to Maximize Labor Productivity in Logistics“). At the risk of beating a topic to death, I’m focusing on this topic again today, prompted by two announcements this week… Continue reading
The morning sky is still dark as the plane takes off and I say goodbye to Kansas City. The “Technology Night” event went well last night, wrapping up just before the start of the Oklahoma-Florida football game (the reason why the event started at 4:00). I think my talk went well, even though it wasn’t PowerPoint free. In retrospect, giving up PowerPoint “cold turkey” probably wasn’t a realistic… Continue reading
Labor and Logistics
· CommentsThe news this morning on the jobs front was not good: 533,000 jobs were eliminated in the US in November, the largest monthly job loss total since December 1974. The unemployment rate is 6.7 percent, still low compared to previous recessions, but the percentage keeps climbing and could reach double digits if conditions worsen for the automotive industry.
