ACWI Advance | Volume 3, Issue 20 | October 31, 2015
Third-party logistics providers’ relationships with their customers are being utterly transformed by capacity constraints, mergers and acquisitions, and technological innovations, new research shows.
Shippers are relying increasingly on collabrotive relationships with 3PLs and other service providers, as well as innovative technologies to meet the challenges of tighteining capacity and rising costs.
Those are among the findings of the 20th Annual Third-Party Logistics Study, which was unveiled at this year’s annual conference of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals in San Diego.
“The ways in which shippers and 3PLs work together are changing as competition within the logistics industry ramps up,” the report says. “Tightened capacity along with increased consolidation within logistics service providers has resulted in fewer partners for 3PLs and increased prices.”
2 Cases Show NLRB Promoting Unions
When the SEIU recently tried to organize a 90-person adjunct bargaining unit at a college in California, one of the college supervisors openly campaigned in favor of the union.
Typically, pro-union involvement by a supervisor taints an election because employees may feel coerced into voting for the union, note attorneys for the Roetzel & Andress law firm.
The union won the election narrowly by 35-32. The National Labor Relations Board later determined that the coordinator’s conduct was largely non-coercive because he was a low-level supervisor and was directed his communications mostly to employees who were not under his direct control.
"This is a significant change to union organizing law," say the Roetzel & Andress attorneys. "This case, again, demonstrates the lopsided nature of the board that companies are up against." If the case involved an anti-union supervisor campaigning against a union, the board's ruling would likely have looked very different, they observe.
Number of OSHA Inspections Rising
Employers can expect to see an increase in the number of complex inspections performed by OSHA because the agency adopted a new system intended to shift resources in that direction.
OSHA said it will perform more workplace inspections involving musculoskeletal disorders, chemical exposures, workplace violence and process safety management violations.