Fashion logistics has never been more important and more ignored than today.
The possibility of an International Brotherhood of Teamsters strike among UPS unionized workers underscores the bigger picture around final mile delivery sustainability for labor, cities and the environment. The particulars often get shoved in a corner.
Trade groups are now pressuring the Biden administration to help avert a strike before the current contract’s expiration Aug. 1.
The Washington D.C.-based Retail Industry Leaders Association represents more than 200 retailers, manufacturers and suppliers. Last week it pushed UPS and the Teamsters to remain at the negotiating table and work out a deal.
“The impact of a supply chain disruption is no longer an academic exercise,” the association said in a statement last week. “We need only look in our rear-view mirror to see the economic and consumer harm that resulted from supply chain bottlenecks and delays that rippled throughout the economy post pandemic. Having worked through these challenges methodically over the past two years, retailers are loathe to stress-test contingency plans again.”
The following day the National Retail Federation and American Apparel & Manufacturers Association joined other trade groups on a letter to President Biden. The groups urged intervention to ward off a strike they said would impact the $3.8 billion in goods UPS workers move daily.
“A Teamsters strike against UPS could be the costliest such strike in at least a century, with significant and lasting harm for small businesses and online retailers,” the letter to the President said. “A strike would lead to months-long backlogs in the supply chain and the interruption of deliveries of critical medical supplies and other essential items.”
Talking Sustainability in Logistics
In fashion and retail, the age of sustainability and impact reports is here. Some offer transparency into the supply chain so consumers know where materials are from, but many are mostly marketing tools.
Few offer transparency into the last mile and how workers or urban and suburban transportation systems are impacted by the need for speedy delivery.
Shekar Natarajan is American Eagle Outfitters Inc.’s chief supply chain officer and president of AEO’s logistics arm Quiet Platforms. He’s steadily gained attention in getting more fashion and retail firms to share their logistics capabilities instead of compete on supply chain.
Clearly, American Eagle sees business potential since it acquired the logistics business in 2021, but Natarajan’s pushing something more basic: the concept of sharing.
“What we are trying to do is create an open network and we are basing the premise on the fact that there’s so much capacity, the world doesn’t need to add more trucks on the ground,” the executive told a trade publication last year. “They need to share better and if they’re able to share better, the economics is obviously lower and you have the power of a big player without being a big player.”
Brands already apply this logic at the manufacturing level. Many that compete in the marketplace have their products made in the same factories. Their warehousing and fulfillment capabilities should be no different, Natarajan argues.
“The way we are all doing logistics today is simply not sustainable,” he said in the same interview. “Not at the way at which it is moving. Look at what is going on in New York. Look at what is going on in L.A. Take your home doorstep. You probably are getting 5, 6, 7 packages a day.”
Background, Update: UPS-Teamsters
The opportunity to think big picture often gets washed away in times of crisis and deadlines.
The Teamsters had already sounded the alarms nearly a year ago when the union launched an awareness campaign around the upcoming negotiations.
“Our union is resolved to win the best contract for UPS members and to reset the standards for wages and benefits in the industry by Aug. 1, 2023,” General President Sean M. O’Brien said last August. “We won’t extend negotiations by a single day. We’ll either have a signed agreement that day or be hitting the pavement.”
About 97 percent of workers covered by the contract have authorized a strike.
The union last year had also launched an Amazon Division focused entirely on the company’s logistics workers.
Negotiations between the sides are expected to resume this week after UPS reported the union walked away from the table July 7.
UPS said “good progress on key issues” had been made as of late May in matters related to “operating priorities,” technology and in-vehicle cameras among other topics.
The Teamsters said they’re looking for increased pay, a boost in the number of full-time jobs, worker heat illness and other safety concerns addressed and stronger protections against harassment at work.
Additionally, the union wants a portion from the 2018 contract on 22.4 jobs eliminated. The hybrid jobs mean employees fill different functions depending on demand. Thus, an employee could drive one day and work in a warehouse on another, with no change in their pay.
“With the contract expiration less than two weeks away, we need to work quickly to finalize a fair deal that provides certainty for our customers, our employees and businesses across the country,” UPS said in a status update Friday. “We started these negotiations prepared to increase the already industry-leading pay and benefits we provide our full and part-time union employees and are committed to reaching an agreement that will do just that.”
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