Yes, Cyber Monday is what the New York Times refers to as "a made-up" holiday, but what was once little brother to the big Black Friday shopping day and subsequent weekend that follows Thanksgiving, is now a big time e-retailing event.
Last year, the Monday after Thanksgiving was the biggest online shopping day of the year by sales, surpassing $1 billion for the first time, according to research firm comScore as reported by the NY Times.
Shoppers already spent $816 million online on Black Friday, up 26 percent over last year more than last year.
Black Friday's offline shopping posted a record $52.4 billion holiday weekend.
Free shipping, discounts and limited "flash sales" are reportedly contributing to the online shopping flurry.
"We were all surprised last year when we saw it turned out to be the biggest day of the season," said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore.
"But more and more retailers have become a part of the Cyber Monday kickoff, more and more consumers are aware of it and know there are special deals coming - and you put that together and you've got an important day," he said.
Equity futures rise sharply on encouraging news out of Europe
On the heels of a record-breaking Black Friday shopping weekend, equity futures were up sharply today on the news that Europe's political leadership is mobilizing over resolution of the debt crisis there.
Dow futures spiked 250 points to 11,437; S&P 500 futures rose 32.7 points to 1,186.1. European stocks were up as well, with the German DAX trading 3.8 percent higher; and France's CAC 40 up 4.3 percent.
There are reports that Germany and France have made a new stability pact to keep the Euro Zone afloat.
ILWU won't join Occupy movement's proposed blockade of West Coast port activity
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union won't be joining protesters from the Occupy movement in attempting to shut down West Coast cargo port activity on December 12.
Robert McEllrath, president of the ILWU, said in a statement that the waterfront union appreciates the support but that it has not authorized joining any such action.
Thousands of Occupy Oakland protesters recently shut down a night shift at the port there, and has since reportedly passed a resolution that called for "mass mobilization" that is ostensibly in support of a union issue against a grain terminal owner at the Port of Longview, Wash.
The Occupy L.A. group has also reportedly made it known there is intent to impact operations at the Port of Los Angeles on Dec. 12.
Occupy L.A. released a statement, saying: "The coalition stands in solidarity with all West Coast occupations that will take place in key West Coast ports and cities on this day. The intention is to effectively disrupt the capital flow and profits of the 1 percent in the billions of dollars."
Prince William assists in rescue operation in Irish Sea after cargo ship sinks
Britain's Prince William reportedly participated in the rescue of Russian sailors after their cargo ship carrying several thousands tons of limestone sank in the Irish Sea early Sunday morning.
Flight Lt. William Wales in Britain's Royal Air Force co-piloted a helicopter that rescued two crewmembers.
The Cook Island-registered Swanland hull's cracked in extremely high winds off the coast of North Wales according to Britain's defense ministry.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Top Story
House could intervene in possible U.S. railroad labor strike
Three out of 13 unions that represent U.S. railroad workers have yet to reach a labor agreement with their employers causing reported speculation over a possible strike in the heart of holiday season shipping as GOP leaders in the House of Representatives say they, along with the support of President Obama and the Senate, are ready to intervene if necessary.
"While our hope is that the parties involved will find common ground and resolve the situation without congressional involvement, the House is prepared to take legislative action in the days ahead to avert a job-destroying shutdown of our nation's railroads, in the event such legislation proves necessary," said Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in a statement.
"A shutdown of our nation's railways, which would harm our economy and endanger many American jobs, is unacceptable. We are confident President Obama and the leaders of the Senate agree," the lawmakers said.
As reported by the Cargo Business Newswire in October, rising healthcare costs have reportedly been at the center of the stalled talks between Burlington Northern Santa Fe, CSX, Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific, several smaller railroads, and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen representing close to 25,000 members, in addition to the American Train Dispatchers Association and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees.
According to the National Railway Labor Conference, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees have reportedly agreed to extend a "cooling off period" for negotiations until at February at the earliest but the other two union holdouts have not with a December 6 deadline looming, as reported by The Hill.
"For retailers, a strike during the busy holiday shopping season could be devastating," said National Retail Federation President Matthew Shay in a letter to Congress.
The NRF also released a statement urging the House to approve pending legislation for H.R. 3094, the Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act, that the retail group said would block the NLRB allowing "ambush" union organizing elections and the formation of "micro-unions."
According to the NRF, the NLRB's proposal would allow union organizing elections to be held in 10 days, and the retailers say they are in favor of overturning a ruling in favor of micro-bargaining unions "where a union could cherry pick certain departments or employees within a company."
The NRF said the bill, sponsored by Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline, R-Minn., would also bar a proposal to require companies to give workers' home addresses and personal e-mail addresses to union organizers.
"Congress must act now to thwart the NLRB's radical regulatory maneuvers and work to restore fairness and balance to union organizing for the good of workers and the economy," said the NRF's senior vice president for government relations, David French.
Port of Oakland readies for December 12 showdown
A month-and-a-half after its night shift was disrupted by several thousand protesters, the Port of Oakland is readying itself for round two of what now is reported to become a West Coast-wide protest aimed at shutting down the primary cargo ports there on December 12.
Subsequent to Occupy Oakland's blockade at the port, Occupy Los Angeles voted to launch a similar effort at SSA terminals at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in solidarity with truckers who were fired when they reportedly attempted to unionize.
Occupy Wall Street, the so called "leaderless resistance movement," has since called for the "blockade and disruption of the economic apparatus of the 1 percent with a coordinated shutdown of ports on the entire West Coast on December 12."
"We call on each West Coast occupation to organize a mass mobilization to shut down its local port. Our eyes are on the continued union busting and attacks on organized labor, in particular the rupture of Longshoremen jurisdiction in Longview Washington by the EGT," the group said in a statement, referencing a months-long waterfront union standoff with the owner of a new grain terminal at a Pacific Northwest port.
The Occupy movements in San Diego, Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland, Tacoma, and Seattle have reportedly voted to join the planned port demonstration.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union has said it would not join the strike, but has said it supports the Occupy movement's concept.
"We think that working people aren't getting a fair share and we support the principal of Occupy Wall Street, but we don't support shutting down our own jobs," said Richard Mead, president of Oakland's ILWU Local 10 as reported by the Oakland Tribune.
Isaac Kos-Read, director of external affairs at the Port of Oakland, told the Tribune that the port is trying to coordinate in advance with business partners, local government, and law enforcement.
"Disrupting operations will only hurt working people, here and throughout the state and country," Kos-Read said.
"This is an important time of year for us, a big time of year for exports. We are the export gateway for Northern California ... and this year is a bumper crop for almonds."
The Occupy blockade at the Port of Oakland will start at 3 p.m. with a rally that turns into a march at 4 p.m. on the port, the, according to the Tribune's report.
South Carolina's environmental agency grilled over Savannah dredging permit decision
Officials representing South Carolina's Department of Health and Environmental Control testified they were not influenced by the state's governor and stuck to what has been viewed by some as a controversial decision to approve a permit for dredging for next-door-neighbor, and seaport competitor, Georgia.
After seven hours of grilling in a state Senate hearing, the six DHEC officials said the recently maligned Governor Nikki Haley did not persuade them to make their unanimous decision to grant a water permit that clears the way for the Georgia Ports Authority to dredge a stretch of the Savannah River provided it spends millions of dollars over several years to pump oxygen into the eco-system for marine life.
The Charleston Post-Courier reported that some of the concerns expressed by state senators included the environmental impacts of dredging the river, placing a planned bi-state container port in Jasper County in jeopardy, and potentially further tilting the competitive balance between the Port of Charleston and Port of Savannah, the latter of which has acknowledged the desire to be ready for post-Panamax ships after the Panama Canal widens in late 2014.
Virginia port takes cargo message to state's farmers
The Virginia Port Authority is telling farmers in its backyard to use their hometown port.
At the annual Virginia Farm Bureau Federation's annual convention, the port brought its message to a gathering that in part represents the $2.24 billion in exports from the U.S. southeastern state.
"The Port of Virginia is the hometown port for Virginia farmers," said Greg Edwards, director of external affairs for the Virginia Port Authority as reported by the Suffolk News Herald. "It's close by, so why go somewhere farther away when you can utilize the port right here?"
Edwards said containerized transportation has made it easier for the state's rising tide of agricultural exports.
"Instead of having to export 1,000 or 2,000 tons of a product, farmers can choose to fill two containers," Edwards said. "That's achievable and has made exporting products more appealing to farmers."
According to the port, Virginia's exports that include soybeans, grains, pork, poultry, tobacco, wood products, fats, oils, cotton, seafood, fresh vegetables and animal hides are headed to markets like Canada, China, Morocco, Belgium, Indonesia, Venezuela, Mexico, Russia, Ireland and Japan.
Rena customers could be paying a lot to get cargo back
Freight customers of the grounded shipping vessel Rena near the Port of Tauranga. New Zealand, could be faced with paying as much as 80 percent of their cargo's value in order to get it back as the lengthy, costly salvage effort continues, reports T.V. New Zealand.
The Rena ran aground on Astrolabe Reef on October 5 the vessel's owners will reportedly pay for what has turned into an extensive salvage operation with only 165 of the close to 1,300 containers having been retrieved to date.
"You've paid a lot of money to get your goods from one point to another and then you get charged with almost the same again...that's just criminal,"
said Craig Fellows, who has household goods stuck in Rena containers.
Fellows told TV NZ that that he might have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to get his cargo back.
A representative from Mediterranean Shipping Company, the charterer of the Rena, told the local news channel that what it would need to pay to retrieve its empty containers is too much.
Two of top three container-shipping lines form tradelane partnerships
As the container-shipping industry retrenches in the face of over-capacity, depressed freight rates, and higher fuel costs, France's CMA CGM and Switzerland's Mediterranean Shipping Company, the second and third-largest global container-shipping companies, respectively, announced what they termed "a broad based operating partnership spanning several trades."
The two family-owed shipping firms said in a joint statement that the tradelane partnerships would include Asia-Northern Europe, Asia-Southern Africa and all of South America.
The two liners said that in "a certain number of trades," they would be able to "deploy the best ships in each of their fleets, while increasing the number of ports of call and frequency of sailings."
"We are very happy to have signed this broad-based partnership, which will unite our two family-owned companies in the years ahead. The agreement offers us new opportunities to optimize the use of our respective fleets, improve our transit times and increase our performance," said Diego Aponte, vice president of MSC.
Rodolphe Saadé, executive officer of CMA CGM Group, said the two shipping lines have "followed the same trajectory" for more than 30 years.
"Based on this experience and our shared vision of the shipping industry, we have decided to step up our partnerships, which reflect a commitment to long-term cooperation and will enable us to offer customers improved solutions and services," he said.
So far, market-leader Maersk has responded to the current, challenging, economic cycle for the container-shipping market by announcing capacity cuts, and merging services.
Maersk has also made various public statements that its competitors should be following suit in a variety of ways, including the chief of Maersk's parent company, Nils Smedegaard Andersen telling Bloomberg TV that "the industry has to clean itself by not placing orders for the [coming] years.and also for the smaller and weaker players, the time has simply come to leave the industry in my opinion."
In the case of Southeast Asia's MISC shipping line, the company announced it is dropping its container-shipping business altogether after the unit lost $789 million over the past three years.
Koichi Muto, president of Japan's Mitsui OSK Line, which is on course to lose $51 million this year, was recently quoted as saying a merger between all three major Japanese container-shipping lines "could be an option, of course. At the moment there is no such discussion, but we should be flexible in every way.we roughly studied such a possibility..."
The CEO of Israel's ZIM Line, Rafi Danieli, reportedly said his shipping company could be restructuring for the second time in two years with a merger being a possibility, after losing $66 million for the third quarter.
Michel Sirat, chief financial officer of CMA CGM Group, said in a separate statement "the market's current overcapacity, combined with slower demand, is impacting our financial performance."
"Our size and ultra-modern fleet are enabling us to successfully weather this situation and we have undertaken immediate, solid, effective measures to adjust to conditions ahead of the expected market turnaround in 2012," Sirat said.
Bonus video spotlight on Port of L.A.'s pilots
Click here for a video spotlight, courtesy of Bloomberg TV, where John Betz, port pilot for the Port of Los Angeles, talks about his job guiding ships in and out of the busiest container port in the Americas, along with the risks associated with boarding the vessels and the salaries of the pilots that make them the highest-paid city of L.A. employees:
www.bloomberg.com
Friday, December 2, 2011
Top Story
U.S. railroad worker strike averted
The specter of a strike by U.S. freight railroad workers in the heart of the busy holiday season has been averted with two of three union holdouts reaching agreements and a third agreeing to an extension on contract negotiations.
A federally imposed cooling off period was slated to expire on December 6 leaving open the possibility of a strike by up to three of 13 labor unions with members that work for railroads that include Burlington Northern Santa Fe, CSX, Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific, and several smaller rail companies.
As reported by the Cargo Business Newswire in October, rising healthcare costs have reportedly been at the center of the stalled talks between U.S. railroads and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the American Train Dispatchers Association and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, the latter of which is the lone holdout on an agreement.
Responding to the outcry by several major industry groups over the claim that the retail sector could lose $2 billion per day during a suddenly vibrant holiday shopping period, GOP leaders from the House of Representatives, along with the support of President Obama and the Senate, announced they were ready to intervene in the labor dispute with emergency legislation if necessary.
"Everyone wins when we reach voluntary agreements," said Kenneth Gradia, chairman of the National Carriers' Conference Committee, the representative of the railroads in contract negotiations.
"In a tough economy, these agreements offer a terrific deal for rail employees. They lock in well-above market wage increases of more than 20 percent over six years, far exceeding recent union settlements in other industries," Gradia said in statement.
Running parallel to the freight rail labor dispute, the National Retail Federation released a statement urging the House to approve pending legislation for H.R. 3094, the Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act, that the retail group said would block the NLRB allowing "ambush" union organizing elections and the formation of "micro-unions."
According to the NRF, the NLRB's proposal would allow union organizing elections to be held in 10 days, and the retailers say they are in favor of overturning a ruling in favor of micro-bargaining unions "where a union could cherry pick certain departments or employees within a company."
The NRF said the bill, sponsored by Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline, R-Minn., would also bar a proposal to require companies to give workers' home addresses and personal e-mail addresses to union organizers.
"Congress must act now to thwart the NLRB's radical regulatory maneuvers and work to restore fairness and balance to union organizing for the good of workers and the economy," said the NRF's senior vice president for government relations, David French.
Matson parent to split in two
The parent company to shipping company, Matson, announced its board of directors has approved a split into two companies.
What is set to transpire is the parent company, Hawaii's Alexander & Baldwin, will be splitting off with its real estate and agriculture ventures, while Matson, a shipping firm that serves the U.S. West Coast, Hawaii, Guam, Micronesia and China would also become an independent, publically-traded entity.
Matson has been a wholly owned subsidiary of A&B since 1969.
"Over the past decade, Alexander & Baldwin's board of directors and management have periodically conducted strategic reviews, including an evaluation of the merits of separating into two companies. After thorough evaluation, we have concluded that the increased size, capabilities and financial strength of both our land and transportation businesses now enable these operations to independently execute their strategies to maximize shareholder value," said Walter A. Dods, Alexander & Baldwin's chairman in a statement.
Dods will become the chairman of Honolulu-based Matson Navigation Company, Inc. and Matson Logistics, Inc. that reported $1.5 billion revenues and operating profit of $104 million for the twelve months ended September 30, 2011.
Matson's assets include 17 vessels; approximately 47,000 company-owned containers and equipment; dedicated terminal facilities in Hawaii; a U.S. logistics company; a 35 percent interest in SSA Terminals on the West Coast; and 1,175 employees.
Matthew J. Cox, the current president of Matson, will have his title upgraded to president and chief executive officer, and Joel M. Wine, Alexander & Baldwin's chief financial officer, will switch over in the same capacity for Matson when the separation from A&B is expected to be complete by the second quarter of next year, according to the statement.
Also headquartered in Honolulu, A&B's new chairman and chief executive will be Stanley M. Kuriyama and Christopher J. Benjamin, currently President of A&B Land Group, will become the company's president and chief operating officer.
Alexander & Baldwin will include A&B Properties, Inc., HC&S and related subsidiaries. For the twelve months ended September 30, 2011, A&B's real estate and agribusiness segments reported revenues of $371 million and operating profit of $102 million with 1,000 employees.
Once the corporate split is complete, shareholders will own one share of each new company for each share of Alexander & Baldwin they currently own.
Asia, Europe drag global manufacturing figures downward; U.S. has strong showing
A global manufacturing index was reportedly dragged down to 49.6 in November from the previous month's 49.9 in large part due to a weaker showing by factories in Asia and Europe as the United States made a strong showing.
November's Global Manufacturing PMI by JPMorgan and a group of organizations marked the third month the index was below the 50 mark that is the level between growth and contraction.
Manufacturing activity contracted in Asia and Europe, with concerns over the latter having entered a recession.
The U.S. surprisingly kept the PMI from dipping further.
"The rate of contraction in output would have been more substantial had it not been for growth in the U.S. accelerating sharply to a seven-month peak," JPMorgan said in a statement.
"Outside the U.S production fell at the steepest pace for over two-and-a-half years," the statement said.
U.S. manufacturing had its strongest showing since June.
Shanghai joins U.S. "Megaports Initiative" on radiation detection
The busiest container port in the world in Shanghai has signed on to a U.S. program to set up radiation detection equipment, termed the Megaports Initiative.
Shanghai's Yangshan port, according to a statement released by the U.S. Consulate there and as reported by the Wall Street Journal, will demo new detection equipment next week.
"This U.S. -Chinese effort is the first project of its kind in China," the U.S. Consulate said.
The Megaports Initiative reportedly seeks to outfit 100 of the top global ports with radiation scanning systems.
