take this job and …
keep it!
Warehouse and distribution center employees
put job security ahead of pay when ranking
workplace priorities and would rather have
more paid vacation days than a 30-cent-per-
hour wage increase. Those are among the
findings of the third annual survey of 1,500
warehouse and DC employees by ProLogistix,
an Atlanta-based logistics staffing firm.
Of 1,000 workers who responded to a question about their top work priority, 360 cited
job security, 310 cited pay, and 107 said their
top concern was doing work they enjoyed. In
the 2007 and 2008 surveys, pay was the top
work priority. The change in the 2009 findings
reflects workers’ worries over having and
keeping a job in the midst of the economic
downturn.
Benefits matter too. More than 90 percent of
the respondents said they would rather
remain at their current pay levels and have six
days of paid vacation than earn 30 cents more
per hour with no vacation, the survey found.
Nearly 81 percent said they would rather have
health insurance and remain at their current
pay scale than earn 50 cents more an hour
with no health coverage.
Although workers would like to be rewarded for perfect attendance, 46 percent said they
didn’t expect their employers to provide any
such incentives.
When asked how they searched for jobs, 61
percent said they used Internet job boards.
That was followed by newspapers and
employment guides. And refuting the notion
that the warehouse and DC workforce is a
transient one, the survey showed that respondents’ average tenure at their previous workplace was more than three years.
Brian Devine, a partner at ProLogistix,
advises warehouse and DC managers to boost
their workers’ pay—the average rate of pay for
a warehouse and DC employee is $11.01 per
hour—and to consider other incentives to
attract and retain workers. Employers “need to
think of the hourly workers and what’s important to them,” Devine says.
Devine also urges employers to be more liberal with paid days off and to offer incentives
to reward perfect attendance.
alliances
; Cool(er) connections. Wared Logistics, a company that provides logistics and transportation services in the Middle East
and North Africa, has partnered with Preferred Freezer Services
to build and manage refrigerated warehouses throughout that
region. The initial facilities will be built in Cairo, Egypt; Jeddah,
Saudi Arabia; and Abu Dhabi, UAE.
; Food for thought. Shanxi Meetall United Supermarket Co.
Ltd., a Chinese grocery retailer and member of the SPAR
International Group, has purchased multiple supply chain and
merchandise management solutions from JDA Software. The
company plans to use the solutions to boost its overall operational performance and efficiency.
; Eco-anticipation. The H.J. Heinz Co. has announced the
extension and expansion of its contract with CHEP, a pallet and
container pooling company, that will result in the expansion of
the CHEP program at both Heinz facilities and contract packagers. Through its use of the CHEP pallets as opposed to limit-ed-use whitewood pallets, Heinz expects to reduce solid waste
generation by more than 30 million pounds per year, decrease
greenhouse gas emissions by 58 percent, and save enough
energy to power about 2,500 homes with electricity every year.
; Saddling up with Sky-Trax. Saddle Creek Corp., a third-party
logistics service provider, is installing the Total-Trax solution
from Sky-Trax on multiple vehicles in its Atlanta facility. The system captures data on vehicle and full pallet movements, then
transfers that information to the facility’s warehouse management system for labor performance and productivity analysis.
; Hounding down assets. Third-party logistics service provider
Transfreight has implemented PINC Solutions’ Yard Hound
asset tracking solution at its Toyota-dedicated cross-docking
facility and adjacent manufacturing plant in Woodstock,
Ontario. The system uses passive RFID and other wireless and
sensor technologies to monitor yard assets in real time.
; Power move. Procter & Gamble Manufacturing GmbH has
selected I.D. Systems’ PowerFleet Vehicle Management System
(VMS) for installation on a fleet of industrial trucks at a production and distribution facility in Germany. Procter & Gamble
hopes to reduce costs and improve overall operations with the
PowerFleet system.
; The crest of an electronic wave. Inttra, an e-commerce platform for the ocean freight industry, has announced that freight forwarding and logistics giant Kuehne + Nagel will implement the
new Inttra eInvoice solution, an electronic payment system for the
ocean freight industry. Inttra says the solution offers the potential
to cut average transaction processing costs by more than half.
