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California to require disclosures about
supply chain labor

Old Dominion Freight Line has opened a new service center in Altoona, Pa., in response to significant growth in the region. … Nissan Forklift Corp. has earned California Air Resources Board (CARB) certification for its 2012 model year large spark-ignited engines, making it the first forklift manufacturer to gain certification for its own line of industrial engines. … Damco Air-freight successfully handled the project cargo movement of a single piece compressor weighing 52 metric tons. The task was carried out for Jindal Steel & Power Ltd. (JSPL), one of India’s largest steel manufacturers, from the plant in Orissa, India, to the final delivery point in Germany. The shipment was completed using an Antonov 124, the world’s largest commercially viable cargo aircraft. … Invata Intra-logistics, a global provider of supply chain and facilities optimization, software, and controls, is releasing a series of videos featuring noted supply chain industry experts. In the first of the series, DC VELOCITY and CSCMP’s Supply Chain Quarterly Editor James Cooke speaks about the issues facing today’s supply chain managers. In the second, Diamond Head Associates Managing Principal Randy Gibson discusses the changing role of modeling and simulation in the supply chain industry. … Mitsubishi Caterpillar Forklift America Inc. (MCFA), a company that makes and markets forklifts in the United States, Mexico, Canada, and Latin America, recently celebrated the manufacture of its 350,000th forklift, a feat equivalent to producing enough forklifts to stretch across the state of Texas.

A little-noticed California law passed late last year requires many retailers and manufacturers to report on their efforts to eliminate slave labor and human trafficking in their supply chains by Jan. 1, 2012.

California Senate Bill 657, the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, requires retailers and manufacturers that do business in the state and have worldwide revenues exceeding $100 million to publish on their websites how they are preventing and eliminating forced labor in their “direct supply chains.” The report must be online no later than Jan. 1.

Under the law, retailers and manufacturers must publish information about five areas, said Betty Hutchison, manager of social compliance for the independent auditing firm Bureau Veritas, at the Coalition of New England Companies for Trade (CONECT) annual meeting in September.

Those areas include:

▪ Verification of their efforts to assess the risk of slave labor and human trafficking in their supply chains

▪ Information about audits of their efforts to identify any use of slave labor and human trafficking in their supply chains

▪ Certification by “direct suppliers” that slave labor and human trafficking were not involved in production of materials that are incorporated into the products they make