Are we about to see Christmas canceled? Retailers are sounding the alarm on the upcoming holiday shopping season due to serious supply chain issues that are slowing shipments of manufactured goods around the world.
According to KPIX, Chaos theory in it’s simplest form says if a butterfly flaps its wings in China, it means rain in Central Park. Well, that applies not just to weather, but supply chains as well, and in the Bay Area, it will impact everything from computer parts for your car to the gifts and toys on your holiday shopping list.
Outside ports in Southern California, more than 70 container ships are sitting off the coast waiting to be unloaded. “There are not the people in place to move the containers and the chassis where they need to go. So you’ve got a lot of stuff piling up at the ports and at the warehouses.
When that happens, the harder it is to get the stuff that is ready to move,” said John Drake, VP of Supply Chain Strategy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A huge surge in pandemic e-commerce and imports is in part to blame.
Meanwhile, according to Reuters, Warehouses in Britain are having to pay up to 30% more to recruit staff after a chronic shortage of workers exacerbated pressure on already buckling supply chains and threatened to derail the run-up to Black Friday and Christmas.
The warehouse trade group and a recruitment agency for the sector said they were struggling to replace the European staff who used to arrive for the festive period and work in warehouses and distribution centers. Clare Bottle, CEO of the UK Warehousing Association, said her members had reported having to increase pay by between 20% and 30% to secure workers for entry-level jobs. With around 200,000 people working in warehousing, she said:
“The problem is big. I would say we’re tens of thousands short.” Jordan Francis, commercial director of the Prodrive recruitment agency which supplies around 35 warehouse companies in southern England, said he already had around 100 vacancies he was struggling to fill.
