By Eric Ham
WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – President Biden Wednesday met with senior stakeholders from business, labor unions and trade associations. The meeting took place in the Roosevelt Room inside the White House. The meeting was closed to the press. After meeting for more than an hour, the president addressed the public.
He made clear he would confront companies that don’t step up and address the global supply chain bottlenecks, urging support from the whole private sector. President Biden said, “If the private sector doesn’t step up, we’re going to call them out and ask them to act.” He announced from the White House major companies including Walmart, FedEx, and UPS will move to begin working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach will also move into 24/7 service.
“I want to be clear, this is an across-the-board commitment to going to 24/7.,” he said. “This is a big first step in speeding up the movement of materials and goods through our supply chain but now we need the rest of the private sector chain to step up as well.”
The president is making this an all hands on deck effort and hoping to address key supply chain problems that have plagued companies for months. General Motors shut down several of its plants months ago due to semiconductor shortages. Numerous companies have been impacted as a result of supply chain shortages.
“All of these goods won’t move by themselves,” he said. “For the positive impact to be felt all across the country and by all of you at home, we need major retailers who ordered the goods and the freight movers who take the goods from the ships to factories and to stores to step up as well.”
Although it will take more time to see any results, Wednesday United Parcel Service, FedEx and Walmart said they are going to strengthen round-the-clock supply-chain connections. Some retailers, like Target and Home Depot pledged to extend more processing of supplies to better utilize off-peak hours. The two busiest West Coast ports, Los Angeles and Long Beach, said they would extend hours of operation, with L.A., matching Long Beach’s 24/7 schedule. The Pacific Maritime Association, which negotiates with dockworker unions for employers, and the American Trucking Association were represented as well at the White House, saying they would do what they could to trim the record backlog of containers on idled carrier vessels.
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Contact this reporter: eric@macenews.com
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