Disruptions away , but now there ’ s nobody to carry out the loading and unloading duties .
“ This , tangled with the lack of dock workers , dray operators and regular drivers , has infected the entire supply chain and congested things enormously . You can literally see it affecting our lives on a daily basis as , still to this day , people have not fully returned to these laborbased positions . There are obviously other problems that we ’ ve experienced , such as the lack of raw materials and the ways in which the pandemic made it difficult to import and export goods , particularly from China . This has fueled the chip shortages , which has led to longer wait times on equipment . All in all , it ’ s made navigating the last few years incredibly challenging .”
Staff challenges
Towards the back end of 2022 , President Joe Biden , along with Congress , passed a tentative agreement between US rail companies and unions into law , to avert potentially damaging strike action . The negotiations , which have been ongoing since 2019 , concern the compensation and working conditions of US rail workers .
“ As we have recently seen , there is a far more profound and robust tendency among European workers to instigate strike action ,” Anne states . “ The US workforce differs here , which is partially due to the decrease in its share of unionized workers . In 1983 , it sat at around 20 percent , whereas today it ’ s more like ten percent , meaning it has far less leverage across the population . However , in lieu of these publicly orchestrated actions ,
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