Tag: North America

UPS has wielded both carrot and stick in its labor relations to build on 17 straight quarters of profit growth.
The Atlanta company says an automation drive rolled out last year enables management to track each package from pickup to delivery, squeezing out unnecessary steps.
Dock workers now load three to four brown vans per shift, up from two previously, company spokesman Norman Black said.
Drivers trimmed 2.95 million miles from their routes in November alone — partly by avoiding left-hand turns — while handling more packages.
At the same time, the company in December offered buyouts to 650 managers older than 50, a month after eliminating 1,200 jobs in its logistics division to reduce labor costs.
“What we’re doing is targeting our most senior managers who are closest to retirement, who are also the highest-paid,” Black said.
Profit gains enabled UPS to fund a 74 percent increase in dividends and a 6 percent reduction in outstanding shares over the past three years. That includes USD4.4 billion spent in 2005 and 2006 to repurchase about 60 million shares.
The efficiency drive has cost the company in other ways. UPS will pay more than USD87 million to settle a class-action lawsuit in California accusing it of improperly deducting meal breaks from the paychecks of 19,762 drivers, who frequently didn’t take them.

UPS will announce its fourth quarter results on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2007, at approximately 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.
At 8:30 a.m. EST, UPS Chairman and CEO Mike Eskew and Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer Scott Davis will conduct an investor conference call. This call will be open to reporters and the public, on a listen-only basis, via a live Webcast.

U.S. parcel delivery company UPS, the last remaining customer for the cargo version of Airbus A380, may cancel its order in what would be the latest defection from the long-delayed superjumbo, a French newspaper reported Friday.

Business daily Les Echos cited unidentified sources as saying that United Parcel Service Inc. would cancel its order for 10 A380s next week. Such a move has long been rumored.

Airbus spokeswoman Barbara Kracht said Friday that she had no information about a possible cancellation. UPS officials in France would not comment on the report.

The cancellation would leave Airbus with no more customers for the cargo version of the A380, after FedEx Corp. and International Lease Finance Corp. canceled their orders last year amid repeated delays to the plane’s construction schedule.

UPS, which is scheduled to receive its first plane in the second half of 2009, said last fall it was still considering whether to change the order.

Kracht insisted Friday that the cargo version was “a very good airplane and the market is good.’

A spokesman for Airbus parent company EADS said it is sticking to its A380 cargo aircraft program regardless of how many customers it has.

“The decisive thing is not the number of current orders, but the market perspective in the long run. With 25 planes per year, it is very good,’ EADS spokesman Michael Hauger said.

Les Echos suggested a cancellation wouldn’t be all bad for the European planemaker, since it would allow Airbus to concentrate on the passenger version of the A380 — for which it has 142 firm orders — and potentially save up to one billion euros (USD1.3 billion).