The UPS Board of Directors today declared a regular quarterly dividend of USD 0.45 per share on all outstanding Class A and Class B shares.
The dividend is payable Sept. 9, 2008, to shareholders of record on Aug. 25, 2008. UPS has either increased or maintained its dividend every year for more than three decades.
Read MoreThe US Postal Service has cut overtime expenses by close to a billion dollars in the first three quarters of its fiscal year. Reports filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission show that the USPS reduced overtime by over 28 million hours through pay period 14, which ended on July 4. The reduction translates to USD 923 million in overtime savings compared with the prior year. The year to date overtime rate for bargaining unit employees stood at 8.7 pct, down from 11.7 pct in 2007. In pay period 14 alone, overtime was 6.5 pct, compared with 10.2 pct in the same period last year.
The overtime savings were partially offset by an increase in straight time hours, which were up by 1.4 million hours. That number is somewhat misleading, since it includes almost 15 million straight time hours worked by new “transitional employees”, or TEs, in the letter carrier craft. Straight time hours for career bargaining unit employees were actually down by over 13 million hours.
The average hourly cost of a transitional employee, including benefits, is USD 23.24, compared with USD 39.47 for the average full time regular carrier. The increased use of lower cost straight time hours means that while the average bargaining unit employee has seen a 3.3 pct increase in hourly wages over 2007, the USPS’s average cost per hour increased by just 1.1 pct.
Read MoreThe transportation industry isn’t often cited for cultivating the careers of female executives, but UPS is the exception.
Women now head up operations in UPS’s top markets in the Americas Region – Ecuador, Mexico, Brazil, Peru and Bolivia. And the company also has launched an innovative career development program aimed at retaining and advancing female managers globally.
Gender disparity is a real business issue for Latin America. Studies show that women make up 44.7 percent of the workforce in Latin America. But according to Globe Summit, a Web-based business network that surveyed Latin Trade magazine’s top 100 Latin American companies in 2005, 64 percent of the 100 companies did not have women in upper management. Additionally, the study found that only five percent of listed board directorships were held by women in contrast to the 10 percent on the boards of FORTUNE Global 200 companies.
The Women’s Leadership Development (WLD) initiative provides UPS managers opportunities to develop leadership and work skills by learning from their peers, from external business organizations and from community service.
Read MoreDeutsche Post World Net CEO Frank Appel has rejected growing US political criticism of DHL’s plans to close its air hub at Wilmington, Ohio, with the likely loss of some 8,000 jobs, and to switch airlift operations to rival UPS.
The plans have drawn criticism from US presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, the region’s members of Congress and local politicians. The US Congress plans two hearings on the proposed DHL-UPS deal in September.
DHL Express had to shut the hub as part of its restructuring programme in order to reduce its heavy US losses, Appel told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview, echoing his similar comments at the company’s recent half-year financial press conference.
The DPWN chief again stressed that UPS would remain a competitor to DHL despite supplying a service, and pointed out that a similar deal between the USPS and FedEx had been approved, despite being much larger in volume.
Appel added that the company was ready to set up a support programme for affected employees and the region to help people find new jobs, but he had no plans to travel to the USA, as Republican candidate John McCain had proposed.
UPS Inc. spent more than USD1.3 million in the second quarter to lobby on issues including its plan to carry air packages in North America for DHL, according to a recent disclosure form.
The Atlanta-based company also lobbied on the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, appropriations for the departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, as well as legislation dealing with patent reform, data security and health care policy.
UPS also lobbied on aviation safety issues and technology, as well as UPS’ “proposed airlift agreement with DHL,” according to the form posted online July 16 by the House clerk’s office.
The second quarter runs from April through June. On May 28, UPS announced it was seeking to work out a contract with DHL that would involve UPS providing the air transport of DHL packages between airports in North America, but not the pickup or delivery of DHL packages to customers.
UPS asserts the federal government does not have authority over the vendor relationship.
Besides Congress, UPS lobbied the departments of Transportation, Homeland Security, labor and other agencies in the April through June period.
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