AuthorTrupti Valsangikar, RUSCA Blog Committee During the COVID-19 pandemic, frontline workers are often associated with healthcare workers. But the unsung heroes during lockdowns are e-commerce or online shopping workers. To keep up with the sudden change to online shopping and at-home deliveries, companies had to hire more truck drivers, delivery people, package handlers, and supply chain workers. According to Bruce Anderson, employment for professionals on the frontline of e-commerce has risen the past year in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Sweden. While some brick and mortar stores were forced to close stores and terminate employees, online marketplaces like Amazon saw a massive uptick in sales. Between January and October 2020, Amazon hired 427,300 new employees, with most new hires being warehouse workers (Weise). These new hirings come from an initial lack of labor availability. A.B. Brown reports that “A scarcity of drivers due to retirements and a dwindling pool of job seekers put the flow of goods in jeopardy, not to mention people's hesitance to work out in public during a global health crisis.” Essentially, logistical oriented companies like Amazon and UPS had no choice but to go on a hiring spree to make up for lost labor and keep up with customer demand. Beyond just gaining new employees, companies had to prioritize worker safety by investing in personal protective equipment, adjusting sick leave policies, and reorganizing work schedules to increase worker safety (Brown). More opportunities opened up for supply chain leadership as well. As most companies were left scrambling to combat their decreasing sales, hiring supply chain managers became crucial for stabilizing a damaged supply network. Fortunately, the surge of hiring doesn’t seem to be a temporary phenomenon. Anderson points out that “we are seeing signs that online purchasing trends formed during the pandemic may see permanent adoption.” As more people adopt the online shopping trend, we can expect to see continued job growth for e-commerce workers. Sources: https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/frontline-ecommerce-worker-rise-linkedin-labor-warehouse-driver-deamnd/593467/ https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/trends-and-research/2021/jobs-on-the-rise-list https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/technology/pushed-by-pandemic-amazon-goes-on-a-hiring-spree-without-equal.html AuthorEmily Hsiao, RUSCA Blog Committee When the FDA gave Pfzier’s COVID-19 vaccine the green light, Americans took a collective sigh of relief. After long months of quarantines, lockdowns, and ever rising death tolls, a vaccine was seen as the light at the end of the tunnel. That was nearly 10 weeks ago. Now, lawmakers and healthcare officials have turned their focus toward the logistical challenge of administering the vaccines. With reports of the highly anticipated vials getting stuck in transit or even going to waste, some Americans are growing frustrated with the slow and inefficient rollout. According to a CBS poll, 59% of people believe that the vaccine distribution is moving too slowly, and 57% say that the process to get vaccinated is unclear. On February 1st, the CDC reported that of the 50 million vaccines distributed, roughly 30 million have been administered (Pinto). Initially, the mechanisms for distribution were shaky. Because we operate under a decentralized healthcare system, states and local health authorities are responsible for implementing federal policies and allocations. However, a lack of communication between state and federal officials made it difficult to track how many doses had been administered and where. One such instance took place in California. Despite consistently requesting the same number of vaccines, The San Francisco Department of Health received allocations that varied between 2,000 and 11,000 each week of January (Weintraub, Weise). To exacerbate this issue, there’s a lack of clear, existing infrastructure for people to make an appointment. Currently, we don’t have a universal landing page to sign up on, and the experience registering online can vary widely depending on which services are available nearby. For example, to register online at Rite Aid, you need to manually plug in the zip codes of surrounding counties, and at locations without a supply, there is no way to join a waitlist (Tang). With high risk elderly Americans eligible, it’s all the more important to make vaccinations easily accessible. It appears that the tide is turning towards a more organized approach. Within the next several weeks, new measures including additional support from the National Guard and vaccination sites set up by FEMA will continue to rapidly accelerate the rate of vaccinations. Lawmakers can improve ease of access and public confidence by working with tech firms to organize a standardized app for the public to track available doses, schedule appointments, and join a waiting list when more supplies and manpower are available (Smith). In the meantime, the federal government will begin shipping directly to pharmacies on Feb 11th, and will increase its supply of the vaccine to states by 16% by the end of February (Tang). Sources: https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-covid-19-vaccination-plan-limits-speed-of-rollout-supply-chain-experts-say-11610283601 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-vaccine-rollout-opinion-poll/ https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/02/biden-administration-will-start-sending-covid-vaccines-directly-to-pharmacies-as-it-ups-shipments.html https://www.barrons.com/articles/how-to-fix-the-vaccine-supply-chain-mess-51611777643 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/01/31/covid-vaccine-what-went-wrong-distribution-whats-being-changed/4275954001/ Tesla’s Newest Notch on the Belt is Removing a Diamond from its Crown: Cobalt-Free is the Future2/12/2021
AuthorNeha Avadhani, RUSCA Blog Committee Cobalt is one of the most essential minerals used in the production of electric vehicles (EVs), primarily because it can provide the energy density needed for an EV battery to allow cars to run for hundreds of miles on a single charge. Cobalt is a highly monopolized natural resource, with roughly 70% of the world’s cobalt mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (McCrea). It has also been less-than-affectionately nicknamed the ‘blood diamond of batteries.’ Cobalt is considered a conflict mineral because of the rampant violence, human rights violations, and child labor used in its production in the DRC. The process of cobalt mining itself is also highly polluting. The World Economic Forum’s Global Battery Alliance predicts that with current practices, the demand for cobalt in batteries will increase by four times in the next ten years (McCrea). The good news is with all of these issues in mind, and a greater focus on ethical sourcing in recent years, a movement has begun to reduce the dependency on cobalt for the electronics and auto-manufacturing industries. There have been initiatives to increase cobalt recycling by recovering electronics and vehicle batteries, and organizations like the Fair Cobalt Alliance (FCA) are seeking to develop fairly-sourced cobalt to use where it cannot be replaced. The most notable endeavor so far, however, has been the exploration of battery options without cobalt entirely. Tesla announced in September that it would begin manufacturing its batteries in-house, cobalt-free (McCrea). Other companies like the Chinese maker SVOLT have also entered the cobalt-free battery market, revealing two such batteries in 2020. All of these developments indicate a step in the right direction in reducing cobalt dependency, but they have the potential to revolutionize the EV market as well. Currently, on average, EVs are 30% more expensive than vehicles made with Internal Combustion Engines. This is primarily due to the cost of their batteries, which were estimated to be 30% of their total cost (Morris). However, over the past ten years, the price of batteries has dropped nearly sevenfold, and the new batteries are expected to be under $100 per kWh, which is widely considered to be the threshold at which EVs become cheaper than ICE cars. Naturally, this would mean EVs would become more affordable, and more accessible, allowing more people to reduce their carbon footprints overall. The SVOLT technology is also claiming a longer-lasting, safer, and more energy-dense battery (Smith). It is very promising that battery production is moving away from using cobalt, but it is important to remember that this is not a fix-all solution. The most cobalt use by industry (50%) still occurs in electronics, for devices like smartphones (Smith). However, with Tesla leading the way with the switch to cobalt-free EVs, if other auto-manufacturers follow suit, there could be a significant decoupling between the production of EVs and the use of conflict minerals. Sources: https://www.sourcetoday.com/industries/article/21152018/working-to-reduce-cobalt-dependency-in-battery-manufacturing https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2020/07/11/teslas-shift-to-cobalt-free-batteries-is-its-most-important-move-yet/?sh=2b7ff19e46b4 https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=19915 https://www.whichev.net/2020/05/29/tesla-seeks-approval-in-china-to-build-new-cheaper-teslas/ |
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