Union Pacific Corporation is the leading class 1 railroad network in the US is primarily engaged in freight transportation. It is the core subsidiary of UP serving most of the central and western United States, west of Chicago and New Orleans, covering nearly 23 states. The subsidiary is the largest contributor at the UP with 19%. Main issues: Environmental regulations, rising fuel cost, congestion and technical issues. Climate change is a growing concern. Union Pacific has taken very notable steps towards reducing their carbon emission. By 2013 Union pacific helped their customers to reduce their greenhouse gases by 33.7 million. Changing environment can affect the companies operation as well; natural disasters such as floods and polar …show more content…
Growing demand and traffic requires company’s operation to be more efficient and reliable than ever because it is very easy for customers to backward integrate or seek other modes of transportation. When Union Pacific entered into a merger with Southern Pacific in 1996, the company underestimated many technological requirements. Southern Pacific’s computer system was very different than what employees were used to at UP which resulted in glitches and ultimately lost cars and containers and unsatisfied customer and dropped accounts. This congestion resulted in 2 billions of damage to US economy, and brought upon many lawsuit on UP. UP managed to recover by integrating their computer system with Southern Pacific’s. But this scenario repeated in 2004 when UP’s system could not handle the pressure of growing demand and traffic. The congestion resulted in loss of profitability. Union pacific made a comeback from this too by improving their technology and hiring trained workforce and giving training to the existing one. There are many reasons for congestion such as technical or operational inefficiency, natural or human made disasters, accidents etc. the best way to address this issues and efficiently manage it is to keep track of all the activities at all time. The first step in this direction is to improve their technology to understand the causes and plan for actions. To have updated information about the track conditions UP experimented with accelerometers on trains that feel for bumps, it's also running cameras over tracks and using algorithms to analyze the captured images for cracks and other flaws in railroad ties. The image analysis is catching more than 90% of what human inspectors would, CIO Tennison says. UP is also testing video analysis at higher speeds, via cameras posted along tracks or in rail yards, whose
As companies look to expand operations and hire new employees, many economic and environmental factors are taken into consideration. The cost of labor is one of the primary concerns as labor generally constitutes a large part of company budgets. The organization of labor by unions further increases this concern. The wages of unionized workers are significantly higher than the wages of nonunion workers in almost every industry (Fossum, 2012). Higher wages generally result in reduced company profits, lower share prices, and reduced shareholder returns (Fossum, 2012). Unionization also reduces the employer’s flexibility with regards to hiring, transferring, or promoting employees (Fossum, 2012). Productivity may be negatively impacted by unionization because merit is often eliminated as a criterion for wage increases or promotions (Fossum, 2012). As a result of these negative impacts, employers are motivated to oppose unionization.
Modern democratic ideas were sprouting in America, especially within the organized labor movement from 1875 to 1900. During this period, blue-collar industrial Americans sought to abate their plight through the formal use of collective bargaining and the voice of the masses; seeking to use their strength in numbers against the pocket-heavy trusts. America’s rise in Unions can be traced back to 1792, when workers in Philadelphia formed America’s first union which instituted the avant garde method collective bargaining. It is because of these grass roots that America’s organized labor has continued to grow to this day, however not unchallenged. The challenges unions face today stem directly from the challenges faced in 1875. The organized labor movement from 1875 to 1900 is to blame for the problems unions face today as early labor unions crucified themselves politically, alienated themselves socially and failed to increase the socio-economic position of the worker, and in many cases only succeeded in worsening such positions.
Unions are organizations that negotiate with corporations, businesses and other organizations on behalf of union members. There are trade unions, which represent workers who do a particular type of job, and industrial unions, which represent workers in a particular industry. The American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is a trade union, while the United Auto Workers (UAW) is an industrial union.
The PATCO strike began on August 3, 1981 with over 13,000 people walking out. This "illegal" act was met with a quick response from President Ronald Reagan (Sconberger p 1). Reagan told the strikers, "Either return to work within 48 hours or be fired from government service for breaking the 'oath of office' not to strike (Sconberger, special report, p. 12). While roughly 1,200 workers returned to work, another 12,000 remained on strike and were promptly fired (Sconberger p 1). This caused a serious safety problem for the airlines, inconveniences for many Americans, and lost profits for many businesses. Controllers needed to be replaced and it needed to be done fast. As a result, their were many questions on the safety of airlines. In order to understand the effects of the strike on the safety of airlines, an understanding of the PATCO movement is necessary.
BHP Billiton commits to customer awareness and outreach through many of its existing programs in hopes to promote sustainable and long-term by decreasing their environmental footprint while building collective stakeholder relationships. The company has committed to its target of being more environmental responsibility and working towards reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by 5% by way of sustainable development. This means pushing forward with extensive innovation through their partnerships with companies like Hatch and any other future
Beginning in the late 1700’s and growing rapidly even today, labor unions form the backbone for the American workforce and continue to fight for the common interests of workers around the country. As we look at the history of these unions, we see powerful individuals such as Terrence Powderly, Samuel Gompers, and Eugene Debs rise up as leaders in a newfound movement that protected the rights of the common worker and ensured better wages, more reasonable hours, and safer working conditions for those people (History). The rise of these labor unions also warranted new legislation that would protect against child labor in factories and give health benefits to workers who were either retired or injured, but everyone was not on board with the idea of foundations working to protect the interests of the common worker. Conflict with their industries lead to many strikes across the country in the coal, steel, and railroad industries, and several of these would ultimately end up leading to bloodshed. However, the existence of labor unions in the United States and their influence on their respective industries still resonates today, and many of our modern ideals that we have today carry over from what these labor unions fought for during through the Industrial Revolution.
Have you ever wondered what life would have been like if labor unions never existed? Labor unions were originally formed to help improve the worker’s low wages, their horrible working conditions, and lower the hours they work a day. “ Unions are powerful by the power of members acting together, linking arms, figuratively and literally, taking a stand , and forcing their agenda on either their employers or political representatives” ( Asher 650).Unions are only powerful if everybody is working together, if one person does something wrong, the whole organization fails. Labor unions formed after the Civil War as a response to the modern Industrial Economy. Labor Unions impacted workers everywhere by helping increase wages, better working conditions, and better benefits.
After the Civil War, many ideologies developed into the United States of America. Some of these ideologies included the free labor ideology and the producerist ideology. Free labor endorsed the belief that by removing slavery, or any other kind of barrier, everyone had an equal chance to try to get wealth (Farless). The producerist ideology tried to stay to the customary view of society and it stressed the importance of viewing the community instead of an individual (Farless). With these two ideologies, they had an impact on labor. By believing in the producerist ideology, people would be staying with tradition, and that leaves no change for our world. Many laborers wanted change, which led to problems for the laborers.
Organized labor, during the period from 1875-1900, had drastic effects on the lives of factory workers. Labor unions not only sought to improve working conditions; they wanted to have a large impact on society as a whole as well. These unions also altered feelings toward organized labor.
This case focuses on corporate obstacles to pollution prevention. Pollution prevention can complex especially for large corporations. There are many different forms of pollution prevention including emissions control devices and incremental changes in existing technology. The author reviews the impact of emissions controlled devices, however the focus of the case study is on incremental changes in existing technology. Incremental changes include substituting one or two steps in a production process or relationship changes between production steps. One example of incremental changes that was provided by the author was eliminating chlorofluorocarbons and saving energy by replacing a refrigeration process with a heath exchanger that can exploit waste cooling from another part of the process. There are three critical decision-making stages for incremental changes; identifying a pollution prevention opportunity, finding a solution appropriate to that opportunity, and implementing that solution. The author discusses the three aspects of an organization (culture, ability to process information, and its politics) and how they impact the decision-making stages.
The ethical issue in this situation is the willingness of the company’s director to prevent the employees from organizing in union. Among others, the company’s director try to use unfair tactic like diversion, intimidation, manipulation, termination of job contract and threat to shut down the company leading to massive loss of job. In an ethical standpoint, these tactics are wrong.
At this point in time, our company is non-union and believes the disadvantages of unionization to be greater than those benefits which may come from it. Many of the benefits which are supposed to come from unionization are canceled by various disadvantages. Additionally there are several, negative effects brought on by joining labor unions which should make any employee think long and hard before they begin the process of joining a union.
Companies that refuse to accept that they will face a strict and demanding environment. The most talented human capital companies that do work to care for natural resources, the regulation will raise the cost of not using resources properly, consumers will demand products and environmentally friendly. In short, choosing between sustainability and growth is not an option.
Mr Price Group must also protect the planet by decreasing their carbon footprint even more and start more projects such as the rooftop gardens to lessen their impact on the environment to better publicity. Mr Price Group reduced their carbon footprint by 17% or 29 500 tonnes of CO2 emissions through improved energy usage and lower energy intensive lighting. They can also increase the amount of waste recycled at the head office which is currently only at 50%.
...sinesses are not affected about what is going on in the environment, but that’s not true. Three main components about how the environment affects businesses is global warming, waste dumping, and how raw materials are needed in businesses. Weather affects the businesses with destroying buildings of employment, waste dumping is just creating pollution and it costs a lot by dispensing the waste, and last but not least how raw materials are needed for some businesses and they need to be natural as well and it all depends on how the environment is to have healthy raw materials, like wood. Also, it’s about how much money is used when you talk about how environment affects businesses. Anyways, it’s hard to predict what is to come when it comes down to the environment because it’s out of your hands but these are some ways that the environment affects businesses negatively.