Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that they will begin full enforcement of Importer Security Filing (ISF) regulations on July 9, 2013 and will start issuing liquidated damages against ISF importers and carriers for ISF non-compliance.
News / Supply Chain Alerts
The Wall Street Journal
Hong Kong port workers accepted on Monday a 9.8% pay rise—ending their strike and averting further disruption at the world’s third-busiest container port.
South China Morning Post
Matthew Cheung calls their first sit-down constructive, but union is less impressed
Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung Kin-chung met dockers for the first time yesterday in an apparent attempt to put an end to their 26-day strike.
Bloomberg Businessweek
Hundreds of port workers at Li Ka-shing’s Hong Kong terminals surrounded his Cheung Kong Center headquarters in the city’s business district after rejecting pay rise aimed at ending a three-week strike.
Pact calls for $3 an hour wage hikes; maintains royalty-payment formula.
The International Longshoreman’s Association’s (ILA) 14,500 rank-and-file members late Tuesday overwhelmingly ratified a six-year master contract covering 14 East and Gulf Coast seaports. The agreement ended more than a year of contentious negotiations that threatened to shut port operations from Maine to Texas for the first time since 1977.
TheStandard.com
Marchers call for talks over docks face-off
More than 4,000 protesters, including Hongkong International Terminals contracted workers, marched on the Central Government Offices calling on the government to negotiate an end to the 11-day docks strike. The protest came yesterday as Confederation of Trade Unions leader Lee Cheuk-yan urged Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to press the port operator to negotiate with workers.
Bloomberg News
Workers at Hongkong International Terminals Ltd., backed by billionaire Li Ka-shing’s port operator, continued a six-day strike for higher wages after a court ruling barred them from entering terminals in the city.
The following is an update of the potential effects of the Sequestration on Federal agencies responsible for monitoring international, particularly import, shipments. As cargo volumes increase after the recent Lunar New Year holiday, these effects increasingly will manifest themselves, causing some supply chain disruption and delay.
U.S. House of Representatives on March 6 approved H.R. 933, the Department of Defense, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013. The bill provides necessary funding to keep the doors of the government open until the end of the fiscal year on September 30.
Customs and Border Protection has posted the latest information regarding the effects of sequestration on CBP Operations on their website at:http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/advisories/info_seq_cbpops/.