JERSEY CITY, N.J. – Against a backdrop of New York Harbor and cranes looming over the Port of Newark, the Supply Chain Council announced its formation Wednesday, boasting that it will fill a void among logistics-focused associations by casting a wider membership net.
At a press briefing at Liberty State Park, the type of “big tent” the Supply Chain Council seeks to build was most evident in the fact that its chairman, Prologis Senior Vice President Steven Hussain, and Josh LaFarga, director of external affairs at the Laborers’ International Union of North America, both made remarks to the gathering.
“This is the first-of-its-kind group that is dedicated to bringing together business and labor, working together to protect jobs, create investment in essential infrastructure and safeguard against global instability and to make sure that supply chain is resilient and that people get the things that they need,” Josh Wood, CEO of the Supply Chain Council, said in announcing the kickoff of the organization.
According to attendees at the event, the idea for the Supply Chain Council came not from companies involved in the supply chain but rather from public affairs companies that saw the need for an integrated group, spurred by their own dealings with companies struggling during the post-pandemic supply chain crisis.
Wood is a Sacramento, California-based public affairs executive who saw the need for something like the Supply Chain Council.
About 20 members of the council will be meeting at a “policy retreat” later this week to hammer out an agenda. “We have lots of ideas, but this is the time to build a consensus,” Wood said.
Among the organizations that have joined besides Prologis (NYSE: PLD) and LIUNA are the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association. Local 18 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union had a representative at the launch but has not yet joined.
Ensuring adequate physical infrastructure
Using the organization as a force to help build supply chain physical infrastructure is going to be a particular focus, Wood said. (As an example of the influence the group hopes to wield, one attendee told FreightWaves he was from a California law firm that focuses on development issues.)
“There have been a lot of significant policy challenges that have come up, like bans on warehouses, that have made it more difficult for these projects to get them built,” Wood told FreightWaves after the presentation was completed. He cited issues with getting rail infrastructure developed as well as “indirect source rules” by which companies in the supply chain can be held accountable to some degree for emissions or other pollution created by companies they deal with. Scope 2 emissions rules are an example of indirect source rules.
“We’re going to be more proactive on what we can do to get more infrastructure investment, to grow the supply chain to make it so that it’s ready and resilient,” Wood said.
The importance of politics
If the organization is going to have infrastructure development as one of its key goals, politics will come into play. And the Jersey City event featured the New Jersey port’s respective representatives from the state Senate and General Assembly.
Wood said while the association’s headquarters now is in Sacramento, where his public affairs firm is located, the Supply Chain Council ultimately expects to open a Washington office as well as offices elsewhere in the country, including the New York-New Jersey area.
“With a mission to develop and advance the best practices and public policies at the federal, state and local level, the Council will work to ensure the supply chain, which brings the goods and services Americans need, will be protected and resilient in a rapidly changing global environment,” the organization said in the statement announcing its launch.
One of a kind
Hussain, who is also head of government affairs at Prologis, said he agreed there is no similar organization within the logistics sector.
“You have trade associations that might represent shipping or might represent trucking or might represent real estate,” Hussain told FreightWaves following the event. “But they haven’t put those pieces together. And what we’ve found when working on policy for the last few years is that creates a problem when someone messes with one part of the supply chain without understanding its downstream effects on everything else. We weren’t speaking cohesively.”
During his remarks to the gathering, Hussain said something similar: “There’s been some uptick in legislation and regulatory issues that we think really undermine the strength and resilience of the supply chain. And it partly comes from the fact that the industry hasn’t been working closely enough with the public sector.”
LaFarga was the labor representative who spoke at the event. Afterward, he said that “too much recently, supply chains have been under attack. When you demonize the industry, you demonize the people in the industry. I think businesses realize they need labor, they need labor as marketers. So I think that is part of the reason for our involvement. It’s a real partnership and we need to be at the table.”
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