Eric Sfiligoj and Lara Sowinski discuss the Canadian rail and longshoremen situations and the number of cyberattacks that have occurred during 2024.
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*This is a partial and edited transcript:
Eric Sfiligoj: Welcome to another edition of CropLife Retail Week. I’m Eric Sfiligoj, back again with my partner in crime, Lara Sowinski. Lara, welcome back to the program. God, did I miss you.
Lara Sowinski: Well, thank you very much. Yeah. It’s crazy. You know, you take a week off or vacation and you feel like you need to learn to read again.
ES: You’re not caught up on everything that. Yes. There’s that. And I know last week, of course they talked all about our adventures at the Maggie Show in Bloomington, Illinois. And of course, there was lots of other news going on in the marketplace, but since I didn’t have a partner last week, I didn’t talk about it.
But, But we can. You’re here now so we can talk. And of course, topic that comes foremost to mind, of course, is transportation, logistics, supply chain. I know there was quite a bit of back and forth over the last couple of months regarding the Canadian railways and their workers and the potential for a strike, and I guess the strike was supposed to happen back on August 20th, I believe.
And kind of, I guess what kind of happened, you know, there was a lot of, back and forth online from associations saying, this is terrible. Please, please don’t strike. Please tell your legal, legislative folks to keep the strike from happening. But I guess the Canadian government took a similar approach to the US government when the railroads, railroads and unions were having issues and they stepped in and basically put everything in arbitration and said, do not strike, we’ll get everything taken care of.
And, so, lo and behold, I guess the, the railroad workers are now back to work and, you know, they’re going to be in arbitration, but, it sounds like we’ve kind of dodged a bullet on this one. So what do you have on this situation to add?
LS: Indeed. That’s, that’s it in a nutshell. The interesting part, as you mentioned, of course, the Canadian, Industrial Relations Board stepped in along with the, labor minister and ordered the Teamsters and union, workers, back on the job, if you will.
So, the Canadian rail strike was averted. However, and I should add to and this is a the Reuters report, that indicated that leading agricultural businesses, pleaded to the government for help. So, certainly if the, strike had occurred, you know, obviously, businesses and, and others would be affected, pretty severely. I should mention, you know, it’s in addition to, you know, this news on the Canadian rail strike that we’ve been talking about recently.
We have been talking about likewise, the, potential for a strike, the longshoremen on the East and Gulf Coast of the U.S., their contract expires at the end of September. But what’s interesting, the takeaway for me about the Canadian rail strike is that, not only, as you mentioned, did the government step in, but what does that, portend for Canadian airline pilots, for instance, right now are reviewing their contracts.
So that may lead to, you know, the question is, will the government step in again? The Teamsters, while they return to work, they are planning to appeal the decision by the Canadian government, appeal that in federal court. So, yeah. So it was resolved in terms of, you know, getting every everyone back to work and avoiding a strike.
But I think, you know, how we proceed from there will be, the big question. So, I did want to give an update on the, international Longshoremen’s Association. Ila. So their contract, as mentioned, expires on September 30th. And this is longshoremen on the U.S. Eastern and Gulf Coast. They have a, wage scale meeting that, is to occur on September 4th and fifth.
So perhaps there will be, some good news following that meeting. The impact should the Ila and waterfront employees not be able to reach reach, an agreement would be pretty, significant. Just in terms of cargo containers. Forget Breakwall bulk and project cargo, for instance. But, they would estimate, 20,000 containers each day combined. East Coast and Gulf Coast would be in, you know, they would just be sitting up idle, nothing loaded for import for export, offloading, etc. so you can imagine how quickly each day that would build up, even if it was a short term, if you will, strike.
I mean, the backlog will be pretty significant. So I think everyone’s kind of holding their breath. And the same thing is, you know, not new. The big, issue, the primary issue is, concerns. But ila over automated technology, the more we automate, you know, the gates and processing of trucks, paperwork, etc., right. Fewer jobs. So, I think that’s, you know, that’s pretty big.
Thus far, I know we’ve mentioned this in the past. Well, things seem seemingly started off, but I, you know, let’s all commit to find an agreement. This was months ago. It’s now pretty contentious. So we’ll see if anything happens again on these meetings from September 4th and fifth. But, that is something that ship shippers have already been trying to get stuff in early over the summer.
There was, unusually high spike of, you know, freight coming in. Likewise, looking at West Coast ports as an alternative, should there be a strike on, East Coast and Gulf Coast. But we’ll see. Yeah. A question for you. Since you know this transportation supply chain business a little better than I do, you’ve covered it longer. You know, now, we’ve seen when it came to the railroad, railroads and their workers, we saw the U.S.
And then the Canadian governments both step in for the good of the economic state of the country, basically saying you can’t strike. Do you think the U.S. would step in, with the longshoremen as well, or is that not that? Would that not be the case? Are we trying to compare apples and oranges here? What do you think?
ES: You know, it’s interesting. You know, we I think that because there is an alternative, if you will, freight can be diverted in this case, for instance, to West coast ports to maybe, other ports, you know, Canada and rail down or whatever. I think that has been less of a, you know, let’s pull this lever if it happens, however, you know, you can’t say no.
LS: I mean, the government, I think will, as they have in, you know, years ago, they have stepped in whether it was their air traffic control, whatever. If things are that’s. You’re serious? I, I think the government will step in with the case of longshoremen again because there is the Ila, East Coast, Gulf Coast, ILWU West Coast that always has been to me that, well, we have an alternative.
So, you know, we’ll see it. We would have to get pretty hairy, which, you know, it could. So we’ll see. See what happens. Okay. Well yeah. State like you said the meetings are taking place here September 4th . So maybe in next week’s video we’ll have an update to provide. So yeah, we’ll keep our eye on it. All right.
ES: Well hey, one of the thing I wanted to talk about, of course, since we live in the information age and sharing stuff online and with everyone, all the time, 24/7 because of the internet, World Wide Web has become very, very commonplace. Of course, when you have an open system like that, it invites some trouble makers or people who will try to take advantage of that system and hurt you.
Unfortunately. And this was a report I ran across from our friends at Stockanalytics.com. They were talking about, the number of customers in the supply chain that had been affected by cyber attacks here in 2024, and I guess this would be called No fun with numbers because according to them, 183,000 customers have had their supply chains disrupted or attacked this year, which is an increase of 33% versus 2023.
So, I thought that was kind of interesting. And and of course, what they said is that most of these attacks occur by social engineering, as they call it, which target the open source and proprietary codes of these companies and then attack them accordingly, because they’re easier to get to because they’re open. So, yeah, I know and I know we’ve done plenty on, you know, cyber attacks that have happened in agriculture, but apparently it’s a pretty widespread problem and, getting worse here this year.
LS: Unfortunately it is. Yeah. I, you know, unless you’re a little more inside of the industry, whatever that industry is, supply chain, whatever, a lot of these things you don’t hear about, even though I would say they are pretty significant, I think, you know, just in conversations with our women and tech investor Joyce Hunter, who does a lot of work with cybersecurity, cybersecurity is a critical infrastructure, of of concern for the US government.
I really think that this next administration, and I think this is an important thing that maybe isn’t talked about as much in the in the public forum, if you will. But I think the issue of cyber security is one that really, really, really, as you know, as I guess, you know, talking about AI. Yeah. Great. How many applications and ways is that, you know, impacting our businesses and our lives.
But the cyber security part of it has to be, you know, we saw what happen just when that glitch, you know, to update the software, you know, when. Well, right. When Microsoft had those problems. I mean, it’s it’s pretty big. So. Yeah. And I think, as you mentioned, a lot more it goes on than we hear about.
But I think that’s one of the biggest is, you know, thanks for sure. That we’ll be dealing with here. Yeah. I think you pointed out I of course AI has the potential to offer more security or a level of security, I would imagine, based on how sophisticated AI systems tend to be. However, if you’re, if you’re a troublemaker or a hacker using an AI system to attack areas, then your your you’re up in the game too.
So yeah, you’re right. This is this is a new age. We live in the cyber age. And, we’re going to have to keep an eye on this. And of course, as we get more numbers and stories on this, will report on it moving forward. Oh, yeah. For sure. The ongoing cat and mouse game.
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CropLife Retail Week: Canadian Rail Strike Averted, U.S. Longshoremen Work Stoppage Looms, and Cyberattacks in the Supply Chain
Sfiligoj is the Editor for both CropLife and CropLife IRON magazines. He travels regularly to cover industry events and has been dedicated to the ag retail industry since he joined the staff in 2000. See all author stories here.
Lara Sowinski is Group Editor for the CropLife Media Group at Meister Media Worldwide. Lara is also Co-Chair of the VISION Conference. See all author stories here.
