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At the Port of Seattle, cargo is always on the move. Longshoremen load and unload cars, electronics, grain, logs, and hundreds of other commodities from ships and trucks before these products land on store shelves around the world. The life of a longshoreman can be a difficult one, with long and labor-intensive hours spent on the waterfront. Yet, many of them say the work itself is not the most difficult part. Especially in recent months, as unpredictable tariff policies have impacted the number of ships entering U.S. ports, uncertainty is plaguing our ports and the workers who make domestic and global trade possible. Were very fortunate to have the jobs we do and what they pay and the benefits we have, but at the same time, the unknown is what keeps us from enjoying those benefits, says Kesa Sten, a terminal chief at the Port of Seattle and president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 52. An unpredictable number of ships Within a few weeks of his inauguration, Trump made tariffs a cornerstone of his international policy agendabut these are not the low, consistent tariffs of past administrations. Broadly implemented and ever evolving, the new administrations tariff policy has led foreign leaders to scramble for deals and has led importers to wonder: Are these high fees here to stay? At the ports, this unpredictability has led to inconsistent numbers of ships coming in: busy periods as importers race to get their goods into the country before new tariffs take effect and much slower days while they wait and see. Compared with last year, the number of imports the Port of Seattle is managing is significantly lower, on average, though spikes in activity during pauses or before new tariffs take effect have, in some cases, met or exceeded last years averages. Just this last week in the Port of Seattle, we were rocking, Sarah Esch, a dispatcher for ILWU Local 19, told Fast Company in early August. I think they were just trying to land wherever they could in the U.S. before the August 7 deadline. The August tariffswhich were implemented under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a law that allows the president to take charge of international commerce regulation during a national emergencyhave been deemed illegal by federal courts. However, they will remain in effect until at least October 14 while the case is appealed to the Supreme Court, thereby extending uncertainty for importers and workers at the port. As dispatcher, Esch will continue to dole out jobs to those working on the waterfront all year. However, now that the busy summer season, when cruise and container ships alike flood Seattle, has come to an end, she is expecting much less work to be availableespecially for the newer workers hoping to become registered longshoremen. Registration comes with big benefits, such as health insurance, retirement, and first pick of available jobs at the port. Getting registered, though, can take many years and comes down to the number of hours worked. As fewer ships dock in times of economic uncertainty and trade instability, fewer jobs are available, and the registration process can become more drawn out and competitive. I need to be available, hoping to get work on the waterfront, Cole Lowenstein, a second-generation longshoreman working in Seattle, tells Fast Company. It takes me away from a lot of other things. Lowenstein has been a casual, the industry term for a dockworker making their way toward registration, for more than six years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he remembers there was so much work available that casual workers would compete to see how many days in a row they could work, sometimes reaching 30 or 40 days straight. This year, his coworkers were in awe of the fact he worked nine days in a row. With job opportunities slowing down, Lowenstein says he lives 12 hours at a time, always waiting for the next dispatch to see if there will be enough work to warrant staying near the port or if he should make the trek back to his home in northern Washington. I spend a lot of time sleeping in my car just because Im two or three hours away from the house, and its not really worth the drive back, he adds. These already irregular work schedules have become even more unpredictable in the age of ever-changing tariffs. What the tariffs are for High tariffs have been a key part of Trumps economic strategy since his first term. However, while his first-term tariffs targeted specific importssuch as electric vehicles, semiconductors, and steel, his second term has seen steep, across-the-board tariffs leveled against trading partners. Moves that are baffling to some economists. Our president has offered several explanations for the tariffs, Gene Grossman, an economist and professor at Princeton Universitys School of Public and International Affairs, tells Fast Company. Interestingly theyre in direct contradiction with one another. A White House fact sheet related to Trumps tariffs outlines his goals for the policy: reducing trade deficits, bringing jobs back to the U.S., and raising revenues. Regarding these goals, Grossman says, you cant have it both ways. Bringing jobs stateside would require us to produce more goods here and import less, but importing less does not allow tariffs to bring in revenue. Still, Trump has moved ahead, creating a complex web of frequently revised tariffs over the past few months. In early February, he imposed steep tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, though many were suspended shortly after taking effect in March. He then announced a 10% tariff on all imports to the U.S., which both took effect and was paused on April 9. And despite summer-long negotiations, new tariffs were unexpectedly announced in August. Nearly all U.S. trading partners are impacted by a set of broad-reaching tariffs, which have been in effect since August 7. A 15% tariff, if you knew it was going to apply to everybody always and it wasnt going to be changed next month would be a problem for importers . . . but it would be a known problem, says Grossman. The current unpredictable state of global trade is a separate issue for importers, Grossman adds, since it encourages firms that might invest in U.S. trade to wait and see what will happen, rather than acting. So far, the result of this wait and see attitude has been slowdowns in tradeand at the ports. The West Coast has been particularly hard hit, because it processes many imports from China and other countries in Asia that have been hit with high tariffs. Lowenstein has even noticed longshoremen usually based at Southern California ports coming up to Seattle to find work. Ive only heard rumors about how slow it may be [in California], but the rumors are pretty alarming, Lowenstein says. What today’s low registrations mean for the future For Esch, who was in the process of becoming a registered longshreman during the 2008 recession, the slowdowns today feel familiar. She remembers how the inconsistency of work added an extra dimension of uncertainty to an already difficult registration process. I almost moved back home because it had just gotten so dreary and I went through bankruptcyIt was tough, it was really tough, Esch says. Im good now, but, oh my god, I certainly wouldnt want to be a casual right now. Derailing the registration process for the next generation of longshoremen does more than inflict uncertainty on workers, it could destabilize the industry as more longshoremen choose to pursue other careers. After a long slowdown in work, if the number and frequency of ships coming to U.S. ports returns to previous levels, there may not be enough workers to handle their cargo, Lowenstein suggests. Entire ships can sit for a day, a night, a shift, two shifts without being unloaded, he says. The ripple effects of that through our economy, I couldnt even begin to articulate. The ports are responsible for an estimated $2.89 trillion in economic activity, according to a 2024 report by the American Association of Port Authorities, and they support nearly 22 million jobs. For now, many working those jobs are sticking it out, hoping the tariffs uncertainty will settle soon. They’re buoyed by the longshore community, which they describe as both vibrant and close-knitthe type of community that rallies around each other in hard times as well as joyous ones. Its just a huge swath of the American public that all work at the same place, getting to know everybody, Esch says. Were together for decades, so it really is like a family.
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E-Commerce
Were more than half a decade removed from pandemic lockdownswhen remote work profoundly upended the 9-to-5yet the preference for workday flexibility endures, a new report shows. According to the recently released ninth annual State of Hybrid Work report from Owl Labs, a video conference tech company, 65% of workers are interested in a concept the report refers to as microshifting: structured flexibility with short, nonlinear work blocks matched to your energy, duties, or productivity. In other words: breaking up your work shift into a bunch of tiny ones. Perhaps you log on at 6 a.m. to get a head start, then take a break for a midmorning Pilates class before clocking back on to finish the days tasks. Or maybe you pause in the afternoon to do the school run or take the dog out, shifting your final work block into the evening, when the madness has settled down. Like similar methods, such as timeboxing or the Pomodoro technique, microshifting rethinks the flow of a traditional workday, zeroing in on when the individual feels most productive. Rather than being chained to a desk for eight hours each day, microshifting breaks up the slog into short concentrated bursts of productivity. Blast through your inbox, or go head-down on a project, and around that balance personal responsibilities and life events that crop up without notice. The new report shows that microshifting has proven particularly popular among Gen Zers and millennials, with nearly 7 in 10 reporting that they would prefer such an approach at work. Its widely accepted that productivity cannot be measured simply by hours clocked. Research on attention spans and productivity has shown that using shorter, intentional work intervals helps sustain energy, prevents cognitive fatigue, and sharpens focus. Workplaces arent as rigid and structured as they once were, Kickresume cofounder and CEO Peter Duris told Fast Company. Flexibility is one of the most common and sought-after perks in a job, whether thats having the option to work from home or working flexible hours. In fact, Owl Labs found that employees were prepared to give up 9% of their annual salary for flexible working hours (and 8% for a four-day workweek). Microshifting is a great way for employees to balance their personal responsibilities alongside work, Duris said. If you have the option to work microshifts, it could be worth discussing with your manager. This may be especially game-changing for parents or carers. Rather than an opportunity to slack off, look at microshifts like mini work sprints. If you give it a try, digital scheduling tools and productivity apps like Focus Friend can stop you from feeling scatterbrained and keep you focused and on track while divvying up the day. Start by figuring out when you are most productive and tackle your high-priority tasks then. If youre a morning person, get to work right away and schedule your low-priority tasks for when your productivity levels wane in the afternoon. If youre a night owl, get your workout classes or errands out of the way first, then lock in for the evening grind. Its always a good idea to get as acquainted as possible with your productivity styleat least until the next business buzzword gets coined and makes you rethink everything again.
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E-Commerce
At the beginning of this year, a climate tech startup called CarbonCapture was ready to break ground on its first commercial pilot at a site in Arizona. But the project is now about to open 2,700 miles away, in Alberta, Canada. The company started considering new locations shortly after the inauguration, as the political climate around climate projects quickly changed. We were looking for regions where we felt we could get support for deployment, says CarbonCapture CEO Adrian Corless. Canada was an obvious choice given the existence of good government programs and incentives that are there. [Photo: CarbonCapture] CarbonCapture makes modular direct air capture technology (DAC), units that remove CO2 from the air. In late March, reports came out that the Department of Energy (DOE) was considering cancelling grants for two other large DAC projects, including one in Louisiana that involved the company. By the end of May, by the time the DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations announced that it was cancelling $3.7 billion in other grants, the startup had already signed an agreement with Deep Sky Alpha, a facility in Canada that is simultaneously deploying and testing multiple direct air capture projects to help the industry grow. The startup had already self-funded its planned project in Arizona and built the modules for the site. Because it didnt rely on government funding for the project, it could have moved forward in the U.S. But it saw that it would be harder to move from the pilot to later commercial projects in Arizona. Now, it’s planning to build its first full commercial project in Canada as well. (The company wouldn’t disclose the cost for either project.) [Photo: CarbonCapture] We just didnt see a pathway in the U.S. to be able to show that linkage between doing a commercial pilot, starting to generate [carbon dioxide removal] credits and selling them, and then being able to raise the capital for something thats much larger, Corless says. Canada offers an investment tax credit of 60% for direct air capture equipment, plus an additional 12% for projects in Alberta, the heart of Canadas oil and gas industry. The country also has strong support for R&D and first-of-a-kind deployments for early-stage companies, and multiple programs supporting climate tech specifically. The Canada Growth Fund, for example, is a $15 billion fund designed to advance decarbonization. And while Mark Carney, Canadas prime minister, has taken steps backward on climate policy, hes also said that he wants the country to be the worlds leading energy superpower both for conventional energy and clean energy. The situation in the U.S. is very different. Trump recently called climate change a con job in a speech to the United Nations. When Chris Wright, the energy secretary, recently canceled another $13 billion for renewable energy projects, he said, if you cant rock on your own after 33 years, maybe thats not a business thats going places, despite the fact that fossil fuels have gotten subsidies from the U.S. for three times as long. Fossil fuel subsidies are now nearly $35 billion a year, or as much as $760 billion if you include health and environmental costs. Direct air capture tech arguably hasnt been hit quite as hard as other forms of climate tech, like offshore wind power. When the One Big Beautiful Bill gutted other funding, from tax credits for EVs to solar panels, it left in place some credits that facilities can earn for capturing carbon as they operate. But the Department of Energy recently cut multiple grants that would have helped new DAC projects get built. One of the large projects CarbonCapture was supportingthe Louisiana facility previously under review, called Project Cypresslost funding, and the company just received official notice of its cancellation. Corless says that the startup is still carefully watching what happens in D.C.and the company still hasn’t made any announcements about whether it might move its whole company, not just particular projects. Right now, it’s headquartered in L.A. with around 50 employees. It also has a small factory for its equipment in Arizona, next to the site where it had planned to build its first carbon capture facility. [Photo: CarbonCapture] Moving the first project to Canada happened quickly. Five weeks ago, the site in Alberta was an empty field. Four weeks ago, the company shipped the modules it had built in Arizna to Canada. Construction crews have been finishing the final touches, and the company plans to begin commissioning the system next week. Deep Sky Alpha already had some key infrastructure in place, including access to solar power to run the equipment. The pilot will ultimately be able to capture 2,000 tons of CO2 a year, which will be buried underground. It’s possible that other companies might follow CarbonCapture’s move. “I think that there definitely are going to be several companies that are looking at the same data that we’re looking at,” Corless says. “And I think that it’s not lost on the Canadian government that they have an opportunity as well to step up and potentially take a leadership role in this space, which the U.S. has really owned for the last five years.” “The U.S. does have a real advantage, even without DOE support,” says Erin Burns, director at the nonprofit Carbon180. “But its very likely that uncertainty around DOE programs will weaken that edge. Some projects will move abroad. Some that might have thrived here will not. Others will achieve only a fraction of their potential. Each outcome is a setback on its own. Together they add up to millions, possibly billions, in lost investment and slower American innovation.”
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E-Commerce
Below, Ann Tashi Slater shares five key insights from her new book, Traveling in Bardo: The Art of Living in an Impermanent World. Slater has published fiction, essays, and interviews in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Guernica, and Granta, among others, as well as in The Penguin Book of Modern Tibetan Essays and American Dragons (HarperCollins). Her speaking and teaching engagements include Princeton, Columbia, Oxford, the American University of Paris, the Rubin Museum of Art, and Asia Society. Whats the big idea? Traveling in Bardo interweaves explorations of impermanence in our everyday existence with Slaters girlhood in America and time spent with her Tibetan family in Darjeeling. Like her great-grandfather before her, she spreads guidance about bardo between-states, or periods of life transition, to Western audiences. Change is inevitable, can come at any moment, and only by growing our acceptance of uncertainty and endings can we live more fully. Tibetan bardo teachings help us navigate and embrace life in its sorrow and joy. 1. Between-states offer great possibilities for transformation. We experience between-states, or bardos, in every area of our lives, from friendship and marriage to children and parents to work and creativity. These periods of transition may be eagerly anticipated (a move to another city, the birth of a child) or painfully challenging (the end of a relationship, the loss of a parent). Whatever the case, they give us a chance to reset our compass and find new perspectives as we discover that the only thing we can be sure of is change. The transformative possibilities of between-states are imprinted on our psyches from an early age. Fairy tales are all about metamorphosis: After slumbering for a hundred years, Sleeping Beauty awakens; Hansel and Gretel defeat the witch in the forest and return home; Cinderella endures the cruel treatment of her stepmother and stepsisters and becomes a princess. We also see it in the natural world: a moth emerging from a cocoon, a flower blooming after the long winter. Were drawn to the potential for evolution that is found in between-states, but can we experience transformation as we ourselves go through times of transition? Its possible if were open to it. 2. Its not change that threatens us, but our resistance to it. Were wired to shy away from change, resist endings, and cling to what we know. Are you holding on to a job that has lost meaning? Or a belief system or way of living that no longer serves you? Perhaps youre denying your parentsor your ownaging and mortality? My grandmother told me once about a funeral she attended in Tibet in the 1920s where the dead man wanted to reenter his body. We couldnt see him, she said, but the high lama there saw that the dead man was trying to bring the corpse again to life. This story is a striking metaphor for our resistance to change. We struggle and grieve, deepening our suffering by trying to hold on to what is lost to us. I experienced this when my father died suddenly, and Im going through it again now as my mother disappears into dementia. There are endings we can do something about, like a job thats no longer right for us, and ones we cant, such as an aging parent. Regardless, only when we accept the reality of our situation can we open ourselves to the sorrow we naturally feel and move forward, instead of remaining trapped in denial. Its our resistance to changerather than change itselfthat most threatens us, hindering the flourishing of our mind and spirit in a world where impermanence is the only certainty. 3. What we pay attention to becomes our reality. In life, we may drift aimlessly through the months and years, immersed in thoughts and reveries. What our distracted minds perceive turns into our reality, and we have the strange feeling that were dwelling in a parallel universe, able to sense our real lives but not live them. We worry that something is missing, or that were missing out, and we wonder if well ever find ease and joy. Were like the hungry ghosts in Tibetan cosmology: skeletal beings with throats as thin as a piece of hair and stomachs as big as the Grand Canyon (never enough drinks or eats for them, my grandmother used to say). The mind is like a team of horses that, given the chance, will charge off in different directions. The challenge is to take hold of the reins. As the bardo teachings tell us, the mind can be guided like the controlling of a horses mouth by means of a bridle. When conscious attention becomes our way of being in the world, we undergo a profound shift in our experience of life. Instead of feeling insatiable hungry ghost cravings, we reside more fully in each moment. As that becomes our way of being, we find the contentment that eluded us. 4. Karma is action, not fate. We often think of karma as fate. It was my karma to buy that house, or, It was my karma to not get along with my daughter. But karma isnt just about things happening to us beyond our control. Its about how what we do, think, and say in each moment determines our path forward. If our actions are positive, thats all to the good, but if not, we make ourselves miserable through habitual behavior that is, in Buddhist terms, unskillful, like getting into power struggles with your child, having the same pointless arguments with your partner, or staying silent when you should speak up. We can transform whats making us unhappy by changing our activities of body, mind, and speech. This may sound daunting, but it can be a small action, such as praising your partner rather than criticizing them, or expressing your opinion about something thats important to you. Our actions in this moment are influenced by our past actions and, in turn, influence our future behavior. The more we choose the positive (kindness, honesty) or, conversely, the negative (disparaging others, lying), the more likely we are to keep acting in these ways. Its up to us whether we slog on through trials of our own making or move into an awakened way of living that brings us the happiness we seek. At each moment, we have choice. Instead of tending the same old garden, we can till the soil for a new one, planting seeds and letting them flourish. 5. We confirm our humanity by living the life thats ours to live. If were lucky enough to come into this world as a human (rather than, say, an ant or a tree), we possess the unique capacity to make the most of our lives, spurred by the knowledgeagain, uniquely humanthat we are mortal. Making the most of our lives in this fleeting, beautiful universe means living the life thats ours to live. A tulip is a tulip, a tiger is a tiger. Tulips and tigers dont lose sight of what they are and end up being something else, like: I ended up a daffodil when Im really a tulip! Or, How did I turn into an aardvark when Im actually a tiger? The capacity to live inauthentically is, unfortunately, all too human. Be yourself sounds so simple, doesnt it? But we care too much about what others think, and when our last day arrives, we wonder why we cared so much and regret that we did. A wonderful aspect of authenticity is that its not about creting your essential self. Your self is like the wide blue sky, sometimes obscured by clouds but already and always existing. It becomes visible as we let go of unskillful ways of being, as we shed false personas and allow who we are to emerge. There are questions we can keep in mind that help us do this: If you found out you were going to die soon, what are some things (like others approval) that you would stop caring about? What would make you feel free? This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Category:
E-Commerce
Digital tools are a necessary part of work life for just about any office gig. But using too many apps, communication platforms, and other tools can be massively frustrating. And according to newly released research, switching back and forth between online systems is also a time thief. Localization platform Lokalise recently surveyed 1,000 U.S. white-collar workers from 11 industries to examine how digital tools impact professionals and how they feel about using a variety of online systems. Overwhelmingly, the report found that workers are frustrated by having to use many different platforms. Some 17% of workers say they have to switch platforms more than 100 times in a single workday. All the back and forth is time-consuming. On average, workers lose 51 minutes per week to tool fatigue. Yearly, that’s a loss of about 44 hours of work. The time loss makes sense when you consider just how many platforms the average modern employee has to navigate. The majority of workers (55%) are using three to five platforms each day. Almost a third (31%) say they’re using even moreas many as 6 to 10 platforms daily. The most time-consuming tools, according to employees, are email (47%); messaging platforms like Slack, Discord, and Teams (35%); video conferencing tools (22%); and calendar and scheduling apps (17%). In terms of apps, specifically, Outlook leads to the most fatigue (35%), with Microsoft Teams trailing closely behind (29%), followed by Gmail (24%) and Zoom (15%). Of course, workers don’t feel great about all that time lost to digital tools. More than half (56%) say their workday is negatively impacted by an excessive number of platforms. But regardless of how workers feel about having to navigate so many different tools, or how much time it takes to do so, they say their company hasn’t addressed the issue. A whopping 79% say their company hasn’t taken steps to cut down on all the tools or stave off worker fatigue.While the workday can be made more overwhelming due to digital tools, sadly the fatigue doesn’t end there. Employees say they feel pulled to respond to alerts even when they’re supposed to be off the clock. The majority of workers (60%) say they feel pressure to respond to pings outside of working hours. With that in mind, it’s no wonder professionals are fed up with digital tools that aren’t just complicating their workdays but also their personal lives.
Category:
E-Commerce
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