One of Fastest Growing Job Sectors in U.S.
Not Just in Retail But in Entire U.S.

Warehousing and transportation has been one of the fastest-growing jobs sectors in the country in recent years, as booming e-commerce demand driven by Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns pushed companies to fill up distribution space to get goods closer to consumers.

Warehousing and storage companies added nearly 100,000 jobs over the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and employment in the sector has doubled since 2016, reaching nearly 1.8 million workers in September 2022, according to BLS.

Questions about the working conditions at warehouses have also grown as the sector has expanded, with companies coming under growing scrutiny over the physical demands of work in the sprawling industrial buildings. Companies have faced questions over the treatment of workers in jobs that can require long hours of walking and lifting. wsj.com

Editor's Note: Which gives rise to a whole set of increased risk for the AP teams and service providers.

From safety issues, workers compensation claims, the rising unionization efforts, business continuity and crisis management, workplace violence, automation and its impact on job force reductions, and the need for more concentrated effort, payroll, and budget to manage the growth. All the while ensuring a safe and positive work environment for the associates. Because it's going to continue to grow and double again regardless of the economic dips and peaks.

Just look at what happened at Amazon in the last week and just yesterday. -Gus Downing

Three Amazon Warehouses Have Mysteriously Caught Fire in One Week
A fire has broken out at an Amazon facility for the third time this week, according to union organizers.

Christian Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union, tweeted that the ALB1 fulfilment center in Albany, New York, was on fire early Thursday morning.

On Monday, Amazon employees in Madison, Alabama, were evacuated after a fire broke out in a warehouse, according to local news station WAFF.

Also on Monday, a fire that originated in a trash compactor disrupted operations at an Amazon warehouse in the Staten Island borough of New York City. The Staten Island facility voted to unionize earlier this year.  newsweek.com

Amazon suspends at least 50 Staten Island union workers after protest over warehouse fire
Approximately 100 workers held a sit-down protest at the facility's main office, demanding to be sent home with pay. "They were saying 'we don't feel safe, we don't feel safe to work,'" Palmer explained.

The workers - who are suspended indefinitely as Amazon probes the incident - were notified by email and phone that their security badges would be unusable during the investigation. The number of suspensions may increase over the coming days.

Warehouse workers at a separate facility near Albany will be voting in their own union election next week. foxbusiness.com

Amazon workers hold walkouts on Prime Day in Georgia and Illinois

Protests took place at four Amazon warehouses

Amazon workers staged walkouts at four of the e-commerce giant's warehouses Tuesday, making demands of the company as it launched its second Prime Day of the year.

The first protest took place in the morning at the retailer's Stone Mountain, Georgia, site, where workers marched outside with signs in front of the building.

Amazon workers at two distribution centers in Joliet, Illinois, also held walkouts over their lunch breaks on Tuesday.

The employees in Joliet were joined by Black Workers Matter Chicago, the Teamsters union and other groups. At one point, the demonstrators blocked trucks from entering the facility.

The small protests in Georgia and Illinois on Tuesday appear to be isolated. To put the demonstrations in perspective. foxbusiness.com

   German union calls on Amazon workers to strike during sale

Starbucks' Union War as Activists Launch 'Pumpkin Spice Labor' Movement

Their video which Starbucks Workers United incorporated in a duet, was watched by nearly 25 million people.

Starbucks Ex-Manager Says to NLRB Judge in testimony - He Was Told to Punish Pro-Union Employees
David Almond, who managed a series of Buffalo-area cafes, testified under oath to a National Labor Relations Board judge in August that Starbucks higher-ups listed names of employees the company had determined supported the union, and told him to punish them. The transcript of Almond's testimony was obtained by Bloomberg through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Starbucks Workers United has filed labor board claims accusing the company of illegally terminating more than 80 of its supporters, including a prominent activist in the Buffalo region recently fired for refusing to remove a suicide awareness pin. bloomberg.com

Editor's Note: We haven't experienced this type of nationalized activity since the 70's. Which is when I was starting my career in retail security and worked thirteen union strikes. With the independent Teamsters, the trucking industry nationwide, did a wild-cat walk out because of the Carter administration's gas prices. With all the truckers nationwide joining in.

It was the scariest experience not just for me but for everyone. As people would throw rocks from over passes at scab truck drivers, killing a number of them. And hundreds of protestors blocking warehouse gates blocking trucks. While security rode shot gun in the cabs during routes to stores and join a line at the gates during the protests.

Not that that would happen again. But the unions are gaining steam as the economic gaps widen and inflation continues.

Bottom line is LP has to be aware and have a plan at every retailer. -Gus Downing

eBay's Former Global Security Team Gets Fed. Prison For Harassing of Journalists
There's no parole in Federal prisons

Two Former eBay Employees Sentenced for Aggressive Cyberstalking Campaign
BOSTON - Two former employees of eBay, Inc. were sentenced today for their roles in a cyberstalking campaign targeting the editor and publisher of a newsletter that eBay executives viewed as critical of the company.

Stephanie Popp, 34, of Louisville, Ky., eBay's former Senior Manager of Global Intelligence, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison and two years of probation.

Stephanie Stockwell, 28, of Redwood City, Calif., the former manager of eBay's Global Intelligence Center, was sentenced to two years of probation, with one year to be served in home confinement.

On Sept. 29, 2022, co-conspirator James Baugh was sentenced to 57 months in prison, two years of supervised release and was ordered to pay a fine of $40,000. Also on Sept. 29, 2022, co-conspirator David Harville was sentenced to two years in prison, two years of supervised release and was ordered to pay a fine of $20,000. Co-conspirators and former eBay employees Philip Cooke, Brian Gilbert and Veronica Zea previously pleaded guilty for their roles in the conspiracy to cyberstalk the victims. Cooke was sentenced in July 2021 to 18 months in prison. Gilbert and Zea are awaiting sentencing.

Continue Reading the Details

Long Island 'boutique' & website owner nabbed with $40M in fake designer goods
Lindsay Castelli, 31, of Smithtown sold faux Gucci, Chanel, Prada, Dior, Ugg, and Louis Vuitton knock-offs to scores of unsuspecting customers through Web sites and her store, Linny's Boutique in Plainview, officials said.

Nassau County detectives recovered 22 printing presses at the store that were used to create "thousands of synthetic heat-sealed counterfeit labels," which Castelli would then attach to the cheap clothing items before jacking their price way up, police said.

"This was a sophisticated operation operating two fashion merchandise companies, Christian Salvatore New York and Linny's Boutique,'' she said, according to CBS.

Castelli was arrested Oct. 7 after a year-and-a-half-long investigation by Postal Inspectors in Operation Rainfall.

If convicted, she could face up to three years in prison, prosecutors said. nypost.com

INFORM Consumers Act Making the News Across the Country
Senate mulls bill targeting online sales of counterfeits and stolen goods
Major retailers have gotten their wish with a bill meant to curb counterfeit and stolen productions added to the Senate's defense spending authorization.

The "INFORM Consumers Act," first introduced in the Senate in March 2021, would require online marketplaces to collect, verify, and disclose certain information from high-volume, third-party sellers.

Amazon initially opposed the bill for its focus on online third-party marketplaces (Amazon's marketplace is by far the largest in the U.S.). The company also said last spring that the bill favored "large brick-and-mortar retailers, at the expense of small businesses that sell online, while doing nothing to prevent fraud and abuse or hold bad actors accountable."

By the fall, Amazon had thrown its support behind a modified House of Representatives version of the bill. Yet Amazon still knocked "big-box retailers like Walmart and Home Depot, and their respective lobbying groups" for what it described as "push[ing] legislation at the federal and state levels with the purported goal of preventing the online sale of counterfeit items and stolen goods" but that favored brick-and-mortar retail.

The latest Senate bill has the support of both Amazon and its rivals. Last week, Amazon signed a letter along with RILA, NRF, Walmart, Target and scores of other large retailers calling on Congress to add the Inform Act to the defense spending bill.

"This common-sense legislation is critical in helping law enforcement, manufacturers, retailers, and online marketplaces of all sizes work together to protect consumers from bad actors peddling counterfeit and stolen goods," the letter stated.

The bill, as the letter notes, mandates verification of a seller's identity as a means to deter third-party sellers from pushing stolen and fake goods in e-commerce marketplaces.

The defense bill is currently up for debate in the Senate. retaildive.com

Editor's Note: Now we see if it makes it through the Senate and then through the budget review process. Which is where a lot of add on's, which this amendment would be considered, are cut in last minute deals.

With both trade associations, the NRF and RILA, pressing it just might make it through. Which will be an industry second. Right behind the EMV transition. After hundreds of millions in fraud in a very short time, as a result of advances in technology fraudsters capitalized on. And dare I say, mostly driven by the Eastern Bloc countries, all protected by Russia.

But the true reason and driving force for the success, even at this point, has to be given to the Buy Safe America effort orchestrated by RILA's Lisa LaBruno, Esq. the senior executive vice president for retail operations at the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) where she is responsible for driving the association's asset protection, supply chain, e-commerce, and corporate social responsibility offerings on behalf of member retailers.

Another Supply Chain Crisis in the Making?
Rail union rejects deal brokered by White House, renewing possibility of U.S. strike
A union representing about 12,000 rail workers on Monday voted down a tentative contract that was brokered by the White House last month ahead of a possible rail strike.

This vote will force the two sides back to the negotiating table and creates the possibility of a nationwide strike. The potential work stoppage could paralyze the nation's supply chain and transportation rail service later this fall as the U.S. enters peak holiday season.

Four unions have ratified contracts based on the agreement brokered by the White House, while seven have votes pending on the deal. The eleven unions represent about 115,000 rail workers. abcnews.go.com

Kohl's, Target and Best Buy announce Thanksgiving closures

Dollar Tree, Family Dollar look for a few thousand good people

Kroger to hire thousands ahead of the holiday season

BJ's opens new headquarters in Marlborough, Mass


Quarterly Results

LVMH Q3 sales up 19%, YTD sales up 28%
 

Senior LP & AP Jobs Market

Corporate Director, Asset Protection job posted for Luxottica in McDonough, GA
The Director of Asset Protection (AP) is a leader at the EssilorLuxottica organization who is responsible for protecting EssilorLuxottica employees and merchandise. The Director of AP develops and ensures execution of the overall security strategy, implements programs to protect employees and property, supervises and trains the AP team, oversees investigations, manages vendor relationships, cultivates partnerships, maintains high team morale, ensures a robust visitor control program, and has oversight of physical security systems and related technologies to include alarms, metal detectors, access control systems, and CCTV systems and strategies. jobs.luxottica.com
 

Cyber-Related Complaints Up 180%
Is the cyber insurance industry on the brink of collapse?

An industry that is too important to fail suffered claims of almost $7 billion in 2021 and now looks to take the lead in reducing client risk.

The cyber insurance industry, battered by a seemingly unending onslaught of claims, is reaching a breaking point. According to the FBI's latest Internet Crime Report, cyber-related complaints have increased by more than 180% over the last 5 years, resulting in $18.7 billion in losses.

Last year, some carriers ended up paying out more in claims than they received from premiums. As a result, the industry is now demanding that customers reduce their exposure or face steep price increases or quite possibly cancellations.

No longer optional

Survival of the cyber insurance industry is paramount. According to the National Cyber Security Alliance, 60% of small to medium businesses (SMBs) fold within six months of a cyberattack. The irony is that while SMBs cannot afford to go without cyber insurance, many soon won't be able to afford the insurance itself.

Business owners and CEOs are feeling the seriousness of the situation when their renewal letters arrive. Premiums - which increased by as much as 300% in 2021, according to a report by Risk Placement Services Inc. - are expected to escalate at an even more dramatic pace moving forward. At the same time, insurers are adding exclusions, limiting coverage, and some are even exiting the market entirely.

In the past, almost all incidents were covered regardless of fault. Today, if a company fails to properly train employees or demonstrates poor security hygiene and gets hacked, its claim may be denied and future access to coverage could also be in jeopardy.

Dramatic rise in attacks

The cyber insurance industry may have become a victim of its own success. As insurers began to offer more coverage, businesses may not have felt the need to be as vigilant in their defenses. Often, they would quickly pay ransomware assuming they would be reimbursed. As a result, cybercriminals may have become incentivized to target companies with cyber insurance policies in place. securityinfowatch.com

The Feds Sound the Alarm Over Chinese Hackers
Chinese hackers have become more brazen, prompting an NSA advisory
Increasingly bold Chinese state-sponsored hackers are actively using known vulnerabilities to gain access to sensitive networks, a dynamic National Security Agency cyber chief Rob Joyce called a "major threat" to critical infrastructure and election security on Thursday.

China has become "really brazen, doubling down on their activities to steal intellectual property and compromise sensitive networks," Joyce told reporters Thursday. "They establish persistence and move laterally across the interconnected networks so malicious state sponsored activity is a major threat to U.S. critical infrastructure, election systems, national security systems and the Department of Defense along with the defense industrial base that we help protect."

The advisory is the fourth of its kind to be released since 2020. Joyce said officials decided to emphasize the known vulnerabilities now in part because NSA has noticed them being exploited recently by "actors of concern with sufficient capabilities to compromise and expand beyond the initial access to the vulnerable networks."

Joyce said the advisory is meant to put network owners on alert so they patch vulnerabilities as soon as possible. The advisory lists several known vulnerabilities that are being exploited by China, including Log4j, a vulnerability in a widely-used logging library that CISA Director Jen Easterly has said is one of the "most serious I've seen in my entire career."

Chinese hackers are targeting government and critical infrastructure networks with an "increasing array of new and adaptive techniques," according to the advisory. Some of these techniques pose a significant risk to telecommunications providers and other information technology organizations in addition to the defense sector and critical infrastructure organizations. cyberscoop.com

Equifax breach settlement for 147 million consumers after five years
Victims of the massive Equifax breach that rocked the consumer credit-scoring industry five years ago are finally beginning to receive updates about their forthcoming settlement payments.

In 2017 the personal information of an estimated 147 million consumers was exposed, some of it super sensitive. Equifax agreed to pay up to $425 million "to help people affected by the breach."

Individual cash payments were capped at $125 each, but because of the large number of people who applied for claims, what you actually get is likely to be significantly less. fastcompany.com

AI and Residual Finger Heat Could Be a Password Cracker's Latest Tools
New research demonstrates the use of thermal camera images of keyboards and screens in concert with AI to correctly guess computer passwords faster and more accurately.

Study: 69% of CFOs and controllers stated their corporate technology responsibilities are increasing

$7.5M ORC Fencing Ring Busted
Wilmette, IL: $7.5M In Stolen Items Found In Bust Of Interstate Fencing Ring
Police said an investigation into a pattern of shoplifting at local businesses led to the discovery of a coast-to-coast fencing ring trading in merchandise stolen from Chicago area retailers. Last week, investigators executed a dozen search warrants in Chicagoland - including locations in Chicago, Cicero, Oak Lawn and Bolingbrook - and three in Southern California, police said. They discovered $7.5 million worth of stolen items as well as other evidence of what Wilmette police described as a "sophisticated criminal enterprise."

Police found 126 pallets loaded with about 278,000 individual stolen items, according to Cmdr. Michael Robinson. Robinson said the investigation began last fall, but the fencing ring had been in operation since at least 2020, if not earlier. "Basically, all our retailers were experiencing the same crime pattern," Robinson said. "The same offenders, these professional retail theft boosters, that were just going around stealing an incredible amount of products and selling them down in Chicago."

After stealing over-the-counter products like allergy medication and tooth whitening strips, usually more than $1,000 worth a time, shoplifters would bring the stolen goods to storefronts in Chicago and sell it to members of the fencing ring for pennies on the dollar, police said. "In New York, it was being sold to third-party distributors which would then put it back in the supply chain," he said. "So some of these major retailers were actually buying some of their stolen product back inadvertently."

The other half were sold by a trio of Southern California men using e-commerce platforms. Early in the investigation, police linked thefts at Wilmette Walgreens, CVS and Mariano's stores to similar incidents in Shorewood, which led to a cooperative investigation between both departments and eight recent arrests - five in Illinois and three in California - on Will County charges related to the fencing ring, according to police.

Chicago police assisted with undercover operations at the storefront locations, according to Wilmette police. The investigation was also assisted by Homeland Security Investigations, the Chicago Highway Patrol's organized retail theft task force, the Will County State's Attorney's Office and Police Assistance Team and the Illinois Departments of Revenue and State Police. Police said the probe was also aided by representatives of Walgreens, Target and the retail crime units of CVS and Kroger's. patch.com

Los Angeles, CA: Chronic Shoplifter arrested after string of 50 LA thefts
The Los Angeles Police Department arrested a chronic shoplifting suspect who allegedly has been linked to 50 thefts totaling approximately $15,000. On October 7, 2022, around 9:35 a.m., resources were set at a location in the 600 block of South Broadway Avenue. Officers said they saw the suspect enter and exit with stolen property. Henry Funches was arrested and charged with burglary. cbsnews.com

Liberty Lake, WA: Police searching for person of interest who may have stolen $300,000 worth of jewelry
The Liberty Lake Police Department (LLPD) is seeking assistance in locating a person of interest allegedly robbed a furniture and jewelry store in Liberty Lake. According to a press release, the burglary occurred at Consign Furniture and Jewelry in Liberty Lake on Monday, Oct. 10 around 8 p.m. The store reported the crime to police at 11 a.m. the next day. At approximately 5 p.m., police said a woman entered the store and proceeded to hide inside until the store closed later that evening. After closing, the woman made her way through the store and allegedly stole approximately $300,000 worth of miscellaneous jewelry. krem.com

Phoenix, AZ: Women caught after allegedly trying to rob Phoenix antique store a second time
Owners of a local antique store say they're out thousands of dollars after two women stole from them, and it was all caught on camera. The robbery happened at Antique Gatherings on 32nd Street and Shea Boulevard. Owner, Amanda Wilson, says a group came in one day, and two women stole jewelry. Four days later, they came back. This ultimately led to a foot pursuit between Wilson, good Samaritans, and Phoenix Police. "These people knew what they were doing," Wilson said. azfamily.com

Ann Arbor, MI: Gunman robs downtown T-Mobile store in middle of day
Police are investigating a brazen armed robbery that occurred in the middle of the day in downtown Ann Arbor Monday afternoon. Police were called shortly after 2:55 p.m. Monday, Oct. 10, to the T-Mobile store in downtown Ann Arbor for a reported armed robbery that had just occurred, according to the Ann Arbor Police Department. Employees, backed by store surveillance footage, reported a man walked into the store, pulled out a handgun and order the employees to fill is backpack with cell phones and cash, police said. Staff complied with the gunman's demands and filled his bag with 13 electronic devices totaling $7,300 in value along with an unspecified amount of cash from the register before fleeing on foot, police said. mlive.com