A6| Monday, March 9, 2020 ** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.**
Supply chains could become
even more snarled as the dis-
ease spreads in South Korea
and Japan, which are both ma-
jor suppliers of textiles in Asia,
said Sheng Lu, a fashion and
apparel studies professor at the
University of Delaware.
As the coronavirus spread
from Wuhan in January, China’s
manufacturing collapsed. An of-
ficial gauge of manufacturing
activity showed its February
performance was worse than at
the depth of the global financial
crisis in 2008.
Hubei province, the center of
the epidemic, is an auto manu-
facturing hub, making the auto
industry among the most seri-
ously affected.
Fiat Chrysler AutomobilesNV last month said it is tempo-
rarily halting production at a
car factory in Serbia because it
can’t get parts from China.
Union officials at two major
General Motors Co. factories in
the U.S. have warned of produc-
tion outages as China-made
parts at its Michigan and Texas
plants run low. Korean car
maker Hyundai Motor Co., had
to suspend one of its main as-
sembly lines in Ulsan, South Ko-
rea.
Trying to evade the U.S.-
China trade war, Japanese vid-
eogame producer Nintendo Co.
partially shifted production of
its flagship Switch gaming con-
sole to Vietnam last year. Yet
the company said the coronavi-
rus epidemic has already de-layed shipments of its console
because of a slowdown in get-
ting parts made by its contract
factories in China.
Union officials in Brazil say
South Korea’s LG Electronics
Inc. halted work at a plant for
mobile phones and monitors
because it couldn’t get parts
from China. LG confirmed the
shortage and that it stopped
production for 10 days at its
cellphone unit in Taubaté, Bra-
zil.
French pharmaceutical giant
Sanofi SA said it would create a
stand-alone company in France
dedicated to making active
pharmaceutical ingredients, an
essential component of drugs
whose production is heavily
concentrated in China.To keep costs low before the
epidemic hit, companies across
industries have cut back on in-
ventory.
“In the 1980s, we had about
$440 million worth of auto
parts, six or seven weeks’
worth, sitting as backup” in the
industry, said David Collins,
chief executive officer of Shen-
zhen-based China Manufactur-
ing Consultants and a former
senior manager for Chrysler
Corp. That figure now is less
than $50 million, he said.
The tech industry carries
about three to 12 weeks of in-
ventory, while the auto industry
has about two to 10 weeks’
worth, said Razat Gaurav, chief
executive of supply-chain soft-
ware developer LLamasoft Inc.mended that employees still
needed in open office spaces
stay “6 feet/1.8 meters away
from others.” The company
also asked its staff to try to
limit prolonged interaction
with other people.
Apple Inc. Chief Executive
Tim Cook sent a company
email on Saturday, encourag-
ing staff in California and ar-
eas around the world with a
high concentration of infec-
tions to work from home if
possible over the coming
week. The note represented an
escalation in the company’s
caution to staff. It last week
had encouraged its 25,
workers across Silicon Valley
to work from home.
Several colleges, including
Texas A&M University in Col-lege Station, Texas, and Mas-
sachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology in Cambridge, Mass.,
have started asking employees
and students to register their
personal travel plans, so ad-
ministrators can keep track as
coronavirus spreads.
Stripe Inc., a San Francisco-
area financial-technology com-
pany, has switched to video-
conferencing for job
interviews in place of on-site
meetings. Becton Dickinson &
Co., a medical-supplies com-
pany based in New Jersey, told
employees to limit client
meetings off-site.
Millions of workers have
been asked to test their ability
to work from home, making
sure they have the Wi-Fi con-
nections, laptops or other tech-nology needed to do their jobs
remotely. Facebook Inc., which
on Thursday recommended
that thousands of its employ-
ees in the San Francisco-area
start working from home, is
further encouraging people to
stay away from the campus by
canceling shuttle-bus opera-
tions for the coming week.
Working from home doesn’t
work for swaths of the em-
ployee universe, from food-ser-
vice and hotel staffers to nurses.
Nearly four in 10 workers in the
U.S., or 37%, say it isn’t possible
at all for them to do their job by
working from home for a period
of several weeks, according to a
new Wall Street Journal/Sur-
veyMonkey poll.
But companies that employ
people who perform their jobs“If the current situation con-
tinues as we go into the second
half of March, I think we’re go-
ing to start seeing some mas-
sive impact on inventory avail-
ability,” he said.
Among fashion retailers,
Ralph Lauren Corp. said supply
disruptions in China could af-
fect its orders. Primark, a Euro-
pean retailer, said it is assessing
strategies including stepping up
production in other regions.
In Bangladesh, factories can’t
easily stockpile fabrics and
other materials because they
don’t know what styles of cloth-
ing buyers will request. Both
Vietnam and Bangladesh are in-
creasing textile production, but
industry experts say they will
rely on imports for years to
come.
At Mr. Khalid-Islam’s factory,
supplies of bra straps are dwin-
dling. He said he could run out
of key materials by April. An-
other of his factories has had to
delay production on a line of
sweaters.
Matt Hall, a spokesman for
Hanes, said the company has
moved to develop alternatives
to components from China over
the past several weeks. He
doesn’t expect any production
delays from the Comilla factory
to affect Wonderbra distribu-
tion.
Matthew Lam, group chief
operating officer for Pioneer
Elastic Ltd., the manufacturer
that supplies Mr. Khalid-Islam’s
factory, said his company faced
delays in supplying customers
after its Chinese plant shut
down for an extra week follow-
ing the Lunar New Year holi-
days. Even after reopening, the
factory remained short-staffed
for another week. It has now
nearly returned to full produc-
tion, he said.
—Tom Fairless and Refayet
Ullah Mirdha contributed to
this article.trade in 2018, up from 1.2% in
2000, according to World Bank
data, overtaking giants includ-
ing Germany, Japan and Tai-
wan. China makes nearly a
quarter of American imports.
Manufacturers world-wide
rely on China’s factories for
many intermediate goods, from
electrical wiring for cars made
in Europe to electronic compo-
nents for mobile phones made
in Brazil.
The garment industry, which
is less capital-intensive and eas-
ier to move, was among the
first to break out of China.
Companies looking for low-cost
labor moved production to
places such as Bangladesh, one
of the world’s largest clothing
exporters after China.
China’s share of global cloth-
ing exports ebbed from 37% in
2010 to 31% in 2018, according
to the World Trade Organiza-
tion. Yet over the same period,
China’s share of global exports
of textiles—which is made into
apparel—rose to 38%, from
30%. Producing textiles is highly
automated, which means China
has remained a favored destina-
tion despite rising labor costs.
Chinese fabrics are shipped
to Vietnam, Pakistan and Ban-
gladesh for labor-intensive cut-
ting and sewing, accounting for
roughly half to three-quarters
of their textile imports. These
newer manufacturing nations
also depend on China for more
complex products, such as zip-
pers and fasteners, that rely on
higher-skilled workers.
ContinuedfromPageOne
Supply
Crunch
Spreads
The coronavirus epidemic has slowed production at a lingerie factory in Comilla, Bangladesh.ALLISON JOYCE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNALAs the new coronavirus
spreads, more companies are
asking people to work from
home. That is often easier said
than done: Technology doesn’t
always work, children may be
running around and employees
sometimes lack the right
equipment.
But for many people, a pe-
riod of remote work is looking
increasingly inevitable. Micro-
soft told thousands of Seattle-
area workers to work from
home if they can; Facebook
recommended the same for
thousands of San Francisco-
area employees; Amazon
urged Seattle-area workers to
go remote until the end of
March. And millions more em-
ployees at companies through-
out the U.S. have been asked
to test their remote setups.
So if you do need to work
from home, how do you do it
successfully? Here is what you
need to know.I am a manager. What do I
need to do now to make sure
my team can function when
we are at home?
Make sure they have the
right tools. Have them do a
test run and report any prob-
lems. Ensure they have the
right laptops, network access,
passcodes and instructions for
remote login.
Set some ground rules. If
you don’t want employees us-
ing public Wi-Fi or other unse-
cured access points, say so.
Set up tools to maintain
personal connections. Sched-
ule group meetings by video-
conferences and set up group
chats via tools like Slack or
Microsoft Teams.HowdoImakesuremy
boss knows I am working?
Make an extra effort to
check in with your bosses and
co-workers. In many messag-
ing tools, you can set a status
for colleagues to see. If you
sense there is a misunder-
standing via email, pick up the
phone or hop on a video call.How can I try to recreate
that office back-and-forth?
Email can be tricky—our in-
boxes quickly blow up and it
doesn’t lend itself to casual
conversations. Your company
most likely has chat or video-
conferencing tools; make use
of them. Group collaboration
tools can feel closer to regular
conversation and videoconfer-
encing lets you see people’s
faces. To create a water-cooler
feel, many companies also cre-
ate nonwork chat threads.What is the ideal work-
from-home space?
While not everyone has
space for a home office, it is
important to set something up
that allows as much privacy
and quiet as possible. Remindother people in your house-
hold that even though you are
at home, you are still working.What can I do about child
care?
Have a conversation with
your manager. Working par-ents may need to alter their
schedules, effectively creating
shifts for themselves where
one parent works while the
other cares for the child.How do I minimize noise
and distractions?
Separate your spaces as
much as possible. Then invest
in a pair of noise-canceling
headphones. On conference
calls, mute your microphone
when you aren’t speaking.HowdoImakesuremy
home internet is fast
enough?
Most U.S. households don’t
use most of their bandwidth,
but you may encounter slow-
downs. The best solution for
poor connectivity: Switch to
Ethernet. Most laptops don’t
have Ethernet ports anymore,
but you can get a dongle. Andyou will need an Ethernet ca-
ble to connect to your router.What if I need to make
overseas calls?
Google Hangouts, Whats-
App and Skype let you make
international phone calls over
the internet for very low rates.How do I set boundaries
so I don’t feel like working
from home is overtaking my
personal life?
Try to maintain a sched-
ule—start and end your work
at the same time as if you
were in the office. Be in your
home office when you’re work-
ing, but leave it when you’re
not. Imagine that you are sim-
ply relocating your office to
another building.
—Joanna Stern,
Rachel Feintzeig, Chip Cutter
and Te-Ping Chen.A Wall Street Journal Roundup
Working From Home? Here Are Some Tips and Tricks
THE CORONAVIRUS EPIDEMIC
on computers and phones are
trying to adjust. Many across
Asia have been operating this
way for weeks.
San Francisco-based crypto-
currency exchange Coinbase
Inc. last Monday asked several
types of workers, including
people with compromised im-
mune systems, those who are
“at risk because of age,” or
people for whom getting sick
would be especially problem-
atic, to start working from
home, according to Philip Mar-
tin, the company’s chief infor-
mation security officer. He es-
timates 200 out of 1,
employees globally fell into
groups that Coinbase asked to
work remotely, including sin-
gle parents and pregnant em-
ployees. The company on Fri-
day suggested all employees
begin working from home if
they can starting on Monday.
The company also issued a
lengthy social-distancing guide
and recommended stockpiling
a 30-day supply of food and
medicine for family and pets,
forgoing public transit and re-
considering religious services.
“For us, the antidote to
panic is information,” Mr.
Martin said.
Companies say they are
looking to federal and local
authorities for guidance, but
they are also closely watching
how their peers respond, often
not wanting to be first to im-
plement a drastic protocol,
said Lars Schmidt, the founder
of Amplify, an HR consulting
and executive-search firm.
“There’s a bit of a cascad-
ing impact,” he said. “Compa-
nies are holding out to see
what others are doing.”Employers are implementing
contingency plans, from divid-
ing teams across locations to
limiting visitors, as the spread
of the novel coronavirus is
starting to upend basic expec-
tations about the safety and
sustainability of office work.
The moves, designed to
minimize disruption to busi-
nesses while protecting work-
ers, range from advising col-
leagues to stand at least six
feet apart, to requiring that
people register their personal
travel plans with their employ-
ers. While some companies
have done emergency planning,
the virus’s breadth and speed
are posing challenges still hard
to anticipate, executives said.
On Monday, Bank of Amer-
ica Corp. will begin splitting
up some employees on its eq-
uities and fixed-income teams
between New York and Con-
necticut, creating redundancy
so that if an employee gets
sick and a whole team has to
self quarantine, a backup team
could keep functioning in its
place. More than 100 employ-
ees will work from Connecti-
cut, while the majority will re-
main in New York.
Microsoft Corp. this past
week told thousands of its
workers in Seattle and the Bay
Area area to work from home
if they are able, and recom-
BYCHIPCUTTER
ANDRACHELFEINTZEIG
Businesses Plan for Disruptions
Employers take steps
to protect workers,
while trying to limit
impact on operations
Nearly four in 10 workers in the U.S., say it isn’t possible for them to work from home for several weeks.BRIAN FLAHERTY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNALSAN FRANCISCO—The big-
gest ride-sharing and food-de-
livery companies in the U.S.
are in talks to set up a fund to
compensate drivers affected
by the novel coronavirus, a
step that highlights the pres-
sure they face to provide
workers with broader employ-
ment protections.
Uber Technologies Inc.,
Lyft Inc., DoorDash Inc., Post-
mates Inc. and Instacart Inc.
are involved in the discussions
and are weighing how to band
together for potential pay-
ments, according to people fa-
miliar with the matter. The
companies are looking at pay-
ing workers in the U.S. who
have been infected or quaran-
tined by a public health
agency. They are expected to
make a decision in the coming
days, the people said.
Some drivers say compen-
sation only available after a
diagnosis or quarantine may
not be enough. As indepen-
dent contractors, most don’t
receive paid time off, which
would allow them to stop
working if they were to expe-
rience any symptoms.
An Uber driver in New York
tested positive for the virus, a
company spokesman said Sat-
urday. The spokesman added
that infections had not spread
between drivers and riders “to
the best of our knowledge.”BYPREETIKARANAFund for
Delivery
Drivers
Discussed
For many people, a
remote work is
looking increasingly
inevitable.