Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

politico.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 149 posts

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#61

Post by eridan2 »

distances wrote: post #33
redgc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I forgot to add: Sweden does have some great gig worker to-the-door delivery companies that have sprung up, particularly around small items like from online pharmacies. When you fulfill an order using those companies they typically have a great monitoring app to track where your delivery is, to input your building door code if necessary, inform you when it's been left outside your door, etc. I always find i…

Germany has interesting approach for this: if you can't be reached, the delivery will be left to whichever neighbour or coffee shop happens to accept it. You'll get notified where it was left, and then just go knocking. It's quite weird at first but in my experience works surprisingly well. Very rarely one has to go queue in the post office to collect the parcel.

My friends from Germany told me the small packages from Amazon are left at your door

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#62

Post by UK-Al05 »

josefx wrote: post #60
UK-Al05 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French goverment was trying to apply rules which had a lot of grey area. Amazon decided it was too risky so shut down.

The court provided a list of Amazon(TM) categories from the Amazon (TM) website and told Amazon to restrict its operations to those. You wont find any of the "essential products" nonsense outside of Amazons own court documents and press releases.

I don't understand. The goverment created an a product list of items to sell, which amazon then tried to create an essential product list which contained these items?

I don't understand whats the problem with that?

According to Amazon they found it difficult to workout what was and wasn't an essential item according to the rules. I would imagine with a catalog as big amazon that's probably true. They decided to shutdown instead which is perfectly rational given the amount fines placed upon them if they did accidentally ship an item. The goverment got what they requested, no non essential items shipped.

I would imagine amazon would have preferred to keep operating, so I believe them.

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#63

Post by Semaphor »

ornornor wrote: post #58
redgc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always attempt to shop from Amazon Germany because (a) larger variety of items, and (b) I feel I can trust the reviews there. Have you found Swedish e-commerce sites to have enough reliable reviews to buy anything with confidence, or do you tend to buy products that you can find reviews of elsewhere? I joke to my wife, "If 500 Germans say it's good, I'm sold"

Aren’t amazon reviews one of the most gamed review system ever? Also, stock co-mingling. That alone makes me buy as little from amazon and as much from elsewhere as I can.

There are far fewer fake reviews at amazon.de (well, compared to what I read on HN) and surprisingly many that are high quality. I think it might be partially because the reviews would need to be in German so you have fewer low-cost ways to have them created.

And I’m not sure we have co-mingling here because I never heard of the problems that seem to be common in the US (/ on HN) with it and also never experienced it myself (I spend around 2.200 € on Amazon per year)

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#64

Post by jeltz »

guerrilla wrote: post #14

Assuming that local production reduces costs, the question seems to become whether they can leverage demand to break the unions or not. This comes from the two further assumptions that they don't have any other leverage to do so (outside of corruption) and even though the benefit of satsifying the market presumably outststrips the cost, they will do everything they can to reduce costs anyway. Am I missing anything? I…

How would they be able to leverage demand? I can't see our politicians wanting to get involved in this fight, especially not on Amazon's side. Why would they want to support Amazon against both unions and againast Swedish companies? I think they will just remove themselves from the conflict and let it play out. I can't see a scenario where Amazon does not have to agree to collective bargaining.

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#65

Post by Semaphor »

eridan2 wrote: post #61
distances wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has interesting approach for this: if you can't be reached, the delivery will be left to whichever neighbour or coffee shop happens to accept it. You'll get notified where it was left, and then just go knocking. It's quite weird at first but in my experience works surprisingly well. Very rarely one has to go queue in the post office to collect the parcel.

My friends from Germany told me the small packages from Amazon are left at your door

That’s only the case if it was delivered by Deutsche Post (instead of DHL) and does not fit into your mailbox, or, in the case of DHL, when you told them to do it via their website.

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#66

Post by mattmanser »

redgc wrote: post #19
navidfarhadi wrote: post #9

I'm very interested to see how Amazon's entry into the Swedish market plays out. I used to shop a lot on Amazon back when I lived in the SF Bay Area and thought I would miss it when I moved to Stockholm but honestly that has not been the case. I get 1-2 day shipping from other online retailers in Sweden anyway (like CDON and Webhallen) and there is quite fierce competition between a few of the bigger names in the gam…

I always attempt to shop from Amazon Germany because (a) larger variety of items, and (b) I feel I can trust the reviews there. Have you found Swedish e-commerce sites to have enough reliable reviews to buy anything with confidence, or do you tend to buy products that you can find reviews of elsewhere? I joke to my wife, "If 500 Germans say it's good, I'm sold"

How do you feel you can trust Amazon reviews? In the UK they've become really bad, obvious fakes, loads of low quality products dropshipped from Alibaba/China with tons of 5 stars.

The only reviews you can vaguely trust are the non-5 star ones.

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#67

Post by wasmitnetzen »

ornornor wrote: post #58
redgc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always attempt to shop from Amazon Germany because (a) larger variety of items, and (b) I feel I can trust the reviews there. Have you found Swedish e-commerce sites to have enough reliable reviews to buy anything with confidence, or do you tend to buy products that you can find reviews of elsewhere? I joke to my wife, "If 500 Germans say it's good, I'm sold"

Aren’t amazon reviews one of the most gamed review system ever? Also, stock co-mingling. That alone makes me buy as little from amazon and as much from elsewhere as I can.

I feel like to stock co-mingling issue is far less pronounced in Europe compared to what the American crowd here on HN says. I live in Europe, and never got a fake product from Amazon.

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#68

Post by wasmitnetzen »

dmitriid wrote: post #2

The most relevant quote: > If they can operate in Germany, they can operate in Sweden.

As a German living in Sweden, I wouldn't be so sure about that. Granted, compared to the US, both are on a similar level, but if you look at them individually, unions are a lot stronger in Sweden.

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#69

Post by Krisando »

Jolter wrote: post #31
bkor wrote: post #7

What a weird article. Loads of international companies operate in countries with wildly different laws, standards of living, disposable income, etc. Why compare Sweden with a Polish warehouse workers and not investigate how e.g. Amazon.fr operates? That country at least goes on strike significantly more often (probably more so than the rest of the EU combined). Meaning, one year I noticed them on strike every other w…

I don't know if you've quite understood how Swedish labor law differs from the French. Sweden is a little unique in that we have fewer strikes than most European countries. The reason is the "fredsplikt": as long as there is a collective bargaining agreement in place, if a worker goes on strike they can be legally laid off for shirking work. So, strikes will only happen at most every two-three years when the current…

> In contrast, in most contries (notably France), unions may do "political strikes" to express opinions.

Comparing any European country to France for striking is a bit absurd honestly.

Political strikes to express opinions is not really common in most European countries. It happens, rarely.

Re: Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

#70

Post by negamax »

me_me_me wrote: post #57
negamax wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also need to account for safety of goods and stability of their assets and operations. So they will need stable political climate to operate.

Then Poland is a great choice, nothing has change politically since 70s. We have government that is built on anti-communist PR, whilst using Soviet guidebook on how to run a country. Including censorship, misinformation, erosion of democratic institution and processes. Heck they even have an ex-communist prosecutor in government! So you can bet Poland is political concrete block. (this is attempt at slightly humorous…

Got me! Haha!
Post reply on HN