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Amazon’s business model meets Sweden’s labor unions

politico.eu

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

#71

Post by josefx »

UK-Al05 wrote: post #62
josefx wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shutd…

That the "essential products list" does not exist, which is the key complaint in any discussion about this. Amazon invented a requirement that does not exist to claim that the requirements are to vague to implement. The list the court provided is explicit in the court documents, meanwhile the "essential products" is subject to the imagination of every armchair free market capitalist. You wont find it googling, you wont find it going through court documents, you will only find an unending sea of discussion how stupid it is for a court to require something as vague as selling only "essential products" and how Amazon shutting down its french warehouses was the only sane response to this requirement.

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

This was an union driven lawsuit. Shutting down operations to stamp out union activity is rather common with companies large enough to cover the short term costs of it.

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

#72

Post by Krisando »

dsign wrote: post #10

Let's see how that goes. Everybody in Sweden right now has an uneasy feeling about Amazon, and I have the impression that if people could have a referendum on the matter, Amazon wouldn't be allowed in.

> Everybody in Sweden right now has an uneasy feeling about Amazon

The few Swedish friends I showed this article to were actually happy to hear that they might have a local Amazon coming soon?

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

#73

Post by vladvasiliu »

bkor wrote: post #12
docdeek wrote: post #3

> Initially, Swedish and Nordic clients will be mainly served from German warehouses — known as fulfillment centers in Amazon-speak — with trucks driving up to Sweden through Denmark, and a fulfillment center operated by local partner Kuehne + Nagel in the Swedish town of Eskilstuna, near Stockholm. During the lockdown here in France Amazon was forced to close some warehouses and filfillment centers under pressure fr…

> After a week or so we started getting our deliveries again, usually with an extra day of delay because it was being fulfilled from Germany. In some other industries (shipping) you have to be really careful to do that. There's various laws against breaking up (the effectiveness of) a strike. That's currently often only applied within one country. If Amazon does something similar more often enough they'll probably ge…

As others have pointed out, this wasn't a strike. The government imposed some rules with steep penalties in case of failure to comply. Amazon figured they would rather stop operations altogether while figuring how to set this up.

One notable difference with a strike is that employees kept receiving their pay.

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

#74

Post by Krisando »

eckesicle wrote: post #29

I think the union rep from Handels is correct. They'll get Amazon to cave. Amazon is the quintessential hill to die on for the unions and the labour laws are incredibly strong in Sweden. Here's how I think it might play out if Amazon refuses to sign: - Handels requests collective bargaining - Amazon declines but are sued in court and loses (you are required to bargain) - Negotiations fail and Amazon refuses to sign -…

> They'll get Amazon to cave.

I'm not so sure, and I'll explain why below on one of your points.

> in the end garbage collectors will refuse to pick up garbage at their warehouse. Electricians will refuse to service their warehouse. Plumbers will not plumb. Workers, builders, postmen etc will all simply stop servicing Amazon. Companies that deal with Amazon can also be put in a blockade.

Outside of employing builders directly, it's my understanding that Amazon has previously operated in-house alternatives for those, particularly to reduce the costs in their supply chain and operations. I wonder if this would lead to Amazon instead scaling up the self sufficiency instead?

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

#75

Post by UK-Al05 »

josefx wrote: post #71
UK-Al05 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shutd…

That the "essential products list" does not exist, which is the key complaint in any discussion about this. Amazon invented a requirement that does not exist to claim that the requirements are to vague to implement. The list the court provided is explicit in the court documents, meanwhile the "essential products" is subject to the imagination of every armchair free market capitalist. You wont find it googling, you wo…

What requirements did they place on amazon then?

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

#76

Post by AnssiH »

Semaphor wrote: post #63
ornornor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I’m not sure we have co-mingling here

We do, the seller setting for that ("Barcode preference") is there in the Seller Central Europe and the help text explicitly talks about commingling.

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

#77

Post by aucontraire »

progre wrote: post #15
matsemann wrote: post #6

Good luck with Sweden's one hour lunch break. And the fika breaks every hour as well. Sorry Jeff, no forcing workers to pee in bottles among the shelves[1] in Sweden to drive up the stock price. I hope the Nordic countries wont bow down to Amazon's exploits. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse...

Well the lunch break is not work time in Sweden so if you have a 1 hour lunch you just work longer in the afternoon. 30 minutes lunch (scheduled to fit the shifts) has been the norm when I have done blue collar work. I don't know anyone who has fika every hour. 15 minutes breakfast break and 15 minutes in the afternoon (on the clock) is normal.

You are entitled to 5 minutes (paid) break per hour worked in a shift, which the employer has the right to consolidate in various (but not endless) ways. This is on top the right to a lunch break which has separate rules. I think that both of these are is in the labour law and not allowed to substantially re-negotiated. (Many things across the various labour laws are explicitly allowed to be overridden by CBA).

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

#78

Post by guerrilla »

jeltz wrote: post #64
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.

Swedish naiveté always amazes me.

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

#79

Post by Semaphor »

AnssiH wrote: post #76
Semaphor wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I’m not sure we have co-mingling here We do, the seller setting for that ("Barcode preference") is there in the Seller Central Europe and the help text explicitly talks about commingling.

Thanks. Do you know why the counterfeit problem does not seem as much of a problem here?
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