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IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

fortune.com

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Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#111

Post by switch007 »

imp0cat wrote: post #106
switch007 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any specific examples of "really good" high end from their current catalogue?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712344 Here's my own (sry) post on how to pick the good stuff.

Person I quoted said good high end. I think you've interpreted good as just "looks good", based on that first minute of the video, which only talks about style.

ÄPPLARYD is a cheaply made sofa that looks nice, with very poor quality fabric just like all IKEA sofas these days

I'm fine with people saying it looks nice but it's tiring when people say it's "high end" and "high quality" and well made

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#112

Post by CalRobert »

jp57 wrote: post #7
misterbwong wrote: post #6

OP's link should really include the full title: Ikea’s boss solved the Swedish retailer’s global ‘unhappy worker’ crisis by raising salaries, introducing flexible working and subsidizing childcare Cutting it off there just makes it seem like ikea thinks "more money = happy workers" when in reality it is more nuanced than that.

Subsidizing childcare is also "more money", but only for some workers. If the others don't notice or don't care that they're getting paid less for the same work that's great for the company. I am in favor of flexible work arrangements, and I have no idea if those have costs to the company, or how much more you'd need to pay the workers to accept the less flexible arrangements.

It's weird, in some ways, that we offer benefits. Give people the money and let them use it how they like. When I lived in California I LOVED the parking cash-out law, it meant a few thousand more a year because I rode a bike to work and didn't need a parking spot.

Although, one challenge with things like childcare is that if you applied this on a society-wide level you wind up with childless people having more money, thereby being better able to outbid parents for essentials like housing (this is why a housing scarcity is so insidious). Of course, whether that's a bad thing or not depends on perspective. I have two kids myself and despite living in Europe childcare was so expensive we dropped to one income.

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#113

Post by CalRobert »

refurb wrote: post #100
39896880 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contributing to the household income. It takes 2 incomes to live anywhere but BFE in the US.

Yeah but a big part of that is because both parents work. You can buy double the house with 2 incomes instead of 1.

Sadly the main consequence of moving to two income families seems to be making everything cost twice as much.

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#114

Post by lucumo »

pton_xd wrote: post #79
lucumo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is better for everyone, and it does not devalue child-rearing at all. It is better for the family: - it has more resources - it has more income diversification It is better for the father: - he doesn't have to carry the weight of income-gathering alone It is better for the mother: - she doesn't have to carry the weight of child-rearing alone - if things go sour, she can maintain herself and/or the family financial…

Half those arguments could be made for child labor. After all, if the child works too then the family has more resources, the father and mother don't have to carry all the weight, the child gets a wider variety of experiences, the father and mother can do something that matches their talents while the child picks up the slack. Right? Who actually cares more about a child's well-being, an employee paid by the hour or…

I would not say that the child gets a wider variety of experiences in child labor compared to child care. Child care is explicitly designed to have a variety of activities for children. Child labor is the low skill kind with lots of repetitive actions. Child care also takes the child's needs into account, like having nap times and eating times designed around children, instead of around a production process.

As for caring about the child's well-being? The parents, which is why they should hire the best people they can afford to do various parts of taking care off them. Hire the best doctor for their medical care, hire the best dentists for their dental care, hire the best teachers for their education, hire the best child-care professionals for daycare.

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#115

Post by AdamN »

boxed wrote: post #103
lifestyleguru wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden has most forests in Europe, yet its IKEA sources wood from Poland and Romania while selling furniture from cardboard. What happens with all this wood?! Unfortunately in Poland and Romania plastic bag of cash and premium German car go very far while Sweden has more climate activists than trees.

Sweden has almost no forests anymore. We have tree plantations. That's a very different thing, and driving around Sweden is absolutely soul crushing for me who grew up running around in the forests during summers.

This is true in the Pacific Northwest too - very depressing.

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#116

Post by lucumo »

cfeduke wrote: post #82
lucumo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is better for everyone, and it does not devalue child-rearing at all. It is better for the family: - it has more resources - it has more income diversification It is better for the father: - he doesn't have to carry the weight of income-gathering alone It is better for the mother: - she doesn't have to carry the weight of child-rearing alone - if things go sour, she can maintain herself and/or the family financial…

For all these "it is better" points, it still doesn't even begin to outweigh the "you get to spend time with your children" point. This is the most important part of child rearing and once they've moved on you'll be thankful you spent your time with them instead of... whatever all that income/societal optimization stuff is. You get to raise your children once.

I guess you missed the part where I said that it is better for the child. Reducing my argument to "income/societal optimization stuff" is arguing in bad faith.

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#117

Post by nytesky »

refurb wrote: post #100
39896880 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contributing to the household income. It takes 2 incomes to live anywhere but BFE in the US.

Yeah but a big part of that is because both parents work. You can buy double the house with 2 incomes instead of 1.

Elizabeth Warren warned of this in the two income trap in 2003.

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#118

Post by petre »

Joker_vD wrote: post #95
petre wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why they source their wood in a country with shitty legislation and corrupt politicians. Because they are "working on it". Their wood supplier is operating on a loss, so no taxes paid to the state.

Russia for the last 8 years have been pushing its woodcutting industry pretty hard at placing a QR code at every single chopped tree and uploading it to the government's centralized DB, analogous to what they do with marking the produced ethanol. Of course, I imagine that at the customs/borders the situation is much more... "solvable", if you know the right people.

Sure. That's only the legal logging operations. Most of the operators also so illegal logging in parallel. They might ship wood pulp or other wood based products instead of logs.

Don't even start about ethanol, because they make samagon (moonshine) out of anything that ferments, including chicken poop. It's just not sold in stores, you "get" it on the black market.

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#119

Post by belter »

dredmorbius wrote: post #98
notpushkin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one is 75 characters: > IKEA solved ‘unhappy worker’ crisis by raising salaries, flexible schedules It's not really grammatically correct I think, but otherwise seems like a good compromise: we only leave out childcare subsidies, which is another monetary compensation, and do mention flexible work schedules which is a non-monetary benefit and might be crucial to IKEA's strategy.

That's actually pretty good, and I'd suggest you email it to the mods: hn@ycombinator.com Wordsmithing titles is a bit of an art and often a challenge.

Agree. Only mods can change now. I posted it and English is not my native language. Just Creole.

As mentioned above, was trying to fit the title without editorializing....

Re: IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries

#120

Post by nonrandomstring »

dredmorbius wrote: post #56
misterbwong wrote: post #6

OP's link should really include the full title: Ikea’s boss solved the Swedish retailer’s global ‘unhappy worker’ crisis by raising salaries, introducing flexible working and subsidizing childcare Cutting it off there just makes it seem like ikea thinks "more money = happy workers" when in reality it is more nuanced than that.

HN has an 80 character title max length. The full original title is 157 characters, nearly double that. The alternatives generally suggested are to shorten the original title, omitting needless descriptives or words (e.g., counts, emotives, etc.) if possible, or barring that, to substitute alternative text, preferably from a subtitle or passage from the article (both to avoid editorialising): dang comment: https://ne…

> Ikea’s boss solved the Swedish retailer’s global ‘unhappy worker’ crisis by raising salaries, introducing flexible working and subsidizing childcare

Kid aid plus dosh foils toil says Swede sofa shop boss

surely there's a command line tool for abstract2dailymail

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