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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

#151

Post by fransje26 »

LunaSea wrote: post #3

They haven't solved the "not sourcing wood illegally from Romanian primordial forests" yet though. Baby steps.

Although I agree that this is not a great sight for IKEA, they did not demand that this wood be cut and put on the market for them. They probably sourced it because it was cheap. But the wood had already been cut by that time.

Unfortunately, I would see this purely as Romania's unwillingness or inability to address the issues leading to the illegal cutting of wood. Possibly the usual suspects of corruption, a lack of will to act, and a lack of "resources".

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

#152

Post by levanten »

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.

As most things it is a balancing act. Children also need to socialize and learn to operate in a social setting independently from their parents. Day cares have an important role in this aspect in our nuclear family based societies. Confining children to be paired to their parents all the time is also not going to be good for their development.

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

#154

Post by HelloNurse »

amtamt wrote: post #85
jp57 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Considered "valued" vs considered "useful" is probably the analogy that should be used here. Subsidizing childcare signals "we value you", while flat increae is signaling "you are useful to us", which can make a lot of impact on moral.

The message of subsidized childcare is not generically "we value you", but "we want you to have children while you work for us", which for most employees is more important than money. Compare to companies that avoid hiring women to avoid dealing with maternity leave.

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

#155

Post by fragmede »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #136
idiliv wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are flexible working hours equivalent to more money?

If you don't have to pay for child care because you can just take off the time to pick up your kids from school, you are saving money your job otherwise forced you to spend. Being forced to commute at peak time costs more - on a retail salary the difference between a peak and off-peak ticket can mean that the first hour or two of working is essentially pointless, as you're just paying back the cost of getting there i…

hours with your child aren't fungible. you can't pay the babysitter to go see the dance recital for you if you want to be the parent instead of the babysitter being the parent. all the money in the world isn't going to make up for missing the soccer game where your kid makes the winning goal.

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

#156

Post by tored »

cess11 wrote: post #101
tored wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This scheme was the consequence of radical Swedish politicians, the Socialdemocrats, that tried to take over Kamprad’s own creation by pure theft. https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%B6ntagarfonder

What do you mean by "own creation"? Kamprad was a fascist that started IKEA with financing from another fascist, and workers did all the work. What exactly do you imagine he contributed? And why are you misrepresenting the article you linked? The idea to transfer some of the profits from large corporations into union managed funds came from the largest trade union confederation, not "radical Swedish politicians". Soc…

I notice that you try to smear Kamprad in order to set the tone in order to defend union take over of companies by force, a typical tactic of the radicals. IKEA was Kamprad's own creation, not the creation of some union bureaucrat.

The Wikipedia article, both the Swedish and the English version, is fuzzy about the details how it worked, they took the company’s own money and use that to buy the company’s shares by forcing them to sell by equity issuance. Goal was to take over private companies and create socialism.

Social democrats were reformist but became radicals during the leadership of Olof Palme. This was not the only one radical thing that they did, another was the famous Pomperipossa taxation where some Swedes payed more than 100% in taxes. This led to other Swedes leaving the country, like the famous movie maker and director Ingmar Bergman.

As I wrote in another comment, this had disastrous consequences for Sweden, large companies left and we went from a consensus culture around business and politics (Saltsjöbadsandan) to a something much more antagonistic.

This radicalized the right wing in Sweden to become neoliberal for many decades to come, which led to other negative consequences.

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

#157

Post by _wueg »

kreyenborgi wrote: post #122

Because it costs them less than onboarding. IKEA would never pay more than they can get away with: https://www.fastcompany.com/3035734/ikea-is-a-nonprofit-and-... (TIL Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA's founder, was a part of the pro-nazi Nysvenska party during WW2. If he were from occupied Norway, he would never even have gotten the chance to start IKEA, people didn't buy from quislings. But Sweden was neutral, a very different…

I don't like big multinationals anymore than the next guy, but if you're going to link an article to strengthen your argument you might consider linking to the original (instead of an article based on a reddit post based on the article): https://www.onlinemba.com/blog/why-ikea-is-non-profit/

Then we also note that the original article was published by an MBA scheme website, apparently re-writing one of The Economists articles (to generate clicks?).

With regards to your TIL, it's also worth noting that Kamprad's memberships were not public information until 1994 (during a "confessional" letter to IKEA employees), by which IKEA had long become an everyday staple in Sweden. Contrary to what was suggested, the Swedish population in the 1950s didn't see a furniture store owned by a Nazi sympathizer and thought "here is someone I can relate to, take my money!".

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

#158

Post by cess11 »

tored wrote: post #156
cess11 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "own creation"? Kamprad was a fascist that started IKEA with financing from another fascist, and workers did all the work. What exactly do you imagine he contributed? And why are you misrepresenting the article you linked? The idea to transfer some of the profits from large corporations into union managed funds came from the largest trade union confederation, not "radical Swedish politicians". Soc…

I notice that you try to smear Kamprad in order to set the tone in order to defend union take over of companies by force, a typical tactic of the radicals. IKEA was Kamprad's own creation, not the creation of some union bureaucrat. The Wikipedia article, both the Swedish and the English version, is fuzzy about the details how it worked, they took the company’s own money and use that to buy the company’s shares by for…

Why the lying?

Kamprad was adjacent to Nysvenska rörelsen, a lifelong friend of it's founder Per Engdahl, who also supplied the initial funding for IKEA.

It's insane to claim that Olof Palme caused a shift away from parliamentary reformism.

And no, we've never had anyone pay "more than 100% in taxes". That's a myth, based on Astrid Lindgrens pretty weird propaganda story about it.

The antagonism between labour and capital is inherent, and you either apply force to subdue the exploited party to this conflict, or you negotiate a deal or parliamentary decision. The latter was the core of Saltsjöbadsavtalet, the reformist position represented by the trade union confederation and the Social Democrats. The radical position would be to form militias and engage in militant revolutionary activities, something which the strong reformist movement managed to guard us from.

The right and the fascists didn't think that was enough, however.

It's absurd to blame the victims of fascism for the rise of fascism instead of those who gain from it.

As for the reasoning behind the löntagarfonder, it's quite obviously immoral for people to become rich and powerful by disenfranchising and exploiting other people. Which is how late modern corporations work, you have owners that take the value produced by other people for themselves. The right agrees that this is a correct description, which is why they made sure pensions and wages have been invested in stock markets and investment funds, so every worker is now forced to participate in the casino.

You could disagree with the particular construct of löntagarfonder, but you would need to be very religious to claim that nature or some god made it good and right that the rich get to keep generational wealth and persist in disenfranchisement and exploitation of other people. It's close to the idea of divine right of kings.

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

#159

Post by DanielHB »

fransje26 wrote: post #151
LunaSea wrote: post #3

They haven't solved the "not sourcing wood illegally from Romanian primordial forests" yet though. Baby steps.

Although I agree that this is not a great sight for IKEA, they did not demand that this wood be cut and put on the market for them. They probably sourced it because it was cheap. But the wood had already been cut by that time. Unfortunately, I would see this purely as Romania's unwillingness or inability to address the issues leading to the illegal cutting of wood. Possibly the usual suspects of corruption, a lack of…

This is a really hard problem in supply chains, it is not like buyers wouldn't change supplier if they knew about the abuses it is just that it is VERY expensive and time consuming to have proper traceability of everything in your supply chain.

At the end of the day it is one very busy person putting purchase orders to some other very busy people. All of them on tight KPIs for their bonuses until eventually it gets to the production site and oops, child labor.

To be honest this problem needs to be fixed top-down through international standards and institutions to ensure proper traceability. Leaving to each company to do it on their own and to country regulations is just stupid and counterproductive.

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

#160

Post by jpc0 »

fragmede wrote: post #155
dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have to pay for child care because you can just take off the time to pick up your kids from school, you are saving money your job otherwise forced you to spend. Being forced to commute at peak time costs more - on a retail salary the difference between a peak and off-peak ticket can mean that the first hour or two of working is essentially pointless, as you're just paying back the cost of getting there i…

hours with your child aren't fungible. you can't pay the babysitter to go see the dance recital for you if you want to be the parent instead of the babysitter being the parent. all the money in the world isn't going to make up for missing the soccer game where your kid makes the winning goal.

Well to be pedantic, with all the money in the world you wouldn't be working for Ikea and the problem wouldn't exist so really that's a problem also solved by money...

Generally though higher paid employees tend to have more sway within a company structure and likely don't need to miss these important events, the win here is that something that was generally true for mid management up for most companies now extends down through all the ranks.

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