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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

#181

Post by justsomehnguy »

itsoktocry wrote: post #176
HelloNurse wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I live in a country with generous maternity leave. I have a family, and we're grateful we could access it. But maternity leave is tricky for businesses. My anecdote: I worked for a company whose long-time CEO retired. After an involved search, the company found a replacement. She was onboarded and started getting in a groove, then 6 months in it was announced she would be leaving for a year of maternity leave. So we…

> Sure, but the strange thing here is nobody did anything wrong

And if anyone did anything for the business...

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

#182

Post by amtamt »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #110
amtamt wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there really a perceived difference on the employees side? If anything subsidized childcare feels like charity and I don't want charity, I want to be paid well for my work, so I can take care of my family.

For some people there is no percieved differnce, some would think employer is trying to save on taxes, while for some (many?) there is a real percieved difference as being seen a member of family rather than a disposable hired hand.

For an analogy, one can be given money instead of being invited to a social gathering. One might feel offended, while other may feel happier.

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

#183

Post by GLGirty »

malfist wrote: post #20
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.

Look, I'm a DINK, don't have kids, never plan to have kids, don't even like kids. But child care is important to both the parents and society. Not subsidizing child care often means one parent has to leave the workforce, and that's almost always worse off for everyone than if they were able to afford child care and can contribute

For single parents, this is the choice between working or not working.

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

#184

Post by FarMcKon »

akira2501 wrote: post #133
ornornor wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that this kind of scheme is still possible in our society gives me very little hope we’ll be able to solve any of our major, species threatening problems. But at least some of us will be filthy rich when the party stops.

> this kind of scheme is still possible They used to be in Switzerland for the tax structure anyways. The move back to Sweden and the lax regulation was designed to repatriate the business. > species threatening problems The human species is facing a threatening problem? I think I know the problems you're talking about, but it seems to me, they're mostly threatening to the current social and economic order, and not t…

"It Could Be Worse" is the absolute worst apologist argument, for anything. Please never excuse something bad, because you can imagine, or see somewhere else something even worse.

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

#185

Post by timeon »

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…

> If he were from occupied Norway, he would never even have gotten the chance to start IKEA, people didn't buy from quislings

How about Knut Hamsun?

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

#186

Post by malfist »

from-nibly wrote: post #22
malfist wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I'm a DINK, don't have kids, never plan to have kids, don't even like kids. But child care is important to both the parents and society. Not subsidizing child care often means one parent has to leave the workforce, and that's almost always worse off for everyone than if they were able to afford child care and can contribute

Right, because raising kids isn't contributing to society.

Sorry if I wasn't clear, but that wasn't my intention with the statement I made, I focused way too much on the "contributing to GDP" aspect of it.

Raising kids is absolutely contributing to society.

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

#187

Post by malfist »

taskforcegemini wrote: post #162
defrost wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly why child care workers who look after packs of 15 to 20 kids at a time should be highly valued and paid a decent wage. It's how villages worked in the past, most adults did non child related work much of the time, some adults and some older children kept an eye on what the pooled group of kids were up to .. watching, sometimes educating, sometimes leading them in "work" building things, cooking, huntin…

raising wages doesn't equal better quality

But low wages certainly doesn't equal better quality.

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

#188

Post by AndrewKemendo »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #51
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not any more complicated than short term rent seeking from investors That’s literally it Investors hire managers that will ensure that investors remain the top priority for the lifecycle of the firm To such an extent that they made up fake rules like the idea that corporate officers have a fiduciary requirement to investors like a mutual fund manager does This is because the goal of financializing a company is t…

> rules like the idea that corporate officers have a fiduciary requirement to investors What makes it a fake rule? Why should it be any other way within bounds of the law? > It’s not any more complicated than short term rent seeking from investors Any evidence? Doesn't "short term rent seeking" contradict "top priority for the lifecycle of the firm"? Would love a reference or two that investors force this. I know act…

It’s a fake rule because it applies a logical construct to a set of groups that it doesn’t apply to

A fiduciary in the finance sense is specifically intentionally hired by somebody to manage their money that is not the case for a CEO in a corporation

You don’t need more than one activist investor for all of your other investors to go along with it so the whole point is, as the lead that you bring in other investors with people who only care about market cap and that’s the whole point of managing a board

Beyond that you’re starting to get a whole crop of CEOs and that’s how they believe they believe they are the investor class and they’re gonna do everything in the act like the investor class including fucking over every employee they can

If you see a CEO with 90% of a company, you know for a fact, they’re trying to be Potemkin dictator

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

#189

Post by dagw »

Edd1CC wrote: post #142
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…

Sweden was "neutral" but big on nazism topics such as eugenics. I spoke about this yesterday with some Swedes (I recently moved to Sweden).

It'd be more correct to say that the Nazis were big on Swedish topics such as eugenics. Sweden was world leading in eugenics 'research' for decades before the Nazi party was founded, and the State Institute for Eugenics Research wasn't closed down until 1958.

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

#190

Post by prmoustache »

throwaway7ahgb wrote: post #173
prmoustache wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We like it or not 1 person in the household taking care of the kids skew the relationship between 2 adults into dependentship as the one working outside perceived to be the one bringing the income (while both should) and the one taking care of the kids and household end up feeling dependent. Some may try to be objective and tell yourself the other one is contributing as much, that is not the way it works in our guts,…

The situation you describe has been happening for most of humanity. IMO society is worse now with dual income + strangers raising children. The only major benefits I've seen are 1) Woman have access to birth control 2) Women have equal rights. Everything else is debatable as "better".

I wouldn't call that strangers raising children. Obviously it depends on the amount of hours per day but it is not like you are sending them to boarding school and you only see them during the week-ends.

I also felt that putting my daughters to daycare helped them socially.

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