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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

#141

Post by switch007 »

Iulioh wrote: post #139
switch007 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah ok, no specific examples then. That's a poor heuristic that's repeated ad nauseum. The trouble is even expensive IKEA lines are mostly poor quality but they have such good marketing and styling that people refuse to believe it But if you're happy with the most expensive IKEA products, good for you!

What answer would have satisfied you? A breakdown of every ikea item and every specific detail for it? Yes, i'm talking for experience and i don't really have any data to back this up, i just have a lot of bad experience with any other furniture builder and not a lot of problems with ikea

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

I find it funny you've asked another poster for the exact price of a piece of Amish furniture. But won't substantiate your grand claims. Interesting

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

#142

Post by Edd1CC »

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).

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

#143

Post by tored »

ornornor wrote: post #99
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

I read the English version (which is rather short) and didn't quite understand: did the government try to buy up shares of IKEA and take it over in the interest of the state/workers?

Not in the interest of the workers, in the interest of the union (LO), they used the companies own money to do this, ie take the company own money and use that to buy the company’s shares by forcing them to sell by equity issuance.

The end goal was to take over companies and be owned by the unions.

This had disastrous consequences for Sweden, many companies left, one was IKEA. It created an hostile climate, instead of the previous decades of consensus between buiness and politics it created an antagonistic atmosphere.

The Social democrats lost their first election in 40 years.

The system was scrapped in the early nineties.

Kamprad got paranoid over the realization that politicians and bureaucrats could take over his life work and thus he moves to Switzerland and then created this non-profit to make sure it always remained in his family.

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

#145

Post by johnwalkr »

Iulioh wrote: post #10
mensetmanusman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a primordial forest, and why is its wood so easy to break when in the form of a cabinet?

A lot of high end ikea stuff is REALLY good, it's not all honeycomb crap. Honestly it's ikea or luxury stuff, anything else does not make sense. You can't beat ikea quality and quality at any price point.

I agree, at the low end it's miles ahead of pricier, worse stuff from Wal-Mart or Conforama (in Europe), covered in wallpaper instead of synthetic veneer. At the higher end, it's very good value. In the middle, it's hard to even find competing products.

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

#146

Post by johnwalkr »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #129
Iulioh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of high end ikea stuff is REALLY good, it's not all honeycomb crap. Honestly it's ikea or luxury stuff, anything else does not make sense. You can't beat ikea quality and quality at any price point.

Bullshit. Amish folks are feeling the economic pain of high interest rates and have seen sales slow significantly. You can get crazy good deals on Amish made furniture right now, and both from in terms of the quality of materials and the quality of the assembly, it will be superior to anything at similar price point to Ikea. Folks keep acting like it's still 2022 and that we are somehow in a ZIRP era. It's not, and m…

That only helps people that live near an Amish community. Ikea is available globally.

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

#147

Post by dmurray »

bombcar wrote: post #46
QuarterReptile wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, and presumably elsewhere, no way. My wife tried to negotiate a higher salary in exchange for forgoing health insurance a few times, to no avail.

Individually it usually doesn't work unless you're at a level where there is "only one of you" - think C-level exec. But collectively it can work; the company may talk to the union and offer either X benefit which costs $Y or $Y applied to salaries.

It won't save as much as you might expect, though, because the insurance provider also knows that the people opting out of the scheme would have (on average) cost the provider less to provide healthcare for.

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

#148

Post by johnwalkr »

stephenr wrote: post #58
Iulioh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of high end ikea stuff is REALLY good, it's not all honeycomb crap. Honestly it's ikea or luxury stuff, anything else does not make sense. You can't beat ikea quality and quality at any price point.

To be honest they are pretty clear about it in their packaging. If it says solid wood it's probably fine. If it says particle board or fibre board or something other than solid wood it's an "assemble it once and never move it again" piece at best, and a "keep it for a few years" piece at worst. It's not like it's a problem unique to ikea. Buying particle board or mdf furniture is always going to give you a much worse…

I've found even the cheap stuff to be long-lasting if you disassemble it before moving it. Carrying or pushing shelves in a way that turns them into a parallelogram is what damages them.

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

#149

Post by bitcharmer »

vintermann wrote: post #93

> “IKEA respects the rights of co-workers to join, form or not to join a union of their choice without fear of reprisal, interference, intimidation or harassment,” a spokesperson said. From my understanding, it's illegal to not say this in the US - or at least, saying something that would contradict any of it will land you in hot water with NLRB. How much they actually respects the rights of workers, is another quest…

You make it sound as if the US is a paragon of workers rights. From what I can say it's pretty bad in the land of the free. Nowhere near the civilised world at least.

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

#150

Post by autoexec »

callalex wrote: post #78
djbusby wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart had a recent profit of like $5B. How is that not having money? https://stock.walmart.com/financials/quarterly-results/defau...

If they distributed that evenly to every single employee it would only work out to $2k/person. Not nothing, but not life changing.

Not only would it be life changing for most of their employees, but consider how much the executives are making (https://www1.salary.com/WALMART-INC-Executive-Salaries.html)

How much do you think Suresh Kumar's life would change if he made 10 million next year instead of 14.5 million? Do you think he would have to stop buying the groceries he usually does, or that he would have to cancel a vacation? It wouldn't change his life at all. Same for the rest of the people in that list. Every one of them could take just a little less and increase pay for the people who actually do the majority of the work necessary for the company to function and be profitable and it would make no impact on the day to day lives of those executives. Absolutely nothing life changing.

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