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The other side of the story... https://www.france24.com/en/20200414-french-court-faults-amazon-over-virus-safety-limits-deliveries https://www.france24.com/en/2

• onli 6y ago
  To be fair, if the deadline is short and if it's indeed unclear which activity Amazon is allowed to do now, taking a moment to figure that out is not that bad of an idea.
  • mirekrusin 6y ago
    Yeah, 24h, sometimes I'm waiting for simple email reply longer, bit tight.
  • bluntfang 6y ago
    >taking a moment to figure that out is not that bad of an idea. This is a tax. The whole point is that they should've been doing this from the start. They've had 4 months of moments to figure out how to keep their workers safe, and the fact that they have union busting history makes this all worse.
    • syshum 6y ago
      The best way to keep the workers safe, is to send them home Now people complain that they are sending them home Amazon is just todays "big evil corporation" and nothing they do will be "correct"
      • barbecue_sauce 6y ago
        If the shoe fits.
      • bluntfang 6y ago
        >Now people complain that they are sending them home AFAICT the only people complaining are the ones complaining that Amazon shouldn't have to protect their employees.
        • deleted 6y ago
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  • munchbunny 6y ago
    The court's ask seems reasonable given the circumstances, but 24 hours to deal with a complex logistical problem is... kind of like management pulling deadlines out of their ass that no rational person thinks is actually possible. If the deadline was, say, 1 week, then I'd agree that it seems like a fair demand.
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • makapuf 6y ago
      1 week delay for the whole company would cost them 7 millions IIUC. not that expensive all things considered.
  • ldng 6y ago
    To be fair, they've been warned several times ... If they're not happy, they can leave. It's not like we don't have other (law complying) marketplaces.
    • bdcravens 6y ago
      That's essentially what they've done, at least temporarily.
• JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > raising a middle finger and threatening to suspend all deliveries I don’t see this. The court gave a short deadline for meeting an ambiguous target with respect to a complex international logistics network. Amazon’s choices are to sloppily comply or halt until they can properly do so. They’re choosing the latter. That keeps warehouse workers safe. And it gives Amazon time to figure out how to only ship that which the court would consider essential. The only loser is the French consumer, and they (will eventually) have other options.
  • mirekrusin 6y ago
    I think not only "French customer", I order stuff from amazon UK while living in Switzerland and often goods go through sorting/whatever facilities in France. Maybe it'll just get routed different way without much impact, not sure.
  • bilbo0s 6y ago
    >Amazon’s choices are to sloppily comply or halt until they can properly do so. And if we're being intellectually honest here, you can't even "sloppily" comply with ambiguous targets.
    • DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
      It sounds like you're raising an interesting point, but it's not exactly clear what your logic is. Mind clarifying?
  • wpietri 6y ago
    Almost all laws and legal orders have some ambiguity to them. Sloppy compliance is the correct choice both here and generally, because a) demonstrates to the court that you broadly agree and will respect the court's authority, and b) allows you to go about your business as much as possible. Given Amazon's recent behaviors around worker protection, I expect their action here is chosen for maximum drama, an attempt to pressure the French government, and to warn other governments that they will disrupt the delivery of essential supplies if they don't get their way. So I agree with harryh; it's a middle finger. It's been deeply disappointing to me. I've been on the fence with Amazon for a while about labor issues. But their behavior recently has crossed a line. I canceled my Prime membership yesterday. If they don't rapidly reform, it'll be the end of my 23 years as a customer.
• bilbo0s 6y ago
  I don't really know the French legal system but I'm pretty intimately familiar with health and healthcare law in the US. While there's not a lot of information in the Bloomberg article, I'm fairly certain "doubling down on efforts to ensure worker safety" is not enough. (It's possible the court gave an actual list of steps that need to be taken in that regard? But if it did, that was not highlighted in the article.) Bottom line, based on the little that was in the article, if coronavirus shows up in your facility despite your doubled down efforts you're still liable. A court of law is a court of law in the US. The liability would be with you. Again, maybe there was some more clear instruction given? But if not, there's a lot of rope there to hang yourself with. Best to just stop doing business in that jurisdiction. At least until you have a better idea what's going on.
• hedora 6y ago
  My reading of this situation is that they were doing everthing they could to ensure worker safety while continuing to operate, got sued because their efforts weren’t perfect. The courts ordered them to meet an unrealistic bar, so the only way to comply with the court order is to shut down for a week. This is what the judge ordered. If the judge didn’t want to create artificial shortages during a crisis, they should have thought more carefully before deciding the case. Note that Amazon’s appealing the ruling, so hopefully the judge will be overruled.
• tanilama 6y ago
  24 hour deadline is a middle finger by itself. Mission impossible really. So court had set them up to break the law.
  • vkou 6y ago
    The 24 hour deadline came after Amazon has been failing to comply for over a month. A month of non-compliance is the middle finger. The 24 hour deadline is a 'This is your last warning'.
    • tanilama 6y ago
      Then I would say shutting down is court's intention. Amazon doesn't do anything wrong here. If it can't improve in a month, surely it can't improve in 24 hours.
      • vkou 6y ago
        Can't, or won't? I'm betting it's the latter. Amazon refuses to say why it can't comply. If they couldn't comply, why won't they say why? Which parts of the rules are arbitrary and difficult to comply with?
• grecy 6y ago
  > Which one seems like a smarter response? Obviously the one that makes higher profit. /s
• 1337shadow 6y ago
  It seems like French government is going to pay for most of the workers salaries in both case: a plan that you may activate in France in case of "substential order decrease", which is caused by any outcome of the current situation as I understand it.
• deleted 6y ago
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• jshevek 6y ago
  >raising a middle finger >Which one seems like a smarter response? Amazon's response seems reasonable to me, under the circumstances. Your characterization of their response is unfair.
  • boudin 6y ago
    Yes, I agree. I'm not an Amazon fan at all and disagree with most of the behaviour of this company, but in this case it seems to be the right thing to do. Stopping while figuring out how to adapt their business seems logical and the safest thing to do for its employees.
• mekoka 6y ago
  Well the article is consistent with the ones you posted. I don't see any other side of the story. It's rather a continuation of the same story. “Our interpretation suggests that we may be forced to suspend the activity of our distribution centers in France,” Amazon said in a statement. “The court gave categories that are very general and create ambiguity that would be too hard to implement, this is a complex business to run,” a spokeswoman for Amazon told Bloomberg. Amazon isn’t able to reduce its activity and must shut down completely “because of the terms and conditions of the court order, especially because of their ambiguity and the absence of definition,” the e-commerce giant said in an internal memo that was seen by Bloomberg. The company will suspend activity at its fulfillment centers for an “initial period” of five days starting on April 16, it said. 5 days, with 100% of their pay btw. That does not sound like a "threat" to me. Why frame it as such?
  • forgotmylogin2 6y ago
    "Threat" is a one of the biggest weasel words I see used by the media to influence their readers. If the subject of the article is meant to be sympathetic, the media will instead use the word "warn" which is more neutral. If the subject is meant to be a villain, they'll use "threat" since it has a connotation of violence. This headline could have easily been written as "Amazon states it may suspend French deliveries ..." but that doesn't portray Amazon as negatively as the author wanted. Amazon is meant to be the villain in this article.
• ineedasername 6y ago
  I think 5 days to design & implement changes encompassing an ambiguous set of requirements in such a truly massive systems isn't unreasonable, and isn't a "middle finger". I do, however, think it serves as a signal to the French courts that rulings of this sort can have unintended consequences, and perhaps more care should be taken: 24 hours is not a reasonable deadline for such an undertaking. It seems strange the court did not enter into a dialogue about how long changes would take: It is an obvious issue that would need to be addressed. Had they done so, the court, rather than Amazon, could have decided what happens in the interim before a reduction to "essentials" could be implemented.
• mr_toad 6y ago
  Amazon seems to have no clue what they’re selling a lot of the time (they are often criticised for selling counterfeit or inferior products). I doubt they could comply with significantly upping their product control.
• eveningcoffee 6y ago
  They threaten to stop an essential service during a national emergency? Yes, definitely a smart move.