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> Initially, Swedish and Nordic clients will be mainly served from German warehouses — known as fulfillment centers in Amazon-speak — with trucks driving up to

> Initially, Swedish and Nordic clients will be mainly served from German warehouses — known as fulfillment centers in Amazon-speak — with trucks driving up to Sweden through Denmark, and a fulfillment center operated by local partner Kuehne + Nagel in the Swedish town of Eskilstuna, near Stockholm. During the lockdown here in France Amazon was forced to close some warehouses and filfillment centers under pressure from unions (among other pressures, of course). It was big news for a week or so, and deliveries seemed to pause briefly before being picked up from German warehouses, too. After a week or so we started getting our deliveries again, usually with an extra day of delay because it was being fulfilled from Germany. I suspect they will eventually do a deal with the Swedish unions but that, in the meantime, trucking things in from Germany will allow them to become established.

bkor 6y ago
> After a week or so we started getting our deliveries again, usually with an extra day of delay because it was being fulfilled from Germany. In some other industries (shipping) you have to be really careful to do that. There's various laws against breaking up (the effectiveness of) a strike. That's currently often only applied within one country. If Amazon does something similar more often enough they'll probably get hit with an EU-wide law instead. It's always weird that internet based companies aren't treated like any other company. Unfair competition IMO.
- docdeek 6y ago
  This was less a strike than a forced government shutdown due to COVID-19. amazon couldn’t satisfy the French government that the French warehouses and fulfillment centers were going to be safe for workers, so they were shutdown. I assume that the German ones satisfied the German government to German standards, and so were kept open.
  - josefx 6y ago
    > so they were shutdown They weren't shut down, that was Amazons decision. The court only told them to reduce operations to specific categories of its store site - the idea was to somehow reduce operations to a safe amount as Amazon had repeatedly failed to so by itself. Amazon then made up the nebulous "essential products" category and made sure to complain loudly about the supposed nonsense the court required while it shut down french warehouses completely.
    - UK-Al05 6y ago
      French goverment was trying to apply rules which had a lot of grey area. Amazon decided it was too risky so shut down.
      - josefx 6y ago
        The court provided a list of Amazon(TM) categories from the Amazon (TM) website and told Amazon to restrict its operations to those. You wont find any of the "essential products" nonsense outside of Amazons own court documents and press releases.
        UK-Al05 6y ago
        I don't understand. The goverment created an a product list of items to sell, which amazon then tried to create an essential product list which contained these items? I don't understand whats the problem with that? According to Amazon they found it difficult to workout what was and wasn't an essential item according to the rules. I would imagine with a catalog as big amazon that's probably true. They decided to shutdown instead which is perfectly rational given the amount fines placed upon them if they did accidentally ship an item. The goverment got what they requested, no non essential items shipped. I would imagine amazon would have preferred to keep operating, so I believe them.
        josefx 6y ago
        That the "essential products list" does not exist, which is the key complaint in any discussion about this. Amazon invented a requirement that does not exist to claim that the requirements are to vague to implement. The list the court provided is explicit in the court documents, meanwhile the "essential products" is subject to the imagination of every armchair free market capitalist. You wont find it googling, you wont find it going through court documents, you will only find an unending sea of discussion how stupid it is for a court to require something as vague as selling only "essential products" and how Amazon shutting down its french warehouses was the only sane response to this requirement. > I would imagine amazon would have preferred to keep operating, so I believe them. This was an union driven lawsuit. Shutting down operations to stamp out union activity is rather common with companies large enough to cover the short term costs of it.
- vladvasiliu 6y ago
  As others have pointed out, this wasn't a strike. The government imposed some rules with steep penalties in case of failure to comply. Amazon figured they would rather stop operations altogether while figuring how to set this up. One notable difference with a strike is that employees kept receiving their pay.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wdb 6y ago
I wish Amazon UK would send from the continent when items are not in stock. I had to wait three months to get a Spacegrey Magic Trackpad from them while it was in stock all the time in Amazon DE, NL, FT.

bkor 6y ago

> After a week or so we started getting our deliveries again, usually with an extra day of delay because it was being fulfilled from Germany. In some other industries (shipping) you have to be really careful to do that. There's various laws against breaking up (the effectiveness of) a strike. That's currently often only applied within one country. If Amazon does something similar more often enough they'll probably get hit with an EU-wide law instead. It's always weird that internet based companies aren't treated like any other company. Unfair competition IMO.

docdeek 6y ago
This was less a strike than a forced government shutdown due to COVID-19. amazon couldn’t satisfy the French government that the French warehouses and fulfillment centers were going to be safe for workers, so they were shutdown. I assume that the German ones satisfied the German government to German standards, and so were kept open.
- josefx 6y ago
  > so they were shutdown They weren't shut down, that was Amazons decision. The court only told them to reduce operations to specific categories of its store site - the idea was to somehow reduce operations to a safe amount as Amazon had repeatedly failed to so by itself. Amazon then made up the nebulous "essential products" category and made sure to complain loudly about the supposed nonsense the court required while it shut down french warehouses completely.
  - UK-Al05 6y ago
    French goverment was trying to apply rules which had a lot of grey area. Amazon decided it was too risky so shut down.
    - josefx 6y ago
      The court provided a list of Amazon(TM) categories from the Amazon (TM) website and told Amazon to restrict its operations to those. You wont find any of the "essential products" nonsense outside of Amazons own court documents and press releases.
      - UK-Al05 6y ago
        I don't understand. The goverment created an a product list of items to sell, which amazon then tried to create an essential product list which contained these items? I don't understand whats the problem with that? According to Amazon they found it difficult to workout what was and wasn't an essential item according to the rules. I would imagine with a catalog as big amazon that's probably true. They decided to shutdown instead which is perfectly rational given the amount fines placed upon them if they did accidentally ship an item. The goverment got what they requested, no non essential items shipped. I would imagine amazon would have preferred to keep operating, so I believe them.
        josefx 6y ago
        That the "essential products list" does not exist, which is the key complaint in any discussion about this. Amazon invented a requirement that does not exist to claim that the requirements are to vague to implement. The list the court provided is explicit in the court documents, meanwhile the "essential products" is subject to the imagination of every armchair free market capitalist. You wont find it googling, you wont find it going through court documents, you will only find an unending sea of discussion how stupid it is for a court to require something as vague as selling only "essential products" and how Amazon shutting down its french warehouses was the only sane response to this requirement. > I would imagine amazon would have preferred to keep operating, so I believe them. This was an union driven lawsuit. Shutting down operations to stamp out union activity is rather common with companies large enough to cover the short term costs of it.
vladvasiliu 6y ago
As others have pointed out, this wasn't a strike. The government imposed some rules with steep penalties in case of failure to comply. Amazon figured they would rather stop operations altogether while figuring how to set this up. One notable difference with a strike is that employees kept receiving their pay.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

wdb 6y ago

I wish Amazon UK would send from the continent when items are not in stock. I had to wait three months to get a Spacegrey Magic Trackpad from them while it was in stock all the time in Amazon DE, NL, FT.