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IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries
- NKosmatos 2y agohttps://archive.is/m0QH5 https://archive.is/m0QH5
- LunaSea 2y agoThey haven't solved the "not sourcing wood illegally from Romanian primordial forests" yet though. Baby steps.
- wcarron 2y agothere's always something to complain about, isn't there?
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoIf they want to be a pretend charity they have to pretend to act like one.
- blargey 2y agoMerely acknowledging potential benefits from non-race-to-the-bottom salaries is "pretend charity" now?
- wizzwizz4 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:IKEA_ownership_chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:IKEA_ownership_chart
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 2y agoThey’re only doing what other intelligently managed orgs are: defensive retention via compensation. With the labor force how it is, orgs that prey on precarious workers are in a game of musical chairs. Where do you want to be when the music ends?
- tobinfricke 2y agoApparently they are literally incorporated as a charity.
- Propelloni 2y agoThe owner of IKEA is a dutch foundation. That's not the same as a charity. Still, IKEA's ownership structure is questionable and occasionally flares up as a matter of interest in the media.
- throwaway920102 2y ago[flagged]
- mensetmanusman 2y agoWhat is a primordial forest, and why is its wood so easy to break when in the form of a cabinet?
- Iulioh 2y agoA 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.
- eropple 2y agoAs somebody who makes luxury furniture, the rest of my house is IKEA.
- ericd 2y agoYeah, we've been finding the same, a lot of the middle tier stuff might look nice, but it's usually kind of crap, maybe because they just don't have the same scale. Feels like the fast fashion equivalent of furniture, a lot of times. As an alternative, we've found antique shops that have amazing quality furniture for less than ikea's high end lines, if you're ok with the older styles.
- stephenr 2y agoTo 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 product (in terms of quality and longevity) compared to something made with solid wood, or at the very least with decent quality plywood.
- johnwalkr 2y agoI'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.
- cco 2y agoThey are reportedly working on it https://www.wsj.com/articles/keeping-sanctioned-russian-timber-out-of-the-eu-is-tricky-this-nonprofit-has-a-solution-1bf366b0 https://www.wsj.com/articles/keeping-sanctioned-russian-timb... My impression is that it's really difficult to do at scale because it isn't trivial to tell this tree from that tree, especially post harvest and paperwork is always spoofable.
- petre 2y agoThat's why they source their wood in a country with shitty legislation and corrupt politicians. Because they are "working on it". Their wood supplier is operating on a loss, so no taxes paid to the state.
- Joker_vD 2y agoRussia for the last 8 years have been pushing its woodcutting industry pretty hard at placing a QR code at every single chopped tree and uploading it to the government's centralized DB, analogous to what they do with marking the produced ethanol. Of course, I imagine that at the customs/borders the situation is much more... "solvable", if you know the right people.
- petre 2y agoSure. That's only the legal logging operations. Most of the operators also so illegal logging in parallel. They might ship wood pulp or other wood based products instead of logs. Don't even start about ethanol, because they make samagon (moonshine) out of anything that ferments, including chicken poop. It's just not sold in stores, you "get" it on the black market.
- lifestyleguru 2y ago> it isn't trivial to tell this tree from that tree At such budgets, scale, and lobbying there is no such thing as "ooops, we didn't know where this come from, some lumberjack lied to us". You have folks in suits flying in private jets and arranging agreements (and cocaine and prostitutes as well of course).
- lifestyleguru 2y agoSweden has most forests in Europe, yet its IKEA sources wood from Poland and Romania while selling furniture from cardboard. What happens with all this wood?! Unfortunately in Poland and Romania plastic bag of cash and premium German car go very far while Sweden has more climate activists than trees.
- boxed 2y agoSweden has almost no forests anymore. We have tree plantations. That's a very different thing, and driving around Sweden is absolutely soul crushing for me who grew up running around in the forests during summers.
- lifestyleguru 2y agoThen again, where all this wood go? Because it's not in IKEA's furniture.
- pas 2y agoLot of it is export as roundwood ... but in general, housing (flooring, windows, decking), furniture, firewood/paper (pulp), etc. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-use-of-wood-from-the-Swedish-forest-the-product-fl-ows-volumes-in-million-cubic_fig3_264244647 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-use-of-wood-from-the...
- AdamN 2y agoThis is true in the Pacific Northwest too - very depressing.
- fransje26 2y agoAlthough 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".
- DanielHB 2y agoThis 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.
- misterbwong 2y agoOP's link should really include the full title: Ikea’s boss solved the Swedish retailer’s global ‘unhappy worker’ crisis by raising salaries, introducing flexible working and subsidizing childcare Cutting it off there just makes it seem like ikea thinks "more money = happy workers" when in reality it is more nuanced than that.
- jp57 2y agoSubsidizing 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.
- grecy 2y agoFor the people that want the childcare, it’s better than more money, because it’s tax free
- golergka 2y agoCan company provide a choice for employees where they can either get facilities or a raise?
- bell-cot 2y agoIANAL, but I'll bet the answer is "yes-ish, in most-ish circumstances and jurisdictions, if the company is willing to pay enough lawyers & taxes & stuff. (If $Company is not big global retailer like IKEA, then things would probably be far simpler.)
- QuarterReptile 2y agoIn 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.
- Sohcahtoa82 2y agoCan someone explain to me why corporate management seems unable to grasp the concept of properly paying and providing benefits for their employees to increase retention and have more successful hiring? Like...is it actual incompetence? Or do they know it's the answer, but just don't want to do it? I just can't grasp why a manager would refuse to provide proper pay and benefits and then get a Surprised Pikachu face when employees don't stick around.
- jfim 2y agoBecause the dollars are easy to measure, but the employee happiness and other fuzzier metrics aren't. Just like we've known for a while that getting software developers their own offices increases productivity (but costs money/doesn't look trendy), or that getting rid of senior aeronautical engineers might lower quality over time (but saves money).
- tsunamifury 2y agoMany many executives do not believe happiness improves productivity and in fact many believe it reduces it. Specifically midwesterner’s who think pain is honor and grit vs a waste of energy and distraction.
- smcin 2y agoInteresting comment, is there any quantitative study or data corroborating regional attitudes in the US?
- tsunamifury 2y agoNo obviously not
- smcin 2y agoAnecdotally, do you find it tends to be true?
- jamesrom 2y agoDoing stuff that makes people happy makes people happy. In other news, water found to be wet.
- givemeethekeys 2y agoIt's a big deal because other large companies invent "open offices" and "unlimited vacation" policies.
- canuckthrow 2y ago[flagged]
- nottorp 2y agoMhh we're talking about a company that makes furniture here. I bet it's "open factory floor" over there.
- Eric_WVGG 2y agoMakes you wonder how many pizza parties they sponsored before getting there, though and what a meatball and smoked salmon pizza would taste like
- Mordisquitos 2y ago> In other news, water found to be wet. That would indeed be newsworthy if countless businesses were to be insisting that they are trying to make their employees wet by pouring sand on them, providing them with T-shirts with the word "WET" printed on it, asking them to wish their dryness away, or (the most enlightened ones) telling their employees to go outside on cloudy days — anything except, you know, simply pouring water on them.
- Simulacra 2y agoThe world's largest nonprofit! https://www.economist.com/business/2006/05/11/flat-pack-accounting https://www.economist.com/business/2006/05/11/flat-pack-acco...
- notpushkin 2y agohttps://archive.ph/68wsn https://archive.ph/68wsn
- ornornor 2y agoThe 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.
- tored 2y agoThis 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 https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%B6ntagarfonder
- ornornor 2y agoI 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?
- tored 2y agoNot 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.
- vintermann 2y ago> “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 question.
- bitcharmer 2y agoYou 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.
- vintermann 2y agoThat is not the intention, it obviously isn't. But oddly enough, this is one of the areas there are some real force behind labor law in the US. If a manager or spokesperson at the company ever said something that contradicted what the IKEA spokesperson said, they could quickly be forced to backtrack and issue a statement like what they actually said. Former NLRB employee and lawyer Matt Bruenig loves trolling people with this on social media. If anyone with employment responsibility is blustering against unions in social media, he'll send an NLRB complaint about "threatening retalitation for protected activity". You don't need "standing" to do this, by design. The targets are quickly told by their laywers to back down, because the law really is amazingly strict on this.
- addicted 2y agoIronically the Supreme Court further watered down what regulatory actions the NLRB can take against companies retaliating against unionizing workers just a couple of days ago. US law is actually pretty good as far as worker’s rights are concerned. The problem is that successive U.S. administrations (both Democratic and Republican) have failed to enforce the law. The Biden administration has been a welcome exception in this regard. The other, bigger, problem is that US law is no longer decided in the legislature and is being unilaterally rewritten by the Supreme Court which is quite decidedly anti union and has been rolling back all sorts of protections which are clearly enshrined in law but have been “interpreted” (in quotes because now they don’t even pretend to be interpreting the text differently) out of it by the Supreme Court.
- kreyenborgi 2y agoBecause 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-yes-thats-every-bit-as-fishy-as-it-sounds 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 climate after the war.)
- Edd1CC 2y agoSweden was "neutral" but big on nazism topics such as eugenics. I spoke about this yesterday with some Swedes (I recently moved to Sweden).
- sofixa 2y ago> Sweden was "neutral" but big on nazism topics such as eugenics. Social Darwinism, including eugenics, was quite socially acceptable until the Nazis made it unpopular by association, and even then many countries (US, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, I forget which one in Latin America that sterilised poor women without telling them, etc.) still continued practising some parts of it for decades after. It only really became accepted as flat out wrong in the developed world what, in the 70s-90s (as an example, Canada's last residential school closed in 1997)?
- dagw 2y agoIt'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.
- _wueg 2y agoI 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/ 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!".
- wiseowise 2y agoSounds like The Onion title.