this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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Work Reform

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cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/15395224

Ikea’s CEO has solved the Swedish retailer’s global ‘unhappy worker’ crisis by raising salaries, introducing flexible working and subsidizing childcare

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Have they tried telling the employees they suck and should be greatful they even have a job? And this worked even better then that? Hm...

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago

Pizza friday is the best day after layoffs on monday.

[–] Allonzee 58 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

"Is there no depth to your depravity, IKEA?"

-Wall Street, probably

[–] [email protected] 38 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Wow crazy how could we have predicted this

[–] InternetCitizen2 21 points 5 months ago

Everyone. If capitalists believed their own free market economics they could have predict it with their own theories. High wages will attract the most people and keep them around longer as labor is part of the supply and demand curves.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago

what a noob, they should have just organised a pizza party.

/s

[–] nucleative 21 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It sounds obvious on the surface but higher wages don't always equal happier staff or more output.

I don't think the staff making 500k at OpenAI will be measurably happier with another 100k, for example.

But there is definitely a lot to be gained by getting staff as far away from a sense of poverty as possible and ikea might have helped their line workers a lot with this change.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

500k in the Bay Area is very different to 100k, especially if you have a family. So I think that would make a massive difference in happiness.

I think 5 times any salary affords you greater security, flexibility and opportunities that have to make a measurable difference in how happy you can be

[–] nyctre 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The employees are already making 500k and the raise would be to 600k, in this example. You misread the op.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Good spot. My bad OP. Carry on...

[–] MehBlah 18 points 5 months ago

Anyone who chimes in here saying more money wont make workers happy are either stupid or greedy.

[–] CaptainSpaceman 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They're also ingraining themselves in Roblox which is kinda gross

[–] VerseAndVermin 21 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Roblox is kind of yucky to begin with. Don't they use kids to make content and then give them an awful portion of proceeds?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Imo it's not the former (kids making content) that's the issue; that's something kids have been doing in games for a long time. Gmod, TF2, CS:S, Minecraft, etc. Most of those games have mods made by kids or people who started as kids, and some of them are very successful and have even led them to careers in the game industry.

The thing that's actually bad is the fact that the kids can make money from it, and the cut they get is almost non-existent. The result is that it encourages kids to design their games in a way that utilizes the kinds of monetization we normally associate with greedy corpos (loot boxes, true microtransactions like charging for extra lives, etc).

If kids weren't able to make money off it, or if the cut was larger and they restricted the kinds of monetization kids could utilize (no loot boxes, charging for extra lives, etc), then I wouldn't see an issue with it.

That's where I think a lot of people miss the mark. For some reason it seems like there's a view that's unique to people criticizing Roblox, which is that kids making mods for games is bad; but imo it's only bad when coupled with a monetization scheme that encourages kids to nickel and dime each other.

Edit: but yes, kids do make content for Roblox and get shitty cuts for it. Also changed a sentence (in bold).

[–] AngryishHumanoid 8 points 5 months ago

Apropos of nothing but "kids or people who started as kids" is one of the best parts of a sentence I've read in a long time.

[–] dojan 6 points 5 months ago

I dunno. Kids making mods is one thing, a corporation exploiting that for profit is something different.

Sure, Gmod and what have you definitely had sales because of mods, meaning an indirect profit, so one could question that too. When it comes to Roblox they’re directly profiting off of the labour of children in a very predatory manner.

Neither scenario is fantastic I suppose, but only the latter is actively encouraging and building systems to exploit people.

[–] CaptainSpaceman 4 points 5 months ago

Yes, yes they do

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

I love how for businesses this is rocket science but the rest of us have known what it would take for decades.