A short film from the Dutch and Belgian trade-unions explaining how IKEA uses cheap East-European drivers to cut costs.
youtube.com/watch?v=wvyBRaE_U78
Geoff
And the company is there to make a profit. For its share holders and directors. If it uses cheeper labour or haulage that’s just life
and it’s not really the company that provides the logistics who came up with the idea of hiring from the balkans - the way ikea works is, after a company has been subcontracting to ikea for a while (for example manufacturing the glued sawdust crap people are so eager to buy, or providing haulage services), they will dictate the price to go lower, they don’t care how it is achieved, they just want a smaller number on the bill. so you either find a way or lose the work.
there used to be plenty of furniture factories in the baltics making the stuff that ikea sells but as time goes on, nobody around here sees a point with the prices so low, so ikea has turned to belorus and ukraine to stock their shelves.
alix776:
And the company is there to make a profit. For its share holders and directors. If it uses cheeper labour or haulage that’s just life
Well I’m not sure I share your apathetic view on life.
So if a company were to import containers full of slaves in ankle-chains from a poor third world country and set them to work for a bowl of rice a day and zero wages, you would just shrug your shoulders and look the other way, using the profit motive as justification?
Geoff
milodon:
there used to be plenty of furniture factories in the baltics making the stuff that ikea sells but as time goes on, nobody around here sees a point with the prices so low, so ikea has turned to belorus and ukraine to stock their shelves.
Which is actually how it should work.
Apparently the standard of living in the Baltics has improved to an extent that people expect/need higher wages, given time the same will happen in Belorus and Ukraine (if they can ever bring themselves to shake off the Russian patronage).
What these Belgian hauliers are doing isn’t really helping anybody because all the infrastructure and profits stay in Belgium and simply increases unemployment and drives other hauliers out of business.
If they want to use Bulgarian and Slovakian drivers then they should invest properly in those countries, set up a business there with administration, maintenance home base, the works instead of postbox companies, tax avoidance and all the other tricks.
Geoff
GeoffC:
alix776:
And the company is there to make a profit. For its share holders and directors. If it uses cheeper labour or haulage that’s just lifeWell I’m not sure I share your apathetic view on life.
So if a company were to import containers full of slaves in ankle-chains from a poor third world country and set them to work for a bowl of rice a day and zero wages, you would just shrug your shoulders and look the other way, using the profit motive as justification?Geoff
There is more than enough information to show this is happening in many parts of the world including here. Still, let’s not put a dampener on those shareholders festivities,eh?
If you see two tvs,both the same model and spec. one is 500 quid cheaper,what one do you buy the cheapest of course.if i was in charge of getting stuff from a to b id use the cheapest company.its a simple rule of buisness that you dont get rich by spending more than you have to
All well and good when simplified in such a way but when the whole thing is rolled out across the board its a bit more serious. Buying a cheaper tv is one thing and if enough people did it, the expensive tv factory in Belgium, or Holland or England would in the end close down and the workers would have to find a job elsewhere. But now we have totally open borders and have to compete against people who will work for the minimum wage, 5-10 to a house and send all their money back to Poland, or against people who until very recently were little more than peasants in a Romanian feudal village etc. Generations of progress in the UK and generations of improving living standards will now all have to be wound back in the race to the bottom. If cheapest has to come first then our society and nations will have to strive to be like Romania, otherwise no one will do business with us and no one will employ us.
Britain can not continue having a British way of life if it will only use Romanian workers, Romanian transport companies at Romanian rates, within Britain. This whole thing is a complete mess and across the board in all western European countries, our jobs, homes and way of live is being challenged and often eradicated like some sort of plague or black death sweeping across the continent.
A country has an absolute duty to protect its own citizens and economy but what we have here now in the EU is nothing more than allowing sea water to flood in to a fresh water lake and watching while all the fresh water fish perish one by one because they simply cannot live in such an environment. We may not actually be dying, but our economy and workforce cannot live and operate against a huge influx of salt water and if we lose our jobs, and keep on losing our jobs while salt water pours in to the country, in the end we’ll lose everything that matters to us and when that end comes, we won’t even be able to afford the cheap tv because our houses and cars will have been repossessed and we’ll be at the level of a Romanian villager. Wonderful politics and economics.
Well those times of 10 people living in one house are nearly gone, you get the seasonal workers who might live like that.
As for the cheap TV, if a person buys a TV for lets say 100 quid and it is the same quality as the one for 150 quid, than it dosent mean that all people a worse off from it, yes the factory that produces the 150 quid TV’s looses a certain amount of work, BUT at the same time the customer has saved 50 quid on it and now he can spend those 50 quid on other things, therefore giving employment to other people in other industries. (This is a simple rule of how economics work)
Its a fact, that if a person works for minimum wage or close to it he will always strugle to make ends meet, thats just the way it is, UK offers a wide range of opportunities to better yourself, but if you choose to spend the evening in a pub getting ■■■■__ed rather then learning something to improve yourself, dont blame the system.
so… when an englishman gets replaced by a romanian, how many cheap tv-s will he go out and buy 
milodon:
so… when an englishman gets replaced by a romanian, how many cheap tv-s will he go out and buy
Its ok because the tv factory will then move to Ukraine and then to China and then to Burma and then we’ll all be unemployed in broken societies with broken economies.
If theyve any sense theyll have moved to china long ago
alix776:
If theyve any sense theyll have moved to china long ago
I’m sure that that is the case.