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The other side of the story... https://www.france24.com/en/20200414-french-court-faults-ama... or https://www.ft.com/content/1ad863ef-dc39-43a3-b714-e5ef3c4a8...

> Laurent Degousee, of the SUD-Commerce union that was behind the complaint, acknowledged that Amazon had "not stood idly by" amid the crisis but had taken a "slew of measures without any evaluation".

> He said that the taking of temperatures had sometimes caused queues and thus risked possible infection.

So Amazon had the choice of either;

a) taking the court ruling seriously and doubling down on efforts to ensure worker safety and working out what needs to be done to lift the suspension

or

b) raising a middle finger and threatening to suspend all deliveries, thereby adding fuel to the notion that Amazon doesn't take worker safety seriously and creating opposition in France that will now work on strategies for "what to do if Amazon pulls out of our market?"

Which one seems like a smarter response?

> 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.

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?

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.
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.

24 hour deadline is a middle finger by itself.

Mission impossible really.

So court had set them up to break the law.

>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.

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.

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.
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.

They threaten to stop an essential service during a national emergency? Yes, definitely a smart move.
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.

Doesn't seem like a threat? More of a recognition of the necessary consequences of this particular order. If the court says to stop doing some things, and the wheels are too big to be changed while in flight, then Amazon should shut down for the time it takes to figure out how to comply. That's just obeying the court, right?
Well that's true. A court order is a court order.

Obviously you shut down. I don't think any reasonable people have an issue with that. What I'd like to understand more is what are the steps sufficient with guaranteeing, (or, I guess, better protecting), health? I can't really make out what is not being done that needs to be done vs what is being done that shouldn't be done vs etc etc etc.

Of course it's a "threat". Amazon doesn't want to shut down in France, they just want not to be subject to this court order. France doesn't want Amazon to shut down in France, they just want them to honor this court order. The only reason you announce a policy that no one wants is as a negotiating tactic. "Honor my desires or else the outcome will be worse for both of us" is, logically, what "threat" means.

Now, no, Amazon can't possibly do what the order asks in 24 hours. But they certainly could make a good faith attempt.

I made this point yesterday, but I remain amazed at the extent to which Amazon let itself be painted the "bad guy" in all of this, simply by not being willing to negotiate with their workers on an equal basis. A world where Amazon had a healthy relationship with its unions isn't one where everyone comes at them with a knife during a crisis trying to protect their workers.

Original title is "Amazon May Suspend French Deliveries After Court Order" but OP changed it to something more clickbaity.
They don't threaten, they obey the court that asked them to suspend deliveries because employees were not properly cared for. Let's not turn things around.

Don't worry, if Amazon stops selling altogether, small businesses will be more than happy to take back some market share.

I'm curious to see what the reaction of the French will be to this. I'd certainly be pretty unhappy if Amazon were turned off in my country.
Except that they won't be able to meet demands, especially for important products such as medical or safety products.
As much as Amazon deserves some bad publicity for how they handle their warehouse and wholefoods workers in the US, in this case I feel like they're being vilified unfairly for the shipping of non-essentials.

Walmart is shipping whatever-the-fuck, I can order nightstands and a bed on wayfair and weed from the SQDC (government)... Let's be clear, marijuana is not an essential for all but a very small percentage of the population using it as medecine...

Yet everyone's roasting Amazon for operating like it's business as usual while the smaller players run wild.

Shipping non-essential items is not the problem here. They can ship whatever they want, but while doing so have to protect their workers. Amazon is infamous for creating horrible working conditions in their shipping centers, it's not a surprise that how they react to the virus is observed very closely. Especially in a country like France that already has a critical stance towards big US companies.
I’m glad that this is not happening in my country. Banning Amazon from selling nonessential items seems detrimental to society. The “nonessential items” that Amazon sells are still pretty important for living my life. I’m sure there are some ways that worker health could be protected better, but at this point I wouldn’t trust the French government to make intelligent judgments on behalf of public health.
As a french, I'm ok if amazon suspends deliveries.

We have plenty of other websites to order from: fnac, darty, ruducommerce, cdiscount, etc.

This is going to be good for the french economy, and a good message to american giants that they are not above the law.

It's now official, Amazon suspended all delivery services in France for 5 days, starting tonight. (In French: https://www.bfmtv.com/sante/direct-coronavirus-covid-19-fran...)
This is weird...

> Amazon “evidently failed to comply with obligations to protect the health of employees,” judges said in their Tuesday ruling.

That results in

> a court order banned the sale of non-essential goods, concluding the retailer isn’t doing enough to protect staff from the Covid-19 pandemic.

I think there's something missing from one reason (not good enough health practices according to the judge) to lead to ban non-essential goods sales.

Can some fill in what's missing (with references) please?

Translations from the Amazon twitter thread, that has more details.

Top twitter comment from Amazon: Following the decision of the court on 14th April, we (Amazon Inc) have to temporarily suspend activity in our distribution centers.

Decision from the court, in a screenshot few comments below: We order Amazon Inc to evaluate work-related risks inherent to the covid-19 pandemic, across all its warehouses and to put in place measures expected by article L4121-1 from labor laws (not sure what's in this article)... we order Amazon, until the above measures are put in place and within 24h of being notified of this decision, to restrict warehouse activity to reception of merchandises, preparation and shipping of food items, hygiene items and medical supplies, otherwise it will be subject to a fine of 1M EUR per day late and per infraction.

https://twitter.com/AmazonNewsFR/status/1250481148209369088

https://twitter.com/BlaisePere/status/1250522103952158722/ph....

Well, what do they "threaten" about? They were ORDERED to stop deliveries :D
I can only see it like this.

Amazon share price and business activity is surging as a direct result of Covid-19. They need to hire 100,000+ workers to meet the demand. However, the same thing they are profiting from (Covid-19) should also increase many of their operating expenses. Things like healthcare, paid sick leave adequate for the situation (so at least 4 weeks for proper quarantine), good PPE, in-depth infection combat strategies, and so on.

The problem is those operating expenses are only obvious if you have ethics/morality/whatever that concludes individual human life is more valuable than money. So if you're a big corporation that has been designed to enrich shareholders and the space company fantasies of your ego-maniacal CEO, you fight as hard as possible against taking on those operating expenses.

Ultimatums are dangerous. If Amazon follows through with theirs, they are gambling that they are too important to lose. That seems like it would be a poor bet; they may lose their EU market.
I don't know why so many people feel the need to attack Amazon. They seem to trigger people to a degree not found in many other companies...
France should call this bluff. Amazon is trying to push around a democratically enacted law. They are not above the law.

If Amazon was suspended in France a domestic competitor would rise up in a year or two, and Amazon would never regain the market. They would not dare suspending services, this is just a disgusting stunt

Is this really the time? I feel like whatever errors Amazon have made with regard to protecting its employees have largely been realized in France by now, and I have serious doubts in the efficiency of forcing a closure having a near-to-intermediate term impact. More likely this is just going to put fulfillment further behind and halt progress in order to protect people who would already have gotten the virus by now.

At some point it’s just more prudent to recognize that the birds have flown and your opportunity to fix the problems isn’t in the next 24 hours but in the next year or years.

It's time for anti-trust regulation to step up. Companies that can essentially extort a nation state and its independent justice system simply due to their size and market power have grown too big and should be split up.

The behavior that Amazon has shown regarding covid19 in the past few weeks, including firing union activists, should under normal circumstances warrant jail time.

Amazon has more to lose than France.
What else can they do? They either comply with the law or stop delivering to avoid non-compliance and enforcement. Do not get me wrong. It is big news, but if Amazon gives up on EU front, American workers will demand the same treatment. /s We can't have that. /s
Deceptive headline...
Some possibly relevant context, or just interesting anecdotes of Amazon in Europe:

When Amazon.fr opened back in 1998/1999 in Orleans, there was industrial action on pretty much Day 1.

It kind of fit the French stereotype of industrial action to a T.

When Amazon.de opened a bit before Amazon.fr in Regensberg, there was an issue with Amazon's book database(at the time we were only selling books) where books banned in Germany(such as Hitler's Mein Kampf) were viewable and able to be purchased in Germany which caused a bit of a media stir at the time.

Things were much simpler back then, in every way.

Interesting that way more effort is put into repression and regulations than actually working on providing a better healthcare system.
Not defending Amazon's petty childish antics when they deal with government, but "essential" has a relative meeting. What is essential to you, may not be essential to me, and vice versa. Two small examples:

My friend started a new remote job last week after about 6 months of unemployment...a feat that was amazing considering the fact that most companies are laying off. He was required to buy a laptop, which was to be reimbursed. He had extensive difficulty buying a laptop that met the required specs because most computer stores are considered non-essential, and amazon had delivery times that were too long.

The other was in Target. I saw someone buying a ton of furniture, while crying. I asked if they were okay, and they responded that their house burned down a month ago, and they had been staying in a hotel while insurance was processing everything, but their hotel time limit had passed and they were forced to move into an empty apartment because their furniture company shut down operations due to being non-essential. She had spent the night on a bare hardwood floor with her husband and toddler.

Who is to say what's essential?? You've basically locked everyone in their homes, and now you are even trying to deny them delivery of goods they may need. Even things purely for recreation may help ease the tension and stress of lockdown and encourage people to do what the government wants them to do: stay inside.

Name literally anything on the Amazon store, and I can come up with a reasonable senerio where someone could legitimately need it. P