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?
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.
> But they certainly could make a good faith attempt.
In my understanding, court orders are not a polite requests. They are demands, with the force of law standing behind them. You don't make good faith attempts to comply with them. You comply, or risk severe consequences (in this case, 1M euro/day). If Amazon can't comply in the time frame allowed, shutting down is probably the right call both for their business and from a public morals perspective.
> You don't make good faith attempts to comply with them.
Uh... "Good faith" is, literally, the term of art used in the legal profession to define the criteria for honoring a contract or order.
Obviously, no, the court could be a total jerk about it and demand ridiculous things. But that's not the way it's supposed to work. The whole point behind the "rule of law" is that we trust each other (Amazon, its unions, the courts) to be reasonable, tell the truth, and honor our agreements in the spirit in which they were made.
People who insist on looking like this as a war with combatants are the ones who are missing the point. I mean, look, the court in France is trying to protect workers. That's a good thing. You agree that's a good thing, right?
> "Good faith" is, literally, the term of art used in the legal profession to define the criteria for honoring a contract or order.
No. Honoring a contract and a good faith attempt to honor a contract are not the same. A good faith attempt does not exempt you from the consequences of failing to perform a contract or comply with a legal order. In some cases it is a mitigating factor, but it is not by any means universal.
If the French court wanted Amazon to make a good faith attempt to do something, that is something they could have ordered. But they ordered compliance, not an attempt at compliance (as is their prerogative).
> Obviously, no, the court could be a total jerk about it and demand ridiculous things.
You mean like a 24h deadline for compliance with a large set of changes to operations?
> The whole point behind the "rule of law" is that we trust each other (Amazon, its unions, the courts) to be reasonable, tell the truth, and honor our agreements in the spirit in which they were made.
Tbh I'm not seeing the connection between rule of law and social trust. You can have high trust societies with less rule of law, and low trust societies with more rule if law. They are separate, loosely connected dimensions.
> People who insist on looking like this as a war with combatants are the ones who are missing the point.
I am not such a person.
> I mean, look, the court in France is trying to protect workers. That's a good thing. You agree that's a good thing, right?
I'm not sure I could make any such blanket statement without knowing the state before, the desired state as indicated by the court order, the evidentiary and legal bases of the decision, etc. The impulse to protect the vulnerable is good. The means by which societies choose to implement that impulse can cause harm, and I judge actions by their results, not their causes.
You seem to be assuming that the court ordered something it knew was impossible. That's, to borrow a phrase from the HN code of conduct, assuming bad faith on the part of the court. It seems much more likely to me that it just made a mistake and wasn't itself trying to escalate a war. That's not what courts do.
So... assuming the court thought this was a reasonable request, why shouldn't Amazon just try to comply?
> You seem to be assuming that the court ordered something it knew was impossible.
Perhaps it did, or perhaps it didn't. I don't think it's very relevant whether the court knew whether Amazon would be able to comply. It had its priorities, and it ordered Amazon to abide by those priorities. That's something that's perfectly within its rights to do.
But if the court were interested in Amazon's ability to comply, then it could have asked Amazon what it could and couldn't do in what time frame. It did not ask, or at least discarded the response if it did ask, so presumably its orders are not conditioned on Amazon's capabilities.
> That's, to borrow a phrase from the HN code of conduct, assuming bad faith on the part of the court. It seems much more likely to me that it just made a mistake and wasn't itself trying to escalate a war.
You seem really eager to assign good and bad faith and assumptions of the same to various parties, including myself. I am not eager to do that. I am also not willing to assume the court was incompetent or made a mistake. It gave an order, and presumably it had an understanding of the possible range of effects of that order. If it didn't, it could have availed itself of Amazon's thoughts on the subject before issuing the order. I assume the court did know the possible results, and it considers Amazon shutting down temporarily to be an acceptable short term outcome, if necessary to protect worker health.
> So... assuming the court thought this was a reasonable request, why shouldn't Amazon just try to comply?
Because the court said they would be fined if they failed to comply. I'm not making the connection on why Amazon's behavior should be conditioned on what the court's view of the reasonableness of the request is. Surely Amazon's behavior should first be conditioned on Amazon's view of the feasibility of the request, the potential economic and political consequences of failure, etc.?
The court order doesn't require a "good faith attempt"
It specifies to only ship essential items and proscribes a 1-million euro fine for every mistake Amazon makes. I don't even think it defines essential (I don't speak french and I don't see anything obvious in the order defining it, perhaps there's a callout in the text to another declaration which defines essential).
A much more reasonable requirement would have been to tell Amazon to not ship any non-essential items and to fine them 10x the value of anything they ship over, say, 5-10% their total shipments.
E.g. If Amazon ships 90 packages of toilet paper/essential items, they can accidentally ship up to 10 pairs of shoes/non-essential items. If they ship 11 non-essential items they would be fined 10x the value of that item.
Seems like that would be a much smarter way of laying-out that decision.
If France wants compliance, they have a duty to produce an order that's possible to comply with. It seems legitimate for a company to not want to be subject to an impossible order.
Original title was "Amazon Threatens to Suspend French Deliveries After Court Order", and Bloomberg just changed it. You could have assumed good faith.
