Ikea’s Factory Workers Vote to Join Union
A vote by Ikea’s U.S. factory workers in Virginia to join a union may boost labor as organizers seek to reverse record-low membership at companies.
Employees at the plant in Danville, Virginia, voted 221-69 yesterday to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the National Labor Relations Board said. The factory, run by a subsidiary called Swedwood, makes low-cost bookcases and coffee tables for sale in Ikea’s 37 blue and yellow U.S. big-box stores.
The Ikea union victory may help organizing efforts at companies where management has hired law firms and consultants to thwart organizing efforts, labor leaders said. Unions represent a record low 6.9 percent of private sector workers.
“It’s incredibly significant,” said Amy B. Dean, a former AFL-CIO official and co-author of a book about reshaping the labor movement. “This is a victory that will help embolden workers everywhere.”
Ikea Group Corp. is the world’s second-largest retailer behind Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), which has turned back unionizing efforts. Ikea, based in Odakra, Sweden, is the world’s largest home-furnishing retailer. The Machinists union had targeted the southern Virginia plant since it opened in 2008 with $12 million in incentives offered by state and local governments.
“We hope this will enable us to put an end to the growing global outrage over the treatment in Danville and have a rapid restoration of both social dialogue and social justice,” the Building and Wood Worker’s International Union said in an e- mailed statement after the vote.
Worker Decisions
Ikea’s campaign against the union was muted by pledges to let workers make their own decision on joining a union, a policy based on labor protections ingrained in Sweden’s corporate culture. The company has a code of conduct called IWAY that guarantees workers the right to organize and stipulates that all overtime be voluntary.
“We fully support the right of our co-workers to make this decision,” said Ingrid Steen, a Swedwood spokeswoman. “We accept their decision and will work with their union in a mutually cooperative and respectful manner.”
The union gained support after Ikea workers complained about low wages, discrimination, long working hours, eliminated raises, a frenzied pace and mandatory overtime, said Bill Street, director of the woodworking department for the union who led the organizing campaign. Workers would find out on a Friday evening that they’d have to work a weekend shift, and there would be disciplinary action for workers who didn’t show up.
‘Plantation-Like Behavior’
“The primary issue that has driven this campaign from the beginning has been a plantation-like attitude by management,” Street said. “Mandatory overtime in New York City may not be a huge deal, but in a rural, family oriented small community with strong religious values, this treatment is unacceptable.”
In addition, six black former employees filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claiming they have faced racial discrimination at the factory.
Steen declined to comment on the union’s statements.
American Rights at Work, a union advocacy group, sent more than 22,000 letters to Ikea Chief Executive Officer Mikael Ohlsson demanding fair treatment for the employees before the vote, said Kimberly Freeman Brown, executive director.
“The outpouring of support we saw then, and the results of today’s vote, are a clear indication of the vital role unions continue to play in ensuring fairness and respect for workers on the job,” she said.
Union leaders also highlighted a disparity between work rules in the U.S. and in Sweden. Fulltime workers in Danville start at $8 an hour with 12 vacation days, including 8 days set by the company. Europeans collect a minimum wage of about $19 an hour and the government mandates five weeks of paid vacation, Street said.
‘Different Models’
“For workers in Danville, the knowledge that the company is capable of meeting a different business model enabled them to seek an alternative,” Street said.
The Danville union drive was followed by the media in Sweden, where many company workers are union members. The largest daily newspaper in Stockholm wrote that the company was behaving in an “un-Swedish way.”
In Danville, the company hired Jackson Lewis LLP, a law firm that helps businesses block unions, to fight the organizing effort. The company’s anti-union tactics were limited by not wanting to hurt their corporate reputation as being progressive, Street said.
“Virginia has the third lowest union density in any state in the nation,” he said. “If we can win in Virginia, we can win elsewhere.”
Virginia is a right-to-work state, where employees aren’t required to pay union dues as a condition of getting a job. Patrick Semmens, a spokesman for the National Right to Work Committee in Springfield, Virginia, questioned the effectiveness of the new union. “Those workers remain free to exercise their rights and cut off their dues,” he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Holly Rosenkrantz in Washington at hrosenkrantz@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Liebert at lliebert@bloomberg.net
Rate this Page