Mon, Jul 25, 2011 page10

• US union drive puts IKEA’s reputation, image to the test

  • AP, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
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  The union attempting to represent workers at IKEA’s only US plant is challenging the Swedish furniture giant’s vaunted corporate ethos, accusing the retailer of paying its US workers low wages and tolerating unsafe working conditions.

  Approximately 320 workers at IKEA’s Swedwood Danville plant will vote on Wednesday whether to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

  The machinists’ union has put IKEA’s reputation as a labor and environment-friendly Swedish employer at the forefront of its organizing drive as it attempts to organize workers at the company’s subsidiary, Swedwood.

  IKEA’s corporate conduct is guided by its so-called IWAY Standard, which outlines environmental, social and working rules — an 18-page document governing everything from drinking water supplied to workers to lighting levels to a ban on child labor. The company says the standards follow a directive that “the IKEA business shall have an overall positive impact on people and the environment.”

  Many of the company’s high corporate standards stop at the US border, the machinists’ lead organizer said. The union said workers are grossly underpaid compared to their Swedish counterparts, suffer high injury rates, are forced to work overtime and are demoted or fired for expressing union sympathies.

  The IWAY standards say overtime must be voluntary and ban employers from preventing workers from associating freely and collective bargaining. They also require that workers be protected from “exposure to severe safety hazards.”

  “You should not be able to reap the economic benefits of an image if that image is not true,” said Bill Street, director of the woodworkers department of the Machinists International. “When you walk into an IKEA store, you’re walking into a little bit of Sweden.”

  An IKEA spokeswoman denied the union allegations that the Virginia plant operates in conflict with IKEA’s principles, saying the Danville operation has consistently measured up to its own internal and third-party audits.

  “Swedwood Danville operates according to the same principles as all Swedwood plants,” Ingrid Steen said in an e-mail.

  Steen also said IKEA will honor the union vote.

  “Swedwood respects the right of co-workers to join, form or not to join a co-worker association of their choice,” she wrote.

  One of the union’s complaints is that starting pay at Danville of US$8 an hour is approximately half of what their Swedish counterparts earn.

  “We know in terms of safety, in terms of health care, in terms of pension, their European counterparts are treated vastly superior than the workers in Danville,” Street said.

  Steen described the pay and benefits of Danville workers as “very competitive in the region.” She said many of IKEA’s 16,000 workers worldwide are members of unions or worker associations, adding it’s difficult to compare US workers with workers in Europe.

  “Conditions of different countries are very complex questions,” she wrote. “It is difficult to compare different national systems [such as] taxes, cost of living, systems of social insurances, etc.”
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