06) BOYCOTT IKEA! RICHMOND STORE WORKERS LOCKED OUT

 

By Jane Bouey

 

            Trade unionists and other supporters rallied outside the Ikea store in Richmond, B.C. on June 21, in solidarity with 350 unionized workers locked out since May 13 by the international furniture giant.

 

            Ikea did $1.4 billion in sales at its 12 stores in Canada last year, and had a 7% increase in sales in 2012. The Richmond store was recently rebuilt with a massive expansion. But the company claims that it must extract concessions from their workers in Richmond.

 

            Teamsters Local 213 (the union representing the Richmond Ikea workers) Business Representative Anita Dawson, points out that Ikea has "locked us out in an attempt to force the Union members to accept the terms of their last offer and invite the members back to work under the terms of the rejected offer."

 

            Local 213 members have rejected Ikea's offer three times: on March 17 by 96%, May 5 by 83%, and on May 9 by 84% - the last vote offer conducted by the Labour Board.

 

            Ikea is demanding major concessions, and warning workers with letters, that it will just get worse if they don't come back to work. Ikea has in fact been reducing its own May 9th offer, taking away items like a lump sum payment.

 

            The concessions demanded by the company include reintroducing a tiered wage system. The Richmond Ikea workers successfully eliminated this with a strike in 2007 and won "equal pay for equal work". The company is demanding a difference of as much as $7 per hour between workers performing the same job.

 

            Ikea is also demanding major changes to the benefits program, including increasing the number of hours per week that an employee needs to work to secure benefits for their family. Like most retail outlets, a large percentage of the workers are part‑time, so this change would have a huge impact on those families.

 

            Other concessions demands include contracting out of cleaning at the store.

            Dawson states that, "Bargaining has since come to an impasse as the company will not move from wanting to reintroduce a multi-tiered wage system as well as other concessions and the union will not agree to this. We are going to continue to stand strong. We are not interested in a race to the bottom. These are good jobs, we really need to stand up to these big companies and protect what we have."

 

            The union is asking the public to boycott Ikea. For more information, visit the Teamsters 213 site on Facebook. Listen to the Media Mornings Co-op Radio interview with Anita Dawson by Jane Bouey (Wed., June 19, on the W2Media.ca website,http://w2radio.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/media‑mornings‑wed‑jun‑19/).

 

 (The above article is from the July 1-31, 2013, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)