Where does Swedish furniture company Ikea build a plant when it wants to offshore work in order to pay poverty wages, bust unions, force mandatory overtime, and generally slave-drive their workers?
Where else – Virginia.
In a report in the LA Times, Bill Street, a union organizer in Danville, Virginia, offers a choice quote:
“It’s ironic that Ikea looks on the U.S. and Danville the way that most people in the U.S. look at Mexico.”
In other words, the Southern, right-to-work states, where paying single-digit hourly wage rates is the norm, is the new destination for European firms looking to offshore jobs.
Nathaniel Popper of the Times investigated how the Swedish furniture giant treats its American workers at its Swedwood manufacturing subsidiary.
What he found is that workers in Swedwood plants in Sweden, which produce bookcases and tables similar to those manufactured in Danville, enjoy a minimum wage of about $19 an hour and a government-mandated five weeks of paid vacation. Full-time employees in Danville start at $8 an hour with 12 vacation days — eight of them on dates determined by the company.
In addition, the workers face mandatory overtime with little notice. Sometimes, at the end of the day on Friday, they’re told that they have to pull an extra shift over the weekend. One female laborer quit because she was repeatedly denied time off to take her chronically ill husband to doctor’s appointments.
What’s more, as many as one-third of the workers at the Danville plant were snagged from local temporary-staffing agencies. These workers receive even lower wages and no benefits, employees said.
In a glowing review of the LA Times’ piece, the Columbia Journalism Review notes that Virginia, a self-proclaimed “pro-business state,” gave Ikea $12 million in tax incentives to locate in Danville, a downtrodden town that once relied upon textiles and tobacco for its livelihood.
As tensions within the factory have grown, workers are hoping to join a union. That’s where it gets real interesting – Ikea, which employs unionized workers in Sweden, has hired a union-busting firm in the U.S. to try to manipulate the upcoming union-certification election.
The dust-up has garnered little attention in the U.S., according to CJR, but it’s front-page news in Sweden, where much of the workforce is represented by organized labor and Ikea is a cherished institution. Essentially, many Swedes view Ikea’s behavior in Virginia as shameful.
When the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers announced that a majority of eligible employees had signed cards calling for an election, the law firm Jackson Lewis, which has made its reputation keeping unions out of companies, was brought in. Workers told the times that officials from Swedwood (the Ikea subsidiary) required employees to attend meetings at which management discouraged union membership.
Things are so different from how Ikea treats its Swedish employees that the head of its Swedish union is baffled by how bad it’s acting in the U.S.
“Ikea is a very strong brand and they lean on some kind of good ‘Swedishness’ in their business profile. That becomes a complication when they act like they do in the United States,” said the labor leader. “For us, it’s a huge problem.”
Mr. Selewski has identified a real threat to the American Standard of Living. Right to work states and temp firms make it possible for firms to pay the lowest wages possible. Keep in mind many jobs have also been outsourced from the Southern (Right to Work aka slave) States to the Third and Developing Nations. Just take a look at the textile industry and its egress from New England to Georgian and the Carolinas to the Developing world. Despite what many NEO CON Republicans say we need both Import and certain Export Tariffs, as without them we suffer massive trade imbalances and are looking more like a third world nation all the time. Perhaps we will end up like Ireland in the 1840's with our country being sold out from under us.
Temp firms also sabotage a persons right to earn a descent living as companies play revolving temp companies and shed their employees in favor of cheaper temp alternatives who receive low pay and little if any benefits. It also allows companies to shed older (more costly) workers without being sued for age discrimination.
While Corporations P&L sheets may look good and deliver slightly higher dividends for shareholders in the short term we become economically weaker as a nation which will lead to greater personal and business bankruptcies in the longer term if the trend is allowed to continue.
Welcom to capitalism, either do you job better or learn a new one. The only thing I see from unions is lazyness and corruption. Look no further that the City of Detroit and how well their finances have turned out.