Unions are accusing IKEA of cracking down on Massachusetts workers in a series of 'captive-audience' meetings featuring fear-mongering PowerPoints
- IKEA has been accused of using union-busting tactics in its Stoughton, Massachusetts, store.
- In a statement to Business Insider, a company representative said IKEA believes that "freedom of choice exclusively belongs to each and every one of our coworkers."
- A group of international unions filed a complaint with the Dutch Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on September 27, accusing the company of allowing local management to create environments hostile to organized labor.
IKEA's alleged union-busting tactics have invoked the ire of a number of unions around the world.
A coalition of unions led by UNI Global Union, including North America's United Food and Commercial Workers, filed a joint complaint against the Netherlands-based company with the Dutch Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on September 27.
The complaint alleges that the furniture retailer's "failure of due diligence" permitted local management to quash organizing efforts at stores in Stoughton, Massachusetts; Dublin, Ireland; and Lisbon, Portugal. It also accused IKEA of using tactics like forced meetings and PowerPoints that discouraged employees from voting to unionize.
IKEA currently operates 403 stores across 49 different countries. Many of the company's 194,000 or so employees belong to different trade unions.
Allegations of 'union-busting' activities in the US
More than 15,000 employees work in the approximately 40 IKEA stores in the US, and none of them are unionized, though some of IKEA's US warehousing operations are. The Dutch OECD complaint describes the US retail store operations as "non-union."
In 2015, 32 "goods-flow" employees at the IKEA store in Stoughton - a town 17 miles from Boston - reportedly made an attempt to change that. Gawker reported that overnight warehouse workers submitted a letter on November 10, 2015, expressing their interest in joining the UFCW, a retail labor union with around 1.2 million members.
"People were excited about it," Shawn Morrison, an IKEA employee who's worked in the goods-flow department of the Stoughton store for nine years, told Business Insider. "We had majority support back when we had the strike."
Boston.com reported that the employees picketed outside the store about a week later, after IKEA had allegedly failed to respond to the letter. Morrison said that about 14 or so coworkers called out that day in order to picket with union representatives.
"I've been here for two years, and I've seen them fire a lot of people for no reason," IKEA employee Veronica Cabral told The Enterprise during the strike. "I want job security because I have a family to take care of."
IKEA argued in a November 16 statement that the strike brought about "unnecessary safety risks for both our coworkers and vendors." The statement also alleged that most of the picketers were not IKEA employees and added that it had "reason to doubt" the accuracy of UFCW's assertion that about 75% of the company's goods-flow employees in Stoughton wanted to unionize.
Then-Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders stepped into the fray, writing a letter to IKEA US President Lars Petersson, urging him to "immediately recognize their union and enter into contract negotiations."
But the much-debated union never came to be.
The Dutch OECD complaint alleges that the Stoughton management team counterattacked with "an aggressive anti-union campaign" in May 2016, after UFCW had filed an election petition with the National Labor Relations Board.
The election took place in Stoughton on June 27, 2016, ending with a 26-14 vote against the union.
Managers allegedly held 'captive-audience' meetings
The UFCW alleged in the OECD complaint that the failed vote in Stoughton was the culmination of IKEA's attempt to discourage workers against unionizing with so-called "captive-audience" meetings, or mandatory gatherings that employees could be terminated for skipping.
The OECD complaint alleged that IKEA's captive-audience meetings would last for one to two hours every day in the run-up to the vote. During the meetings, the UFCW alleged, management disparaged collective bargaining, indicating that the union would likely fail to help workers "obtain a net gain in wages and benefits," and told employees that they were "personally offended" by the push to unionize.
"It was a lot of pressure and people were getting scared," Morrison said. He described the meetings as "grinding," and added that management began doing favors for certain employees, like not assigning Saturday shifts.
According to the complaint, management also showed employees a PowerPoint comparing the election to selecting a getaway destination. Voting against the union was compared to a "vacation paradise." The union alleges in the OECD complaint that "the choice to have union representation was illustrated with a donkey with a stick in its mouth next to a small wooden hut."
When an employee attempted to photograph a slide, the report claims, management booted the person from the meeting.
Employees were also allegedly barred from wearing union buttons or comparing salaries, according to the complaint. In its complaint, the UFCW accused IKEA management of "buying votes" by giving employees gift cards a week before the union election.
A subsequent investigation by the regional NLRB found "merit in charges that IKEA's management unlawfully interrogated employees about their union activities and sympathies."
The NLRB filed suit against IKEA in July 2017. An administrative law judge was set to take the case, but the resulting trial was pushed back a few times. In the OECD complaint, the union described the delays as IKEA's attempt at "buying time" until US President Donald Trump overhauled the NLRB's lineup in December 2017. The NLRB ultimately dropped the trial on January 17, 2018, three days before it was supposed to commence.
The complaint alleges that the actions on the part of IKEA management in Massachusetts infringed on OECD guidelines. It also said that IKEA should enact an agreement "not to interfere in the representation process with anti-union captive-audience meetings, threats of permanent replacement and other tactics" across its international stores.
Morrison said that he wasn't particularly surprised by what he saw as an anti-union campaign on the part of IKEA, especially given the state of US labor laws.
"I've met coworkers from IKEA in Europe," Morrison told Business Insider. "It's a lot different over there."
In a statement released to Business Insider following the filing of the OECD complaint, an IKEA representative said: "We are committed to providing a great place to work, permeated by a spirit of collaboration, dignity and respect for all coworkers. We respect and welcome the free choice of our coworkers to seek representation through any kind of coworker association. Our position on union representation is clear - we firmly believe that the freedom of choice exclusively belongs to each and every one of our coworkers, and we will not take side or express preference to any association."
Are you a current or former IKEA employee with a story to share? Email acain@businessinsider.com.