Believe it or not, but I’m an organizer. I believe that too many people think unionizing just happens to workers, rather than workers forcing it to appear to protect themselves. IKEA is international. Swedish coworkers can’t defend workers in the US, US workers have to demand they’re treated the same as their Swedish coworkers.
Didn’t the recent Swedish Tesla conflict spill over borders? Dock workers in Norway and Sweden refused to unload materials for Tesla as long as the dispute in Sweden was resolved.
It did, but not because the workers in Sweden pulled Norway along. The workers in Norway knew that if they didn’t stand in solidarity with their fellow workers then, then Tesla would try the same shit with them. In the US, those strikes are technically illegal (not criminal) but still happen anyway. I helped organize a walkout for CWA, and by getting the word out the teamsters showed up with equipment and we had 2 other local presidents come join us on the picket line.
As someone who once sat back and said “I’ll have what the Union is having.” at negotiation time - I’m sad to report that I stopped being able to do that in tough times.
And I’m happy to report I no longer have this problem, as the union expanded and now I’m able to be a member.
This is AFAIK normal, as legal details for unions differ by country. In other words you cannot have a single global union. The per-country unions can of course communicate and plan action to be synchronized, sure. But as unions they exist separate, and have to. As in, they’re striking at “IKEA Germany”, not “IKEA”.
I don’t know that I’d use ‘insanely’ as the modifier here as their position has weakened significantly over time, but they do certainly still play a large role in the Swedish labour market.
That’s awesome! I’d be curious to know which industrial union they’re a part of, I love learning about labor movements in other countries. I’m from the US so when I say unionize, it’s more comparable to a worker council. But the crazy shit you might have heard about like captive audience meetings, firing organizers, and anti-union onboarding absolutely happen. It’s an uphill battle for sure.
What im about to say applies to belgium, and i dont know about other countries or companies or how it works if a company from another country has a base in belgium, so take everything i say with a pinch of salt.
SO
In belgium every company with more than x amount of employees ( i think its either 50 or 100 ) must have a worker council meeting every month and have worker council member votings every few years, to select what employee will join said meetings with a select few people of the heads of the company. The members are people who have joined a union ( which is just being registered, has nothing to do with your job and which union depends on the job and your political views. Each union is large enough to cause mayhem and force talks ) and have put themselves forward to be in those meetings.
After said voting, the representatives are selected and join the meetings.
While the representative is selected him or her can not be easily fired or laid off. While they are registered at a union they also can not be fired without a valid reason, as that would get the company investigated.
So overall here what union doesnt mean that much, but the process is more important.
I would also like to point out that i love this whole thing, even if ive worked with a complete asshat that was the workers representative and seriously needed to be fired because he did his actual job (handyman) terribly. The fact he was in those meetings meant the workers were represented and im sure he did that part right as he kept being voted for.
They’re part of ver.di, although that in itself skips a whole host of details that I personally don’t all know either. But yeah over here plenty unions are local in a company, too. But they also got strong legal protections (and some obligations), so apart from the shakey time when you’re forming a union, they’re on stable ground.
Some others - like ver.di - are large cross-business union aggregations that centralize their decisionmaking process and then can strike on multiple divergent businesses at the same time to force business owners to come to the table. From what I know from people who are in such companies, upsides and downsides. They got a lot of pull, but in return their demands are often rather generic which is good if you just care about pay, but bad if you want things more specific to your work.
Very nice. If anyone here works at IKEA, just know that unless you unionize those things can disappear just as easily.
AFAIK, unions are insanely strong in Sweden. Though that doesn’t help IKEA employees outside of Sweden.
So we’re relying on the Swedish union to stand up for global employees without a union.
Believe it or not, but I’m an organizer. I believe that too many people think unionizing just happens to workers, rather than workers forcing it to appear to protect themselves. IKEA is international. Swedish coworkers can’t defend workers in the US, US workers have to demand they’re treated the same as their Swedish coworkers.
not related, but I can never look at un-ionizing as a good thing to humans. I’m very pro ions.
Didn’t the recent Swedish Tesla conflict spill over borders? Dock workers in Norway and Sweden refused to unload materials for Tesla as long as the dispute in Sweden was resolved.
It did, but not because the workers in Sweden pulled Norway along. The workers in Norway knew that if they didn’t stand in solidarity with their fellow workers then, then Tesla would try the same shit with them. In the US, those strikes are technically illegal (not criminal) but still happen anyway. I helped organize a walkout for CWA, and by getting the word out the teamsters showed up with equipment and we had 2 other local presidents come join us on the picket line.
Yep.
As someone who once sat back and said “I’ll have what the Union is having.” at negotiation time - I’m sad to report that I stopped being able to do that in tough times.
And I’m happy to report I no longer have this problem, as the union expanded and now I’m able to be a member.
Capitolism, baybeeeeeee!!!
This is AFAIK normal, as legal details for unions differ by country. In other words you cannot have a single global union. The per-country unions can of course communicate and plan action to be synchronized, sure. But as unions they exist separate, and have to. As in, they’re striking at “IKEA Germany”, not “IKEA”.
I don’t know that I’d use ‘insanely’ as the modifier here as their position has weakened significantly over time, but they do certainly still play a large role in the Swedish labour market.
I mean… compared to the states, they’re practically a political party.
I don’t know about other countries, but here in Germany IKEA workers are unionized, and have been for a long time.
And have been on strike recently, for quite some time.
That’s awesome! I’d be curious to know which industrial union they’re a part of, I love learning about labor movements in other countries. I’m from the US so when I say unionize, it’s more comparable to a worker council. But the crazy shit you might have heard about like captive audience meetings, firing organizers, and anti-union onboarding absolutely happen. It’s an uphill battle for sure.
What im about to say applies to belgium, and i dont know about other countries or companies or how it works if a company from another country has a base in belgium, so take everything i say with a pinch of salt.
SO
In belgium every company with more than x amount of employees ( i think its either 50 or 100 ) must have a worker council meeting every month and have worker council member votings every few years, to select what employee will join said meetings with a select few people of the heads of the company. The members are people who have joined a union ( which is just being registered, has nothing to do with your job and which union depends on the job and your political views. Each union is large enough to cause mayhem and force talks ) and have put themselves forward to be in those meetings.
After said voting, the representatives are selected and join the meetings.
While the representative is selected him or her can not be easily fired or laid off. While they are registered at a union they also can not be fired without a valid reason, as that would get the company investigated.
So overall here what union doesnt mean that much, but the process is more important.
I would also like to point out that i love this whole thing, even if ive worked with a complete asshat that was the workers representative and seriously needed to be fired because he did his actual job (handyman) terribly. The fact he was in those meetings meant the workers were represented and im sure he did that part right as he kept being voted for.
They’re part of ver.di, although that in itself skips a whole host of details that I personally don’t all know either. But yeah over here plenty unions are local in a company, too. But they also got strong legal protections (and some obligations), so apart from the shakey time when you’re forming a union, they’re on stable ground.
Some others - like ver.di - are large cross-business union aggregations that centralize their decisionmaking process and then can strike on multiple divergent businesses at the same time to force business owners to come to the table. From what I know from people who are in such companies, upsides and downsides. They got a lot of pull, but in return their demands are often rather generic which is good if you just care about pay, but bad if you want things more specific to your work.
But again, totally not an expert about unions.
Word.