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Swedish newspaper Dagen Nyheter reports from a meeting where UNI Commerce together with affiliates from USA, Sweden, Belgium, Turkey, Austria and Ireland discussed the issues they have with IKEA globally. One of the issues was the inconsistency of labour relations practices in the company, which could be solved if IKEA signed a global agreement with UNI.







You can read more from Dagens Nyheter in Swedish on www.dn.se.









Below the English translation of the article:



Headline: Demands made on IKEA – Union wants an agreement which covers all employees of the furniture giant.



Union representatives from different parts of the world have been to Stockholm to coordinate their demands on IKEA.

“We are not asking for a lot, just an agreement that guarantees basic rights for IKEA employees,” says Alke Boessiger of global union UNI which represents 20 million workers.



The unions’ demands are that a union can talk to workers at their workplace without pressure so that they can decide if they want to join a union, as well as to have a collective agreement.

“These are simple things. IKEA already has such an agreement on the production side,” says Alke Boessiger.



Lars Anders Häggström, president of the Swedish commercial workers union, thinks that IKEA is dragging its feet on the issue of a global agreement.



“We have no problems with IKEA in Sweden, but the company shows a different face in different parts of the world. They simply follow the local practice and legislation. If it is OK to harass the union, then they do this. But if you can have (Swedish) meatballs as an international concept, then you can have an international concept for human resources also.”



Michael Bride of the UFCW finds IKEA to be anti-union and tells of meetings to massively persuade employees with reasons why they should not join a union.

Brian Forbes of Mandate, the Irish union, wonders why a Swedish company refuses to talk to a union, and Mehmet Karaarslangu witnesses on how union organising is made difficult in Turkey.



“Now we will write to IKEA and hope they can meet us in a few weeks so we can at least start a dialogue,” says Alke Boessiger.



From IKEA the Swedish press spokesperson Ylva Magnusson says the company welcomes a dialogue and hopes that a result can be achieved which is acceptable for all parties.



But IKEA’s structure makes negotiations complicated. IKEA does not run all stores since there are also franchisees.



“it is of course desirable that all under the IKEA flag treat their co-workers with respect”, she says.





Inserted below the article from Dagens Nyheter: