An Exceptionally Long Strike on Canada’s Left Coast

23 Replies to “An Exceptionally Long Strike on Canada’s Left Coast”

1. Their working conditions and contracts must have been pretty sweet for them to hold out for so long, why else would they? Unions went from bricks and mortar to steaming piles of dog dung.

2. “Why would any of them agree to working for such a “terrible” company in the future?”
   I would surmise that if you equate union lowlife scumbags with low information voters, well, you should have your answer.

3. We went through this years ago with the Nipawin Co-op. I can’t remember now how many years it was but it was many many – maybe 10+. We just got used to the sight of a couple of morons picketing outside the Co-op store. The ones that are left on the picket lines after a year are either idiots or unemployable or possibly both.

4. Unionized shops tend to nurture bad attitudes and practices in both labour and management. It is a destructive relationship protected from reform by the state through labour laws that preclude open and free bargaining or the choice of alternative arrangements after expiration of a contract. It has allowed unions to become politicized thugocracies rather than competing bargaining units governed by contract.
   The hypocrisy of workers hating their employer underscores the self-contempt of the entitlement mentality.

5. Couldn’t they both lose somehow?
   IChinea always brings to mind:
   Sears run by the KGB.

6. Nanaimo was once known as a staunch union town – until there was almost no industry left. We still suffer from that legacy and mentality. Big spending local gov’t and high property taxes. The City took the parking contract away from a private company and we now pay unionized city employees $32/hr to write parking tickets. IOW, high wage union jobs subsidized by the taxpayer when lower cost alternatives are available.
   We used to have several large unionized ‘Co-Op’ stores that were mini-department stores, all paying ‘good wages and benefits’ of course. Now none of them exist. Lots of Co-Op gas stations though, paying minimum wage or slightly above. The only reason they exist is that members save 4% on gas purchases, plus a $50 cheque at the end of the year as a share of profits.

7. It would probably be worth it to Ikea if they just locked the doors and wrote it off. It isn’t like they can’t find d another tenant for that building, right? That’s what Walmart did in PQ, and it works well for them.
   There’s really no upside to the shopping experience of being served by a surly union goof who’s just putting in time until shift change. I’d be driving to another Ikea, were is me.

8. The only think I can figure is that the Teamsters REALLY want to get into Ikea.
   But 13 months? Clearly, Ikea has a strategy, and they’re in this for the long haul.
   In other words: Dude. She’s gone. Get over it.

9. Well …. anyone stupid enough to want to belong to a union and a private union in particular is an idiot, a fool and a weak person. So, those people are idiotic, fools who are too weak to get a real career where merit counts. Jobs at IKEA are no different from jobs an a fast food place …. temporary .. they are stepping stones to a real job, a career opportunity. While these twits strike and earn no money and will never make it up not matter how good a settlement they may or may not get. It’s a fools game where the winners are the people who run the union. They are knows as progressive thugs.

10. One more thing. IKEA doesn’t hurt families, they provide cheap fashionable furniture to people on a budget. IKEA has nothing to do with families let alone hurting them. IKEA doesn’t want to hurt anyone … but people who rely on unions to have a job to SUPPORT a family are the ones who are hurting their own families. If you don’t like you job, working conditions and paycheck … then quit and look for something better. If you need more skill training, then get it …. if you don’t … YOU ARE HURTING YOUR FAMILY.

11. There’s another story, Phantom, on the same website, that says the Supremes have ruled that Walmart violated Quebec’s labor laws by closing the store during the unionization drive and will now have to pay compensation.
    I agree with John Chittick’s characterization of labor laws as written being a huge, government caused, labor problem.

12. Ikea should close up and rent the location to another business that isn’t susceptible to Union blackmail.
    Then the Teamsters can celebrate another victory over the evil capitalists.

13. Exactly. That was my experience when I was in an UAW office union for about four years. Furthermore, I received smaller raises after the union came into the office.

14. Most union employee gripes never make any sense to me. I don’t think I could have been on strike for a month without going to IKEA to get my job back with enhanced wages as a ‘scab’ or , more likely, be gone looking for something better.
    I looked through the links, including the comments, and could only find two definite complaints:
    1) Tiered wages; Oh those rotten Swedes, paying people based on merit.
    2) Some individual complaint about lack of bereavement time; without further detail, it could be the company has a point and the employee is a jerk. Who knows!
    3) IKEA makes lots of money.
    Knowing unions, their demands are antagonistic in nature and they should have gotten back to work within the month.

15. “Walmart violated Quebec’s labor laws by closing the store during the unionization drive and will now have to pay compensation.”
    Yep. Unions make the store uneconomical but you are not allowed to shut it down. I guess the strategy has to be to let the union go on strike permanenly all the while bargaining in “good faith” After a couple years, they could ask the labour board for permission to dispose of assets.

16. “Anita Dawson of Teamsters 213” This is not the first time that the Teamsters have taken Strike action and failed to obtain a Contract.. NYC Package delivery Company comes to mind ~ 20 years ago, The sad story was on 60 minutes at the time, Teamsters screwed the strikers with promises they couldn’t keep.

17. Half pay for over a year. I guess there aren’t too many math whizes on the picket line. Those lost wages will take years to make back For many it will mean they never see the benefit of any wage increase as they’ll retire before making back the lost $. I have seen nothing in the union demands that would be worth that hit. However, I’m sure the sheep were assured by the Teamsters that they’d have a new contract in short order.

18. One of the problems of union workers is they tend to rise to their level of incompetence, then surpass it because most promotions are based on experience, and not on merit. I have had both union and non-union jobs over the years. You work hard and show some initiative in a non-union shop, and most likely someone will see it and offer you more money and/or a better job. If you are smart and enthusiastic you can advance quite quickly. You cannot advance the same way in a union shop, and quite often you are pressured by more senior co-workers to slow down and not do as much.

19. Why are all monopolies bad, except for those created by unions?
    Good for IKEA for holding out.

20. Are they on strike or locked out?

21. “… most promotions are based on experience, and not on merit. …”
    Yes, and although experience teaches, not everyone learns.

22. Love the Swedish meatballs.
    Bought the package deal over the weekend. Yum. Yum.

23. I used to work at IKEA Richmond. That union has been agitating to try to force their way into the non-union Coquitlam store (and if they could, the entire chain across North America) since it opened and also has a history of screwing over the workers.
    About the tiered wages: it has nothing to do with merit. My hiring in 2004 was delayed a month because they had just voted to accept a new contract whereby new hires would receive lower wages (from start to max) in order to maintain or boost existing workers. By my math, I bet a lot of the current dispute is people hired under that 2004 contract getting pissed about being paid less than the older cohort of workers, and indeed I seem to recall reading something about now the union wants the lower tiered newer workers to be paid what the older maximums were, even though it was their idea in the first place!
    I left after a year because I was working in a fairly physical department and it was screwing up my back. I’d been trying to transfer departments to something less physically straining a couple times and the union rules about seniority were blocking that, plus even if I’d been accepted by a new department, it was set up that my old manager could have blocked the move for weeks or months if not indefinitely because of her inadequate staffing levels.
    My sister-in-law worked at the Coquitlam store and found she had a much easier go of things for sure. And I think their maximum pay levels for any given job were what us new hires at Richmond were being given, so it’s not like the union was getting us more money over the non-union shop. I would have preferred to work at the non-union store but I couldn’t see having that hour commute each way (which would have sucked up much of my wages; she was fortunate to live close to the Coquitlam store).
    Anyway, what I saw was a lot of people get trapped where they didn’t have the job skills to do anything other than retail and the wages were pretty good for retail, in some cases almost double what a mall retail gig would pay. Which sounds good except people hated being stuck in the job but between the higher wage stopping them from leaving for other retail and the unpredictable hours screwing up being able to go back to school or get other job training to get out. I especially remember one of my coworkers who did the same job as me, hated it with a passion, but had resigned herself to that being her forever job because she couldn’t afford to go back to a different retail gig but she was always too run down and exhausted to even think about what else she’d rather do with her life.
    And then as John Chittick said above, that resentment turns to the company instead of the union.
    I guarantee you that IKEA’s plan is to get rid of the Teamsters and good for them, I hope they succeed. Their biggest problem is that they built the brand new store across the parking lot from the old one, not sure of all the strategy involved but it seems to me it might have been simpler to build a new one either in Vancouver proper or in South Surrey, have that be non-union like Coquitlam, wait a year and let the Richmond store die on the vine. Pretty sure its sales haven’t been as strong as Coquitlam’s, but I guess there’s some reason they didn’t or couldn’t do it that way.