This is where the anti-union stances of governments in the United States get really interesting. Read between the lines of this report in the Los Angeles Times.
According to the story, Ikea chose to set up its first factory in the United States, specifically in the town of Danville Virginia, because there were no unions there. The workers are now trying to unionise so Ikea has hired a union busting law firm Jackson Lewis. The report points out delicious ironies.
Nathaniel Popper at the Los Angeles Times writes: "The dust-up has garnered little attention in the U.S. But it's front-page news in Sweden, where much of the labor force is unionized and Ikea is a cherished institution …. Laborers in Swedwood plants in Sweden produce bookcases and tables similar to those manufactured in Danville. The big difference is that the Europeans 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. What's more, as many as one-third of the workers at the Danville plant have been drawn from local temporary-staffing agencies. These workers receive even lower wages and no benefits, employees said."
In other words, Ikea was attracted to the United States because it had lower production costs. Now usually big multinationals outsource all their production to places like China, Vietnam and Mexico. But Ikea has identified the United States as a third world equivalent. It's a lot cheaper to produce goods in the US than it is to do it in Sweden. Thanks to those union busting policies, the US is now becoming like China.
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