International Pressure Nets Union Victory in One of Two Elections at Virginia IKEA Suppliers
Employees at the EBI, LLC plant in Danville, Virginia voted against union representation by the Steelworkers in an NLRB-supervised election conducted earlier this week. The tally of ballots indicated a 281-118 vote rejection of the union. The employer manufactures products for IKEA.
This was the second NLRB election at an IKEA-related employer in Danville in the past month. Employees at a nearby Swedwood plant voted 221-69 in favor of union representation by the International Association of Machinists on July 27.
In the case of Swedwood plant, at least, there was evidence of a significant evolving trend where the American operations of European companies are pressured to remain "neutral" in connection with union organizing drives. A Bloomberg news report put it this way:
The Danville union drive was followed by the media in Sweden, where many company workers are union members. The largest daily newspaper in Stockholm wrote that the company was behaving in an “un-Swedish way.”
Labor Notes' coverage of the election lists effort by international unions to apply pressure to organize German-owned Volkswagen, Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile, and French-owned food services company Sodexo, among others. Regarding the efforts of the IAM's Woodworking unit in Danville, the author notes:
...BWI took on the Danville union effort as an international campaign, calling for a boycott, sponsoring protests from Germany to Hong Kong, and at one point clogging Ikea corporate inboxes with 100,000 emails. BWI has member unions in 127 countries.
European companies with American operations should not underestimate the type of pressure UNI and the other international labor organizations are able to bring to bear on these issues in the U.S. As the successful union organizer at this Danville plant noted:
