Union decries Swedwood conditions

An international labor union is campaigning for IKEA and its manufacturing subsidiary Swedwood to recognize the rights of workers in Swedwood’s Danville facility to join a union after complaints about working conditions at the local plant.

Swedwood Group leaders say the Danville plant remains committed to worker safety, treats workers fairly and respects the rights of workers to join or not join unions.

Building and Wood Workers’ International led a protest against Swedwood Danville conditions on Dec. 7 at the IKEA in Geneva.

“We’re still hoping for an amicable agreement to the outcome of this campaign, but we’ve become sort of less hopeful every day,” said William Street, director of the woodworkers department for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, a member of BWI.

The machinists union reported in July that Swedwood in Danville had a higher incidence of injury than other worksites in the same industry in the United States based on analysis of U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration log data.

But the union doesn’t have an accurate record of the number of injuries as Swedwood was cited for not recording injuries for temporary workers, Street said.

Earlier this year, OSHA cited Swedwood for violating the standards for “control of hazardous energy (lockout/tagout)” regarding machinery or equipment, “forms,” and “covered employees,” according to the OSHA website.

The facility was cited for two violations, both of an administrative nature, said Ingrid Steén, information manager for the Swedwood Group in Sweden, in an e-mail.

One was for recording the injuries of temporary employees as the staffing company for temporary employees logged the injuries, Steén said. OSHA concluded Swedwood should be recording them, so Swedwood since started doing it that way. Steén noted the injuries were always recorded and never ignored.

Secondly, the annual audit of the lock out/tag out procedure wasn’t sufficiently documented, Steén said via e-mail.

Both issues were immediately addressed after a comprehensive wall-to-wall inspection of the factory, Steén said.

As far as safety, the Danville facility is now at 125 consecutive days without any incidents and the objective is zero lost time accidents for the Swedwood Group, Steén said on Wednesday.

Swedwood works “intensively and continually” with preventive programs, training new workers on safe work practices, regular safety meetings and conferring with a worker safety committee on an ongoing basis, Steén added.

Street would like Swedwood to work with the union to address worker complaints. Swedwood Danville workers are they’re forced to work more than 40 hours a week and work schedules change frequently and often without two days off in a row, Street said.

“In Danville, Virginia, families are pretty important and church on Sunday is pretty important,” he said.

 Other workers said they aren’t treated with respect, like when supervisors use profanity, Street said.

Swedwood is not allowing union representatives on the Danville facility property and Street meets with workers in secret.

Street said Swedwood in Danville is not allowing unionization even though the BWI claims more than 50 percent of workers there want to join. That goes back on the agreement BWI and IKEA have, he added.

“We had really hoped we could do this in a cooperative win-win,” Street said. “I haven’t given up on that hope.”

Swedwood maintains it hasn’t violated the agreement and that when Swedwood learned of the claim that workers wanted to join the union, it suggested a secret ballot process to determine the accurate position of workers, Steén said.

“And, we will respect the result of the election process,” Steén said. “This offer has, however, been declined by union representatives.”

For more information on the union campaign, visit http://www.goiam.org/ikea/.