Offering incentives for workers to cross picket line in bad taste, board rules
Management at Ikea’s flagship store in Richmond, B.C., committed unfair labour practices after trying to negotiate directly with striking staffers, the provincial labour board has ruled.
At the end of July, British Columbia’s labour board decided Ikea had acted in bad faith and violated provincial labour laws by trying to bargain directly with employees through a website posting, which offered monetary incentives for employees to cross the picket line.
About 350 workers at the Swedish retail giant’s Richmond store — one of only two unionized locations in the country — have been on strike since May 2013, with no negotiations taking place since December of that year.
The union representing the locked out workers, Teamsters local 213, lauded the labour board’s decision.
"It goes to what bargaining in good faith is compared to what bargaining in bad faith is," said Anita Dawson, the business representative for the local chapter. "If you try and put forward these conditions, enhancements if you will, to try to entice these workers to cross the picket line and circumvent bargaining with the union — it’s just not acceptable."
"The company is looking for major concessions and they want us to take a lot less in a lot of areas in the collective agreement," she added.
She pointed to the wage structure and wage progression as one major point of contention. While it would take four years under the most recent collective agreement to reach the top wage tier, under Ikea’s proposal, an employee would have to work for 16 years to earn that rate. As well, Dawson said the union could not accept the scaling back of the number of sick days, scheduling and flexibility provisions and changes to management rights.
The decision from the labour board will set a precedent for employers that attempt to change the terms and conditions of employment during a strike, Dawson added.
"It’s about getting back to the bargaining table. You can’t go around and circumvent the bargaining unit rights of certain employees by trying to negotiate directly with them instead of the bargaining agent. It may not sound like much, but it’s significant because it just goes to show the real anti-union nature," she said.
Ikea confirmed it will appeal the decision.
"It is unusual to restrict an employer from determining the terms and conditions of employment during a legal strike when there is no collective agreement in place," explained Madeleine Lowenborg-Frick, public relations manager for Ikea Canada. "We feel it is important to communicate directly with our employees through the strike and to answer any questions that they may have in a straightforward and honest manner."
Because the store has been operating during the strike — and because it is against labour laws to hire replacement workers during a strike — the managers and employees who are working with a contracted workforce behind the picket line deserve compensation for the additional duties performed.
"They are meeting these customers with a reduced workforce and are learning new skills and working in new areas," Lowenborg-Frick said. "Many are performing functions that are higher paid roles with a higher level of responsibility from their usual jobs. As a result, Ikea felt that added compensation was fair."
Bargaining between Ikea and the Teamsters union is slated to resume pending a forthcoming decision from the labour board regarding the status of the 35 employees who were expelled from the union after crossing the picket line.
Unprecedented case
The case has attracted the attention of key players in labour circles, as it deals with unique conditions, said Nicole Skuggedal, a lawyer with labour and employment firm Lawson Lundell in Vancouver.
"This case is different because Ikea said they’re going to continue to bargain with the employment conditions in the collective agreement — but (the other offer) would be solely applied during the strike or lockout. That’s a unique issue," Skuggedal said, adding that the board’s decision was well-reasoned.
"The board said, ‘No, the duty to bargain in good faith requires that you need to put those conditions to the union before you implement them, even if you’re just implementing them during the strike or lockout,’" she said.
However, Ikea’s move could have been damaging to the trade union movement as a whole, which likely prompted the labour board to rule the company acted in bad faith.
"The board said it constitutes an unfair labour practice in making these wage improvements to the employees — which could induce employees to refuse to be members of the trade union. Ikea was essentially saying, ‘Look, get rid of your trade union. If you don’t have the union here, you’ll be getting higher wages,’" Skuggedal said.
