In Case You Missed This... 'Ikea Joins The Race To The Bottom' - Salon

Ikea joins the race to the bottom
We thought the Swedish furniture chain was the anti-Walmart. Turns out we were very wrong
BY DAVID SIROTA
FRIDAY, APR 15, 2011 07:01 ET

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...

Buried in the Times report is the troubling story of why Ikea opened a plant in the United States in the first place. No, the decision wasn't made to take advantage of superior workforce skills or productivity -- positive attributes that once drove our manufacturing sector and built our middle class. Instead, it was made to exploit our decreasing wage levels and weak worker protections.

Though company factories in Sweden produce the same bookcases as the plant in Virginia, the Times notes that "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 (while) full-time employees in Danville start at $8 an hour with 12 vacation days" -- and that doesn't count the one-third of Danville workers who are paid even less because they are deliberately subcontracted through temp agencies.

Ikea’s exploitation motive evokes memories of General Electric's Jack Welch. He famously said that in an era without strong international unions and with standards-free trade pacts, profit-maximizing companies would end up putting "every plant you own on a barge" and trolling the world for the lowest wages and workplace conditions, knowing they would no longer face tariff costs.

That's what so many formerly American manufacturers did when they picked up and left the United States after NAFTA and the China trade deal reduced tariffs, and what more will likely do if the Obama administration's new Colombia free-trade pact passes Congress. That's what companies are doing by leaving China for the even lower wages of Vietnam and North Korea. And that's what Ikea did in moving Swedish production facilities to Virginia (and probably somewhere else if Danville workers dare demand some respect).

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More: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/04/15/sirota_ikea

:mad:

:kick:

shop there. Tired of that pressed wood look.

Unbelievably fucking sad.

nations of Europe did during WWII. Their economies have been near the top in Europe,
and still are. Sweden can hardly be described as a "developing nation." I believe
their standards of living are higher than ours today on a per capita basis. It's just
that their countries are small -- with less than 10 million inhabitants each.

How fucking sad is that? We're #1! First at the bottom! Yay.

barely covers RENT!

Well, at least the south is....

the nth degree. Enforce workers' rights, yes. But $8/hr and 12 vacation days isn't what I'd call slave labor.

Should this be fixed in the future? Definitely, yes. But right now, we need the jobs.

I bet if you ask any of the people working there, they'd say they'd rather have the job than not have the job, and they'll wait to get better terms, when the economy is better.

My employer has taken advantage of the bad economy. All the companies have, it seems. And employees take advantage of a good economy by negotiating higher salaries, when workers are in demand. It's the way of the world.

I do know this, though: the worm always turns.

Even in the most destitute areas, that barely covers rent and the bills, much less the ever-increasing cost of food. At those wages, you pretty much have to put your kids to work in order to live. Twelve vacation days a year is getting New Years Day, Christmas, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Labor Day off, plus one week's vacation a year - the legal minimum in many states.

Paying the minimum wage and state-mandated holidays isn't slavery, no, but it's the absolute bare minimum to conduct business legally in this country.

I come from a union town. The plants in the town pay extremely well and have great benefits (they're union). But I noticed at a young age that when they lay off, those plant workers can't do anything else. The work is pretty specialized. I therefore determined that I would not work at the plants, and additionally, would try to have a secondary skill or experience, so that when the economy is bad, I'd have a better chance of getting employment.

Those people who work at that plant have decided they want to work at a plant. They don't have to. Working at a plant is pretty risky. Unless you do office work or something general, you don't really learn a trade that you can go out and market. Maybe there are carpenters that work at Ikea. I don't know.

But w/o seeming tooooo cold hearted about it, a job is a job, and $16K a year is better than NO $K a year. Companies don't pay people more than they have to. That's not the way the world works. If you open a deli, I can bet that you wouldn't pay your workers a lot more than the going rate, because they'd live a better life if you did. Maybe you'd pay at the high end of the going range, but you'd stick w/in the range. Your sandwiches are going to sell in the range of the going rate for sandwiches, and you'll be paying the going rate for pepperoni and cheese and bread. And your staff would get paid the going rate for deli workers.

If the economy were great, and companies were competing to get workers, do you think those workers would turn down HIGH wages, because it's just not right to take advantage of the situation? No, they wouldn't. And you wouldn't. And I wouldn't.

I would advise all the people working there to go to school at night or move to a larger city or do something to get a better job where the pay is better. In the meantime, though, they have to work, and if they get insurance benefits, and have a job, they're better off than a lot of other people. Things will get better, when the economy gets better. In hte meantime, the companies call the shots. My pay has taken a hit, too, in the last two or three years, and I'm pretty PO'd about it. But I still get paid a decent wage...however, I've sacrificed a lot to make sure that that happened (I've stayed at the same employer for years...I've given up vacation and personal time in order to work....I try not to complain....I try to do an excellent job...I've saved and saved and saved for a rainy day....years ago I changed vocations when I saw I would never get a decent wage. It can happen, but you have to work at it.)

Aside from that, it is minimum wages indeed. New Yrs Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, X-mas. Hmm, coming up with 6.

After all, it was due in part to the massive discontent of the unemployed during the Great Depression and other such downturns that we got the rights that we have now.

These same workers will go and Rally with the teabaggers and write op eds about the evils of Unions. Don't feel to bad for these workers they do it to themselves.

propaganda, deliberate misinformtion and lies, would continue to
do it to themselves. It's out of ignorance, and the corporate
media are glad to increase that ignorance, so that they can
keep on manipulating those they have dumbed down.

I have often heard what I thought were rational people say, "A poor man never gave me a job." This is the mentality of the South. The wealthy are elevated and admired because they throw crumbs to the lower class and the poor or middle class are basically useless. Every manager I have had has had a similar mentality unless they were from somewhere else. It's not a fun place to work.

corporations are doing this not only in our country, but also worldwide.
Rupert Murdoch tried to buy his way into Britain and Canada, and was
rejected by both. Corporations are the worse of the two, and so are
more dangerous.

I don't think the middle-classes are useless. The word also means different
things to different people. I think of anyone earning less than $200,000/yr
as middle-class. This would include scientists, engineers...and other skilled
workers (at least in the first 10 to 20 years of their working lives). They
are the ones who come out with new ideas and inventions. The unskilled ones
are those who produce goods in factories, or services in various forms.

The super-rich people produce neither goods nor services. What they do can
generally be described as to MANIPULATE MONEY, generally in the direction of
their own pockets. They are the PARASITES who produce nothing useful, yet they
think of themselves as being superior to others, and have convinced themselves
that they are entitled to all the benefits, without having to do any work.
These are the sickos.

"The super-rich people produce neither goods nor services. What they do can generally be described as to MANIPULATE MONEY, generally in the direction of their own pockets. They are the PARASITES who produce nothing useful, yet they think of themselves as being superior to others, and have convinced themselves that they are entitled to all the benefits, without having to do any work."

appears to be setting up the states as low wage
states.

So the great America is going to be the center
of cheap wages and few regulation. Perfect target
for the Transnationals. China is going to have
to raise Corporate tax rates as the middle class
grows larger and they need to bring more citizens
out of poverty and into the fold.

Nafta Cafta and all those FREE TRADE Policies.

Back then we said ultimately Globalization would
bring lower standards of living to the US through
lower wages. First they had to get rid of the higher
wages jobs by shipping them to lower wage countries.
Just like clockwork, we are becoming the lower wage
country. Yes, they bring jobs back but at much lower
wages. This benefits Big Business, Wall Street and
the ELITES. Main Street, you can have the crumbs.

Maybe "Amazed" is a better word.

:shrug:

:hi:

C'mon we need to bring them here to exploit us, some people need 2nd and 3rd jobs!

Supposedly, you can get tons of free Ikea Furniture off of freecycle.

only to reimport the product back to the US.

When Sweden is doing this, they are not bringing the final product back to Sweden - they are leaving the product to be sold in the US.

This is simply not comparable to what US companies are doing in their offshoring.

thnx

Guess I was a sucker for ever believing in any companies in the first place...

I expect they got rid of those.