Where it says IKEA, it is not always IKEA inside

The following text I found on the Internet:



Where it says Ikea, it is not always IKEA inside

Precarious employment is spreading in the Wallau branch

The management of IKEA in Wallau is increasingly using temporary agency workers instead of their own employees and outsourcing activities to external companies. This undermines the ver.di collective agreement of the Hessian retail sector.

A new management team at IKEA in Wallau has been bringing more and more temporary agency workers into the store since the end of 2007. Fixed-term contracts at the cash registers expired at the end of August 2008. Now there are often temporary agency workers from the company attentus sitting there for eight euros gross per hour. IKEA employees earn 12.93 euros per hour at the register according to the collective agreement. Long-term employees receive 14.33 euros.

The Wallau IKEA management wants "simple tasks" in the areas of cash register, logistics and restaurant to be performed "flexibly" by temporary agency workers. Own employees are not being laid off, but turnover is exploited. Even management positions such as substitutes are not being replaced.

More and more external companies are being used under contracts for work at IKEA in Wallau. Those who help customers load in the self-service hall earn about 6.50 euros gross, and the new cleaning company pays only 6 euros. External companies are used in furniture assembly/lost property, at the trash compactor, at the entrance gate, as cleaning crews, in the dishwashing kitchen and as cart pushers – almost exclusively with precariously employed workers, as the works council and ver.di criticize.

Until the end of 2007, 431 people were employed in Wallau with 300 full-time positions. With almost the same revenue, by July 2009 there were only 318 employees in 233 full-time positions. Wallau is today the most profitable IKEA branch in Germany. But the price is an ever-deeper division into a core workforce on the one hand and temporary agency workers and external companies with low wages on the other. The works council can hardly do anything for the latter. IKEA still applies the collective agreement, but fewer and fewer people working in the store benefit from it.

The management also threatens the works council: If it does not sign a works agreement on temporary agency work or makes the use of temporary agency workers too difficult, the entire cash register area will be outsourced.

ver.di and the works council now want to bring these grievances more strongly to the public. Because customers are increasingly financing precarious employment relationships with their tax money, in which people rely on state assistance despite having work.

It’s not nice, but as long as there are temporary employment agencies, this will probably become more and more normal, right???

The idea of temporary work was actually a completely different one, but unfortunately, the whole thing has turned in the wrong direction. And now we have to live with it. Or do you have a better idea?

Should we all stop shopping at IKEA now?
Suppose one fifth stopped shopping at IKEA because of this, what would be the consequence? IKEA would continue to work on cost minimization and possibly not renew temporary contracts due to operational reasons. And whether a works council shouts: “No, this is not how it works...” is probably completely irrelevant.
Or should the employees rebel against it and possibly risk a secure job?

The problem is not IKEA itself, but the problem is temporary work that offers such dumping wages.
You name IKEA, I counter with every big corporation in the world. Because every corporation wants to save money, and if you were at the top of a global corporation, you would act the same way. Period.

Another example, same effect:
You surely remember the big bribery scandal involving some top politicians. Do you seriously think that’s all over???
There is no more bribery in this world just because a few politicians got caught?
If you were a politician, no offense, a little chubby one who actually sits alone at home every evening and occasionally sneaks secretly into the topless bar. Do you seriously think you would refuse a luxury vacation in the Maldives or Mauritius with a few scantily clad ladies? Especially since no one knows you are there. I hardly think so. And just like that, the company has your vote, maybe not the first time, but at the latest when your Swiss bank account suddenly shows 5, 6, or even 7 figure sums.

If you seriously believe that this couldn’t happen to you, then grab a suitcase and let yourself be dropped on a desert island. There, the law of the strongest applies and not the one with the biggest wallet. But don’t forget that a few monkeys can also be jealous of your treehouse and drive you away from there.
Everyone is for sale, it’s just a matter of the amount.

Regards Maverick1854

or briefly summarized:

every company will sooner or later do it out of cost pressure or profit seeking by the owners. as long as it is legally possible. but strangely enough, we voted out the red-green and ushered the business-friendly black-yellow into office...