A group of IKEA workers in College Park, Md. have banded together to gain more hours and improved scheduling and opportunities for advancement in the company’s Maryland area logistics department.
When workers in the Inflow Department saw that IKEA kept hiring more part time workers even though current employees were asking for more hours, they asked for a meeting with management and called for a hiring freeze as long as current team members were asking for more hours. Together, the workers made the case to management that they couldn’t make ends meet on the hours they were being scheduled. As a result of their efforts, seven new full-time positions were created in the Inflow Department, providing promotional opportunities for eligible workers.
The group is now working to gain more worker support throughout the store in order to create more full-time positions, better hours and benefits for all IKEA workers.
The College Park workers join a nationwide movement of IKEA workers supported by the UFCW, who are uniting in their workplaces to improve their jobs. Following IKEA’s announcement last year to raise the base pay for all new hires in 2014, three Seattle IKEA workers launched a petition calling on IKEA to make sure workers with years of experience weren’t left behind. The petition united IKEA coworkers across the country and quickly gained more than 7,000 supporters from 101 countries around the world.
Way too go!!!!
Awesome! Keep pushing!