Mediated talks aimed at resolving a long-running labour dispute at Ikea's Richmond location reached an impasse Monday.
The two sides entered discussions July 13. According to the employer, officials representing Teamsters Local 213 were presented with an amended proposal July 17 that eliminated a two-tier wage system.
In its place was a system providing automatic increases, plus increases tied to the furniture store's performance.
In a press release from Ikea, the proposal allowed Ikea to address the Union's expressed leading concern, while also addressing the store's poor performance.
According to Ikea, the Richmond store, just one of two unionized locations in Canada - the other is in Quebec - has consistently been the lowest performing store in Canada for sales and productivity, while having the highest staff costs.
"Despite our efforts to address the two tier system, the union rejected Ikea's offer," said Ikea's public relations manager Madeleine Löwenborg-Frick in a press release. Mediation has concluded and the parties remain at an impasse.
Teamsters representative Anita Dawson said the company's offer that included an initial two per cent raise was rejected because subsequent annual percentage increases tied to the store's performance would take workers 22 years to achieve the top rate.
"That wasn't going to work," Dawson said, adding, "There's not a lot of trust there that those sales goals and numbers are attainable. Therefore, it was going to
be very hard to say that you could actually get to those numbers with any kind of consistency."
As for the company's comments on the store's productivity and sales performance, Dawson said, "They are the ones managing the store.
"They control the ordering and how the store runs. So, trying to pin it all on the workers that the productivity isn't there is not fair."
As a result of the breakdown in talks, the labour dispute, which began in mid May, will continue.
No further talks have been scheduled, and the store will continue to be operated on reduced hours.
