UPDATE: IKEA man­agers offi­cial­ly refused a request from ware­house work­ers to extend vol­un­tary recog­ni­tion to the UFCW as the union to rep­re­sent work­ers at the Stoughton, Mass­a­chu­setts site. Many of the affect­ed work­ers staged a one-day strike Novem­ber 16 and the union is now con­sid­er­ing next steps, accord­ing to a spokes­woman, includ­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fil­ing with the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board for an election.

A small group of IKEA work­ers in sub­ur­ban Boston launched a union orga­niz­ing cam­paign this week — and imme­di­ate­ly attract­ed the sup­port of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates Bernie Sanders and Mar­tin O’Malley.

The overnight ware­house crew at the IKEA store in Stoughton, Mass­a­chu­setts, met with local man­agers Novem­ber 11 to request that the home fur­nish­ing retail­er rec­og­nize the Unit­ed Food & Com­mer­cial (UFCW) union as its legal rep­re­sen­ta­tive, IKEA work­er Chris DeAn­ge­lo tells In These Times. The pro-union employ­ees pre­sent­ed a peti­tion in favor of the union signed by 75 per­cent of the 32-mem­ber ware­house crew, DeAn­ge­lo says.

Let­ters of sup­port were imme­di­ate­ly issued from the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign orga­ni­za­tions of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vermont) and for­mer Mary­land Gov. Mar­tin O’Malley. In a coor­di­nat­ed effort, both called on IKEA U.S. Pres­i­dent Lars Peters­son to rec­og­nize the union vol­un­tar­i­ly, con­sis­tent with the company’s stat­ed labor poli­cies of respect­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights.

Fur­ther, Switzer­land-based UNI Glob­al Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Philip Jenk­ins issued this state­ment at pre­cise­ly the same time: ​“Here at the meet­ing of our World Exec­u­tive Board, the affil­i­ates of UNI, rep­re­sent­ing 20 mil­lion work­ers, includ­ing those work­ing at IKEA stores the world over, have stat­ed their unequiv­o­cal sup­port for the brave actions of work­ers in IKEA Stoughton.”

UFCW has been sup­port­ing pro-union work­ers at the IKEA Stoughton store for near­ly a year, DeAn­ge­lo says. Dis­con­tent has been sim­mer­ing, the eight-year com­pa­ny vet­er­an says, with a harsh reg­i­men of work­place dis­ci­pline and arbi­trary deci­sions on wages. ​“Job secu­ri­ty is a major issue, and gen­er­al fair­ness in increas­es and pro­mo­tions. … All poli­cies are applied dif­fer­ent­ly,” he says.

“Peo­ple have been fired for ridicu­lous rea­sons. It was almost irra­tional. One guy got fired when he got to work 12 min­utes late, and that was on a day we had a bru­tal snow­storm. … Anoth­er guy got fired when he was late because his car broke down.”

When the grow­ing union sen­ti­ment became obvi­ous to local man­agers, there was a quick change in atti­tude, DeAn­ge­lo fur­ther reports. ​“Ear­li­er this year they were very harsh with us. I would say dra­con­ian. But then in August, they turned 180 degrees, it was like night and day. They start­ed to put up notices remind­ing us how good our ben­e­fits – they had nev­er done any­thing like that before,” he says.

Work­ers even saw notices post­ed in Por­tugese, as a nod to a group of employ­ees of Cape Verdean descent, he says. ​“We had nev­er seen any­thing like that before.”

DeAn­ge­lo tells In These Times that work­ers are hop­ing this charm offen­sive will lead to IKEA grant­i­ng vol­un­tary recog­ni­tion to the union, even though there is no his­to­ry of the com­pa­ny doing so at oth­er U.S. loca­tions. The work­ers gave IKEA a 72-hour dead­line to respond. ​“If they don’t respond, or say no, then we’ll have to decide on the next steps,” he says, but a like­ly step would to file for a Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board-super­vised election.

IKEA set the pat­tern for NLRB elec­tions for its ware­house work­ers when union orga­niz­ers swept through the company’s five large stand-alone dis­tri­b­u­tions cen­ters in 2011 – 2013. The Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Machin­ists (IAM) won elec­tions to rep­re­sent work­ers at three of the cen­ters, and the Team­sters won at a fourth. Those efforts had, in turn, been spurred by a suc­cess­ful IAM orga­niz­ing dri­ve at the IKEA-owned Swed­wood fur­ni­ture man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in Danville, Virginia.

Aside from the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date sup­port, anoth­er twist in the Stoughton sto­ry is that the orga­niz­ing cam­paign is lim­it­ed (at least at this stage) to the ware­house crew, known in IKEA par­lance as the ​“Goods Flow In” depart­ment. It there­fore leaves out about 165 IKEA retail work­ers on the same site.

The Goods Flow In work­ers are quite dis­tinct from the retail work­ers, DeAn­ge­lo says, in the sense that they work 2:00-to-10:00 a.m. shifts load­ing and unload­ing trucks, and are rarely seen by the store’s cus­tomers. DeAn­ge­lo, for exam­ple, spends most of his time oper­at­ing a fork­lift as goods are moved around the ware­house space where cus­tomers are not allowed.

This may become a point of con­tention if NLRB pro­ceed­ings are ini­ti­at­ed. Lob­by­ing orga­ni­za­tions for retail store nation­wide launched a pub­lic­i­ty cam­paign last year aimed at a NLRB deci­sion involv­ing Macy’s depart­ment stores and so-called ​“micro-unions.” The deci­sion said it was per­fect­ly appro­pri­ate for union orga­niz­ers to divide the work­ers at indi­vid­ual stores in to small­er dis­crete bar­gain­ing units, even if the store man­agers object­ed. Lob­by groups like the Nation­al Retail Fed­er­a­tion and Retail Indus­try Leader Asso­ci­a­tion objected.

UFCW spokesper­son Moira Bul­loch tells In These Times that the union has no addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion avail­able at this time about the recruit­ment of Sanders and O’Malley as sup­port­ers of the Staughton work­ers. Nor did she know whether lead­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date Hillary Clin­ton had been asked to join Sanders and O’Malley.