The direct action, which was carried out by the workers with the participation of the rank-and-file trade union SI Cobas and the Bolognese antagonist student and worker collectives, was aimed to compel IKEA to stop workers’ exploitation, respect working timetables, equally share extra workload, pay the due salaries, guaranteeing the right to organize and reinstate porters which were suspended from their activities and threatened of sacking.

Policemen in riot gear, which were lined up in front of the store, tried to disperse the protesters with their truncheons – in accord with the management. But the determination of the workers, which withstood the hits and surrounded the officers, brought the store to an early closing for the day.

The protest was covered by the Twitter hashtag #ikeainlotta (#ikeainstruggle), after a previous one #spazioalcambiamento (“#spacetochange”), originally used by IKEA itself for community marketing purposes, was flooded by angry messages of workers and consumers. Picketing has been a practice also shared by students, which carried it out in the recent day of nationwide action of December 6 against education cuts when – once again in Bologna – the Faculty of Humanities in the central Via Zamboni was temporarily closed.

The outcome of the day was important, achieving the first successful blockade of an IKEA shopping outlet in northern Italy – whereas other pickets were called up to block the company’s warehouses in various locations in the same area. A common struggle affecting logistics workers, that recently enjoyed yet another victory in the nearby Lippo di Calderara – a small industrial Bolognese suburb in which the GEODIS employees, after two days of agitation, secured better working conditions and had also their strike period salaries paid. The mobilization will continue in the weekend, with a new picket scheduled for friday morning in Piacenza (Emilia-Romagna) and further actions at San Giuliano and Corsico (Lombardia) IKEA premises.

* A term used in colloquial Italian to refer to a wide array of bureaucratic and hierarchical cooperative companies mostly based in the Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany, which act both as coffers and patronage networks in these regions for the centre-left Democratic Party (PD)