So it sounds like the action isn't about particulars, at least not at this point.
They are describing the dispute as being about general principles afaict. That Tesla should accept the "swedish labour model" in general. They emphasize that it's an non-disruptive model and good for business.
This stuff is all context(that I don't have. Otherwise it's just a generic "unions or not" debate unrelated to Tesla, Sweden or 2023.
That said... US companies seem at aeas with these sorts of issues in Europe. In china, companies either stay out or bite the bullet and play by Chinese rules.
In Europe, especially around labour issues... American companies seem to always "rebel." It's as if local labour laws just aren't taken into prior account... and companies are caught surprised by the inevitable.
This doesn't really happen outside of Europe, nor for non-labour issues like environmental regs.
It's interesting, I've started seeing job ads in Sweden where you are expected to setup your own company to work for a US-based company with US-style PTO. The salary looks bigger than what is typically offered by Swedish companies but that is because not only do you have to work more, the company you setup will also have to pay the quite steep payroll tax (at ~31%) that most employees are not familiar with (as it's paid by the employer on top of your salary before personal taxes).
The law in Sweden dictates that a company must give its employees at least 5 weeks of vacation of which at least four weeks consecutively some time during June, July and August.
This is really insidious as it looks like you'll be earning a lot (but you won't) and it's hard to sue yourself for only giving yourself two weeks of vacation.
I found it on LinkedIn, specifically targeting Swedish SWE ASFAIR but do you really want to work for $50/hour? That's less than I pay my carpenter and it's what $100000/year boils down to when you have to work 50 weeks/year.
The ad said prominently $100000/year which sounds pretty ok for an SWE salary in Sweden, but then if you read on you realized that you needed to start your own company and your company would be paid $100000/year which is quite a big difference. That's my main objection to these types of ads, if you don't already run your own company, chances are low you are familiar with the payroll tax and other costs that comes from running a company which will eat into what you may initially perceive as a good salary, only to end up working more for less.
In my experience as self-employed, it's not that hard to find Swedish companies that pays at least twice the hourly rate and then you can have much longer vacation and still earn more!
It seems very odd that the government would dictate four consecutive weeks at that time of year. Why do they get to decide when you should work or take the bulk of your holiday?
>It seems very odd that the government would dictate four consecutive weeks
Because summer vacations are part of the culture, and considered important. That rule allows families to take long holidays together, with other families, etc.
I realize that it's a foreign idea... but this is a foreign place.
The government doesn't dictate when you take your vacation. They only dictate that if you want four consecutive weeks of vacation during the summer no company is allowed to deny it. Your employer is however allowed to say that you get your four weeks any time during that period. Most people typically vacation in July so the whole country basically closes down then.
Honestly, I think governments in some places (Sweden certainly) should just formalize these practices and make them easier and more transparent.
Work is getting international. There is value for Swedish workers and the economy here. Companies (even with good faith) can't deal with unlimited jurisdictions directly.
If it's formalized, it can be managed.
For some countries (Eg France) it would probably too hard or conflicting. For sweden... why not?
Some companies absolutely try it for environmental regs, too. I think what you're possibly seeing here is that where a multinational tries labour abuses, the response is typically very messy and public, whereas only the very most extreme _regulatory_ offences will be particularly publicly visible (typically where the company tries to defy the regulator after being caught red-handed). More commonly they'll be told what they need to fix and possibly fined.
Sad the same isn't true in the UK where amazon is happily abusing the spirit (and perhaps also the letter - IANAL, don't sue me) of our already weakened labour laws.
There is nothing illegal about operating without a collective labour agreement in Sweden. For example, I’m born in Sweden and have worked here for 20+ years and I don’t think I’ve ever had an employer with a collective labor agreement. Among tech startups and smaller companies it’s quite rare, and when I’ve worked for larger companies I’ve incorporated and contracted, largely to get away from the negative effects of unions and job security: absurdly low pay.
> Does Tesla have a chance/way of operating in Sweden without collective bargaining?
Sure it does. It just has to survive the “sympathy actions” from many of the other unions. As I understand it many of the actual Tesla employees refuse to go on strike.
Oh now I understand what this is. Swedish have a standard of how fast you work MTM and others have as well. I bet Tesla doesn't want to follow that and want people to work much faster.
So, some average speed of worked might be MTM 90-100, but in Sweden is like 70, because studies show they get injured much less. And if you see videos of workers, they appear to work like in slow motion.
This might be one of things they have dispute about.
This is not very informative at all, the first sentence is a vague statement about “decent and safe working conditions” without any detail or elaboration and the rest is basically an ad for the union complete with a “join today” call to action.
It directly answers the question why this trade union is taking industrial action against tesla. Because tesla refuses to negotiate a collective agreement with its employees. Seems quite informative.
I support unionization, but I still wouldn’t call a single sentence saying “we need a collective agreement” as “informative”. I would expect some details around what exactly is causing the safety issues they claim.
What you’re asking for is in the article. The “single sentence” is actually three paragraphs which explain why this is a concern.
> what exactly is causing the safety issues they claim
This is in the third of those three paragraphs in the article:
> The collective agreements are negotiated on a sector-by-sector basis, and employees are guaranteed the wages and working conditions that are standard across the sector. This allows for companies to operate on a level playing field, while avoiding the risk of any one employer distorting competition in the sector by imposing poor conditions on their employees.
Tesla doesn’t allow the employees to work under the same conditions as dictated by the agreed-upon standards.
Collective agreements / collective bargaining are very common in europe, and their purpose is to establish a baseline of guarantees, compensation and generally workers rights.
Collective agreements are also incredibly common (in my eu country they cover like 98% of the workers).
The main reason for a company to avoid those is because of the intention to offer lower rights, worse pay, and less guarantees (job security / protection from discrimination etc).
These articles from Sweden give those concepts for granted because they usually are taken for granted in most Europe.
> a vague statement about “decent and safe working conditions”
There's nothing vague about it given the context. They mean standard Swedish working conditions, like the deals they have (and everyone else has (literally 90% of workers)) everywhere else. The precise conditions of collective agreements vary somewhat but overall are pretty uniform per sector so everyone here knows what they're talking about. Unfortunately I can't find you an English article for what they're talking about but you can try your hand at translating this one [1] for some introductory information.
You are reading one side of the dispute's statement.
That said, yes, it doesn't sound like their on specific demands, at least currently. They want Tesla to "accept the swedish labour model."
"Decent and safe working conditions" is the union's general raisin d'etre. Their role, general goal, etc. It would be like Tesla saying they want to "profitably manufacture vehicles." Just a general description of what they do... and it's fine if they were to state it while describing their position.
It seems reading comprehension isn't your forte. Here's the very first paragraph of the article you're accusing of not being very informative.
> The main reason for IF Metall to take industrial action at Tesla is to ensure that our members have decent and safe working conditions. Over a long period of time, we have attempted to discuss with Tesla the signing of a collective agreement, yet without success. Now we see no solution other than to take industrial action.
> The main reason for IF Metall to take industrial action at Tesla is to ensure that our members have decent and safe working conditions.
I’m Swedish and have been following this closely. I’ve yet to see anything that indicates either a) that Tesla employees do not have decent and safe working conditions or b) that Tesla employees themselves want a collective agreement with IF Metall. In fact Tesla has stated that their agreement is better for employees than the one the union IF Metall is trying to impose. There are also statements from Tesla mechanics in the press to the same effect, e.g. because they currently get stock options.
To me it’s quite obvious that this is about defending “the Swedish model”, a semi-socialist labour market system where compensation is decided primarily in negotiations between cartels of unions and cartels of large employers. (Individuals can negotiate their own salaries, but in practice only within this reference frame of collective bargaining.)
> There are also statements from Tesla mechanics in the press to the same effect
Scabs :) more seriously: let's say I have 100 employees; I underpay 90 of them, and overpay 10. When the union comes knocking, I roll out the 10 overpaid ones to whinge in the press. I'm not saying this is Tesla's case, just that all declarations (particularly from employers) have to be taken with a big pinch of salt.
That's not to say that unions are always right, some of them are undoubtedly power-hungry organizations more interested in survival than in their core mission (like all institutions). But typically, cries from employers about their agreements being "better" are just because they don't want to be tied to the guarantees that union agreements contain; nobody stops them from paying above what stated in the agreement anyway.
> nobody stops them from paying above what stated in the agreement anyway
That's not the point - the point is they don't want to be strong-armed via collective bargaining. We have a market to enforce market rates; you don't need a union to do that.
You call it strong-arming, I call it negotiating among equals. When unions are involved, the original imbalance of capital owners vs labor becomes more of a level playing field, and the resulting agreements tend to be fairer than they would otherwise be.
Obviously, if you are a capital owner used to leverage your asymmetric power, this sucks. It probably sucks even if you're one of the few workers who happen to be able to be treated almost as peers (typically because of skill scarcity), since the union might concede something you enjoy in exchange for guarantees that you don't (think you) need. But for the workforce as a whole, collective bargaining is typically a net positive. Which is a big part of why Scandinavian countries have some of the highest quality of life scores in the world.
"The market will solve this" only works with an idealized free market.
Labour is the very definition of an un-free market. Employees are looking for the very means to survive, while employers (especially ones like Tesla) are just looking for ways to make themselves even richer than they already are.
A free market, in the sense of "market theory", requires (among several other conditions, very few of which apply here) that what is being negotiated over is a commodity. Neither side can have their very existence at stake, and what's being traded can be swapped with another provider's version of it for no (or very low) cost.
Their existence isn't at stake. It's only at stake if there's only one employer, e.g. in the total opposite of a free market.
Your phrasing, e.g. "even richer than they already are" is really not helping. Anyone can start a business, even a tiny one. They take on risk. They need people to survive this risk. Those people want close to no risk, and a salary and other things. They get those not because of labour unions, but because these two types of people need each other.
There are so many variables, it's fundamentally disingenuous to say "just find another job". Maybe Tesla is the only car factory in town, and your skills are very specific to car manufacturing. Maybe you have a disability that makes it extra-challenging to job-hunt. Maybe you borrowed money to fix your home, and you can't afford to be out of work for a month as you look for another gig. Etc etc.
The word safe here is doing a lot of heavy lifting imo. Not necessarily safe as in physical safety but also contractual safety.
An example is pension where companies not under collective agreement tend to not specify pension in contract rather just a blurb about "pension is to be compensated based on the currently applicable company policy". Basically allowing them to do whatever bait and switch they want later. Even if the benefits are good now there's no guarantee that they will stay that way. That's what a collective agreement is supposed to protect, that you can't go below that standard.
> I’ve yet to see anything that indicates [...] that Tesla employees themselves want a collective agreement with IF Metall.
I, uh, wonder how you arrive to this conclusion considering all the Tesla employees striking for this exact purpose? Admittedly it's not the employees themselves manning the picket lines, but that's for safety reason as bosses at Tesla has threatened to fire people who participate in the strike.
Same in Germany, where the left party and labor union drive a campaign against Tesla Grünheide (just southeast of Berlin) with very nebulous claims such as safe working conditions or wages. Those claims are never backed by hard numbers, just anecdotes about work accidents or in case of wages pure accusations.
The German IG Metall is quite obviously teaming up with the Swedish IF Metall (does anyone else recognize the similarity in their names) to keep their power. It will be interesting to see how this will work out.
> Same in Germany, where the left party and labor union drive a campaign against Tesla Grünheide (just southeast of Berlin) with very nebulous claims such as safe working conditions or wages. Those claims are never backed by hard numbers, just anecdotes about work accidents or in case of wages pure accusations.
This is a very strange claim considering that the German media recently published articles on workplace accidents at Tesla in Grünheide. Some of them are government documents they can't share, but they have published many numbers.
Doesn't this strongly support what the left party and labor union are saying?
There is nothing illegal about operating without a collective labour agreement in Sweden. For example, I’m born in Sweden and have worked here for 20+ years and I don’t think I’ve ever had an employer with a collective labor agreement. Among tech startups and smaller companies it’s quite rare, and when I’ve worked for larger companies I’ve incorporated and contracted, largely to get away from the negative effects of unions and job security: absurdly low pay.
Yes you are absolutely right. In this case it is about Tesla, owned by the richest man in the world. In other cases it has been about a salad bar run by an ordinary small-business owner. The "Swedish model" is that they should all sign collective agreements or else the unions will be very unhappy and you will have a hard time to continue running your business.
No single person owns Tesla. It's a publicly traded company, Elon does not have majority ownership nor control of the board. Anyone can buy shares and take ownership or run for the board.
