I expect this to continue to expand indefinitely. Tesla's going to end up being driven out of Sweden. Musk would rather (locally) bankrupt it than cave.
In 1947, after a strike wave triggered by postwar inflation, the anti-union Taft–Hartley Act[1] was passed by bipartisan agreement over President Truman’s veto.
You're being downvoted currently, but anti-Communist sentiment was absolutely a big factor in the erosion of the power of unions over the course of the Cold War years.
Since the unions cooperate together this way, it looks like they can shut down whatever business they want to, especially since they can decide not to deliver packages and mail. Why should a union accept a company's terms at all? If you're powerful enough to shut down a business, what's stopping you from getting whatever you want, regardless of whether it's reasonable?
The sympathy strikers don't risk losing pay, since they strike against someone other than their employer. Laws and contracts don't seem to be preventing the unions from shutting down Tesla's operation. The need for production doesn't seem to be preventing this either.
you mean, just like companies have it in the US? they also cooperate, to do things like suppress wages or fix prices. what's stopping them from getting whatever they want?
What the unions are doing in Sweden are apparently legal. The US has laws to protect against the things you're talking about, such as the Sherman Act and FTC oversight.
This is not even close to the first time something like this has happened. In denmark unions collectively crippled mcdonalds operations, with sympathy strikes disallowing deliveries, from dockworkers refusing to unload supplies and equipment, to construction workers refusing to fit out stores, to truckers refusing to deliver supplies and food and beverage workers refusing to work on supply chain items. Mcdonalds workers are now paid $22 an hour in denmark
Similar reason amazon simply doesn't operate here. Many other companies have learned the hard way: you simply don't fight the system, give fair contracts, and things work out okay.
Just treat the system as the system. Locate there if your business model works in that system.
If you plan on a "normal" employment model where workers get fired sometimes, redundancy is part of your MO, etc... don't locate to France.
If you plan on being union free, don't go to Sweden.
Walking in with declaration that "you can either have McDonald's or you can have your union model," that is so immature. I can't think of another aspect of business where this kind of thinking is acceptable.
Imagine doing this with building permits or whatnot.
It would be fairly stupid for a country to retaliate against another country because one of their companies failed to abide by local rules and regs. Not that it hasn't happened before but this isn't how you remain a dominant player in the market, such powder is best kept dry for when it is really needed.
Over Tesla? No way! The US didn't even go nearly as far over the Boeing-Airbus disputes.
Also, the EU countries field, between them and the UK, multiple aircraft carriers, nuclear subs (hunter-killer and ICBM ones), modern militaries (albeit smaller in size than during the cold war) and robust industrial base for basically everything. Surey the US quiting wouldn't be great, but it wpuld be an even worse self inflicted wound than Brexit.
Unless Elon ends up POTUS (after all, in Demolition Man they passed an ammendment to allow Schwarzeneger to be elected, so ehy not?), the US won't do nothing over Tesla whatsoever, now or in the future.
What's NATO got to do with it? Really these are absurd statements. The US is tickled pink that Sweden finally joins NATO and three weeks later they go and drop out of NATO on account of a business dispute?
Sweden exports 3x more to the US than the other way around, and of those $15B in exports it's primarily critical infra like trucks, medicine, and refined petroleum. I don't believe the US would "retaliate" because Musk doesn't want to give his ~130 employees industry-standard packages in Sweden, but if they did A) it's not a huge amount and B) I doubt the US really wants to reduce critical infra to help a trillion dollar company strong-arm a union in another country lol
I'm saying I don't think Sweden would be impacted by losing a tiny bit of its GDP in exports in order to protect its work culture, but I also don't believe it'd ever come down to that anyway.
Sweden is part of the EU, and thus cannot be sanctioned without sanvtioning the EU as a whole. And that is something the US cannot afford. In general and paeticularly in light of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
If Tesla doesn't want a Swedish location, they don't have to have one. There's nothing extreme or dysfunctional about Swedish labour norms. It's not France. Even if there were, that's Sweden. Tesla don't have to locate there.
Why are Tesla not prepare for this? It's not like they completely ignore permitting or environmental regs just because they're different from the US.
Tesla live by Chinese rules in Chin. That even includes the major task of making Elon shut the gob.
You want to operate internationally... everywhere is different. Not everywhere is suitable. Choose wisely.
If Tesla eats a major delay because they hadn't anticipated the inevitable... That's on them and it is bad management.
This would be a _baffling_ move by the US, and hasn't happened in previous cases of American companies fucking around and finding out in Scandinavia, even when they were far more iconic American companies like McDonalds.
For practical purposes, the US also cannot just start a trade war with Sweden; they would have to start it with _the EU_. (You'd think people would've learned this from Trump's nonsensical attempts to make trade deals with individual EU countries.)
I don't understand this view. you come to a foreign country to do business. This country has an established set of rules that you have to follow to do business in it.
You arrive and demand something that is not following these local rules, and then get mad because they do not agree? What am I missing?
