> "In the light of the conflict now spreading to Denmark as well as Tesla's recent very categorical refusal to enter a labour union agreement in any country, we have come to the conclusion that we as investors at present hardly can influence the company," the pension fund said in an emailed statement. ... That is why we're now putting Tesla on our exclusion list, ..."
PensionDanmark, one of Denmark's largest pension funds, has decided to sell its holdings in Tesla over this dispute. [0]
Scandinavia (and to a lesser degree the Nordic countries) is rich, capitalist and early adopting. This not only makes them a valuable market for Tesla. It also represents a threat if they exit. That market, alone, could enable a competitor to scale their EV production through the valley of death.
That's certainly a factor, but at least in Norway the government was quick to offer various incentives for EV (less fees, free use of bus lanes and so on) making it the largest early adopter of EVs in general (and Teslas in particular for the reasons you mentioned).
I don't see that PensionDanmark files 13f filings so it is hard to confirm their holdings. None of the 128 EDGAR filings that reference them pertain to Tesla. It's possible their holdings are through an inter-broker dealer which would be strange for a national pension fund but possible.
The Swedish National Pension Fund had about 500k of TSLA shares as of their latest 13f.
You're almost always better off buying individual stocks yourself. You can optimize your return in various ways, like tax loss harvesting to offset capital gains from other sources like stock options. There are cheap robo-advisors that can do this even with small amounts.
Also, you might agree with some activist fund exclusions, like tobacco or gambling.
You're not better of buying individual stocks compared to global index funds, that almost always ends up with you underperforming while taking more risk.
> Postal workers even decided not to deliver mail to the electric automaker, including license plates – an action that Musk called "insane". The local court has since put a stop to that action.
This is no longer true. A higher court overturned that decision and the license plates are again blocked from reaching Tesla.
Allowing the government owned post office to pick and choose who gets mail just seems like a step too far.
But even then the court wasn't forcing them to deliver mail, just allowing that mail to be picked up. And now that's blocked?
I just don't understand how one entity can have this much power, in this case they essentially are the government they could demand whatever the hell they wanted. Your choice is to leave the country or agree to the demands of the postal service.
People hate tesla and Musk right now so they'll by and large support this, but eventually the post office will realize how much power they weild and use it for some other gain.
And how is this not similar to the post office choosing not to deliver tax documents, forcing an entity to eventually become delinquent? The government agency responsible for sending license plates only uses the government owned mail provider (makes sense) but that provider can pick and choose who it delivers mail to?
>I just don't understand how one entity can have this much power, in this case they essentially are the government they could demand whatever the hell they wanted.
When you zoom out and look at the actors involved, this isn't all that strange. This is a strike - if the citizens of a country don't want to do business with a certain entity isn't that how the government, ideally, should work? Citizens should be able to demand whatever the hell they wanted; otherwise who does the government work for?
The nordic countries, Norway, Denmark and Sweden have unionization rates in excess of 50% - to almost 70% in Sweden. The nordic countries have always shown solidarity when it comes to union negotiations all the way down to the rank and file. To pretend that this isn't desire of the electorate in those countries is willful ignorance.
It's absolutely bizarre to claim that self-determining nation has too much power against a foreign corporation.
I'd say we the citizens are largely in agreement and want Tesla (and Musk) to stop waging war on our model. The US having an antagonistic relationship with unions is not how we operate. Unions negotiate with our blessing and employers are by and large happy to deal with them.
So please consider that other models are possible that are cooperative not antagonistic.
Required by who? What is this entity that compels government employees to work? Is it Tesla? If so why? Or is it their citizens, who are by and large supportive of this movement?
> What is this entity that compels government employees to work?
Typically the entity that compels employees to to their job (or be fired) is their employer. That is, in fact, the defining relationship between employees and employers.
The employer here is the government. That's why they are _government employees_. Last I checked, Sweden wasn't under a dictatorship. So again, if the citizenry largely support the strike, what is this shadow entity that is requiring them work?
This distinction is meaningless. The motivations of the "structured entity" is defined by the nebulous collective will of the population. If the elected members of the "structured entity" feel as though the best course of action is for those employees not work, then they don't have to work. I don't know why the needs to Tesla should have higher weight than those of electorate.
If PostNord was a private, shareholder owned company, sure those shareholders may value revenue over social cohesion.
Only if you subscribe to the most naive grade-school model of democracy. A government isn't actually the will of the people made manifest; it's an organization made up of people, processes, and constraints. Just like a corporation isn't actually the will of the shareholders made manifest.
> The motivations of the "structured entity" is defined by the nebulous collective will of the population.
Once again, this is an absurdly naive view of how governments function. There is a voting mechanism in place which usually does a sort of OK job of keeping the government's behavior in line with the population's preferences, but this breaks down all the time and even in equilibrium doesn't work very well.
I suggest reading Bueno de Mesquita's _The Logic of Political Survival_ if you're interested in developing a realistic model for how government behavior emerges.
That may be the case, but that's not germane to our discussion, which concerns whether it's bad to fire people who don't do their job. This is a normative discussion, not a descriptive one.
Well, your classification truly does not matter in the slightest. This is legal in the Nordics. You know how you make it illegal? By signing the CBA, which if you're already providing better terms, doesn't change anything.
Perhaps the world needs fewer Americans that speak so confidently about labour relations in other countries. As usual, 90% of what’s being said on this matter is utterly ill-informed back and forth by Americans that despite their best efforts can’t hide that they’ve bought in to the longstanding American anti-unionist culture.
> Similar to cops deciding not to police a region populated by a certain tribe. Or, in the same vein, over policing a certain region/tribe.
You should have gone with firefighters.
Cops famously never act in solidarity with other workers. In fact, they actively work against workers' rights.
Cops "over policing", or more accurately, "targeting", most certainly violates certain fundamental rights. A mailman not delivering packages to some company offices does not.
Sure, use firefighters not putting out certain fires.
I would classify use of infrastructure as a right. Like if a toll booth operator refused to take money from certain people.
Also, in this case, it sounds like the workers are also not allowing anyone else to deliver the packages, so it is not just "a mailman not delivering packages to some company offices".
> don't understand how one entity can have this much power...choice is to leave the country or agree to the demands of the postal service...eventually the post office will realize how much power they weild and use it for some other gain
It's fairly constrained. They have leverage because the law gives Postnord a monopoly on delivering license plates.
If they abuse that narrow power, it's trivial to take it away without triggering any broader impacts. The fact that this is outside the political Overton window should say something about Tesla's public support.
> The only reason they have leverage is the law that gives Postnord a monopoly on delivering license plates
Is that a law or an exclusive contract between the government and PostNord, given after bidding and a tender process as they call it in Europe and Asian countries?
I think it's a contract, and contracts have exclusions in cases of forces majeures like strikes. Since the Transport Agency is required by law to provide plates for properly registered cars, I would think they would be required to let Tesla pick them up, or use a different carrier for Tesla plates.
> contracts have exclusions in cases of forces majeures like strikes
Tesla can't call force majeure on a contract it isn't party to. If the Swedish government wanted to break the strike, it can--trivially. There is simply zero political will to do so.
The Swedish Transport Agency is required by law to provide plates. If it cannot fulfil its duties because of a force majeur event then it would be expected to explore alternatives like allowing plates to be picked up at the factory, which is not forbidden by law. It might be forbidden by the contract with PostNord, but PostNord is undergoing a force majeure so it cannot object to it.
> If the Swedish government wanted to break the strike, it can--trivially. There is simply zero political will to do so.
That won't be breaking the strike if plates are allowed to be picked up. If the government does not want to follow Swedish law and their duties, then the courts should force it to do so.
Yes, Tesla can do exactly that. It's a standard clause in Nordic contracts. They're not liable if they have had even remotely competent council do their contracts.
My Visa card has a clause that the bank isn't liable if it stops working due to industrial action.
There is an exclusive contract between the Swedish state and the postal company. There is also a contract that forbids the plate manufacturer from sending plates by any other means than post.
Transportstyrelsen does not agree that the current strike counts as a force majeure. This is (essentially) what the court case is about. Lower court agreed with you and allowed them to pick up plates themselves but the appeal court repelled that decision earlier today.
> Transportstyrelsen does not agree that the current strike counts as a force majeure
That's interesting, I wonder what their reasoning is, I thought strikes were included in the definition of force majeure in the law.
> There is an exclusive contract between the Swedish state and the postal company. There is also a contract that forbids the plate manufacturer from sending plates by any other means than post.
Isn't there a law that states the transport agency must provide lawfully registered plates? Usually laws trump contracts.
There is indeed such a law. There’s also a law saying that the state must provide me with a passport after I apply for one, but if their distribution system breaks down for whatever reason I cannot just show up at the passport making factory and demand my passport.
I think it’s obvious that Tesla will be allowed to get their plates sooner or later, and Transportstyrelsen does not seem to be of the view that they shouldn’t be. They are more concerned about the practicality and legality of letting them pick up the plates from the factory.
Given that PostNord is jointly owned by the Swedish and Danish governments but is not a government agency, it's strange that there would be a law that exclusively forces the Swedish government to use PostNord.
There's also nothing in the law that states that plates have to be mailed and cannot be picked up, that's a operational decision by the Transport Agency. It's required by law to provide plates so it will be interesting to see how this turns out.
You may well think that, and i agree with you, but that is how the regulation is, afaik. The plates have to be distributed by mail and Postnord has to be used for it.
The deal is that whoever gets the contract has to deliver to all of the nation, not just where it's profitable. UPS, GPS, DPD etc won't commit to that because they don't earn enough money on that. PostNord is the only one who does, and therefore they're the only ones who can win the contract.
PostNord is a private company owned by the Swedish and Danish government and who has won a tender with the Swedish transport authority to carry out the deliveries for them.
Private workers for a private company exercising their union protected rights.
I thought Americans loved private companies? But apparently not when it’s a postal service and it affects a treasure like Tesla?
Post Nord is not government run. It’s a private company which serves multiple countries. People seem to have very confused ideas about Swedish institutions.
> I just don't understand how one entity can have this much power, in this case they essentially are the government
In Sweden the unions own the government. Nordic countries can not be compared to modern republics such as the USA. There is little separation of powers.
The unions don't own the goverment. Or do you also belive that the nordics is full of socialists? And I'd much rather be a modern nordic country as compared to the USA where democracy is constantly threatened and bribing politicians is perfectly legal as long as you call it lobbying, the name a few modern examples
> Or do you also belive that the nordics is full of socialists?
Well, yes. Although the world is a lot more complicated than left vs right, the socialist parties have generally been the largest parties in Nordic countries, and the "conservative" parties do not rock the boat too much when they're in power. Because the voters wouldn't accept that.
> compared to the USA
It's a matter of taste and of values, but directly comparing these very different societies doesn't work well.
The unions "own" the government in the extent that they where tightly connected to the Socialist Democratic party that ruled Sweden for decades and are responsible for much of today's legislation. If you were a member of a union, they would on your behalf sign you up as a member of the Socialist Democratic party, until 1991.
So the unions are intertwined with the government in Nordic countries to an extent that is very unfamiliar to peopler from some other countries.
Another example is the government church in all the nordic countries, which is not much talked about, but indeed strange to people from other backgrounds.
So in other words the unions don't own the government so much as they own the voters (or is it the other way around)? I'd call a decision that voters agree on democracy.
> The unions "own" the government in the extent that they where tightly connected to the Socialist Democratic party that ruled Sweden for decades and are responsible for much of today's legislation. If you were a member of a union, they would on your behalf sign you up as a member of the Socialist Democratic party, until 1991.
Another explanation could be that both sides of the political spectrum agrees and thinks that the power re: labor decisions such as this _should_ lie with the unions, regardless of left/right lean. Even the "right" parties in Sweden are pro unions.
> Another example is the government church in all the nordic countries, which is not much talked about, but indeed strange to people from other backgrounds.
Huh? This hasn't been the case on paper since the year 2000 in Sweden, but in practice far longer than that. The church might still be called "Church of Sweden", but it has nothing to do with the government.
> So in other words the unions don't own the government so much as they own the voters (or is it the other way around)?
Yes, that's a good way to put it. Although memberships are rapidly decreasing in later years. The reasons for that can be saved for another discussion.
> Another explanation could be that both sides of the political spectrum agrees and thinks that the power re: labor decisions such as this _should_ lie with the unions, regardless of left/right lean. Even the "right" parties in Sweden are pro unions.
There really isn't any "both sides" of the political spectrum in Nordic countries when it comes to labour. The way the "right wing" parties can get elected at all is to say "We promise we're not going to do things differently than the left wing, but we'll give you a $100 more per year in tax deductions".
> Huh? This hasn't been the case on paper since the year 2000 in Sweden, but in practice far longer than that. The church might still be called "Church of Sweden", but it has nothing to do with the government.
It is still the case in Finland, Norway and Denmark. These countries have a government church, that performs government functions, and levies taxes to the church from your salary. You still have to fill in a form if you want to exit the government church. The year 2000 is not so far away, compared to when other nations separated church and state.
And AFAIK the former state church of Sweden (along with neighbouring countries) is still controlled by secular political parties, whose candidates are elected by church members. The largest church party by a huge margin being the Socialist Democrat party.
> There really isn't any "both sides" of the political spectrum in Nordic countries when it comes to labour. The way the "right wing" parties can get elected at all is to say "We promise we're not going to do things differently than the left wing, but we'll give you a $100 more per year in tax deductions".
That's exactly my point. I think we're in general agreement about the state of things, but perhaps not in the reasons behind it. I see a rational consensus and belief in a system. I don't believe that these parties pretend something simply to gain votes, and then, after gaining power, do nothing to further this alleged political agenda.
> It is still the case in Finland, Norway and Denmark. These countries have a government church, that performs government functions, and levies taxes to the church from your salary. You still have to fill in a form if you want to exit the government church.
The church tax still exists in Sweden, and is opt-out in a similar way as you describe for the other Nordic countries. The tax is used for things like church weddings, burial costs, etc. I agree that this is a little strange, but the fact of the matter is that this system (at least in Sweden) doesn't apply only to the Church of Sweden. If you are a member of another religious communities, the fee can instead go to this entity. (In Swedish: https://www.skatteverket.se/privat/skatter/arbeteochinkomst/...)
> The year 2000 is not so far away, compared to when other nations separated church and state.
Be that as it may, the time span wasn't really part of the initial discussion. And people living day-to-day up here knows that the church has little to no say in anything in society. It has been like that for a long time. I think if anything people coming from elsewhere might be surprised how secular Swedish people/Scandinavians are. I don't think anyone that moved here (or even grows up here) would ever think about the fact that there was a "state church" not even 25 years ago.
That's wild! As a (pseudo-) government agency, it seems like the postal service shouldn't be legally allowed to pick and choose whose mail to deliver and whose to withhold.
They're not allowed to pick and choose themselves. Why and when you can strike and sympathy strike is clearly defined, if you take action outside this framework it would be an illegal strike.
And just to add, the postal service in question is private and works like a private company, though the states of Sweden and Denmark fully owns it. Employees are not state employees.
> the postal service in question is private and works like a private company, though the states of Sweden and Denmark fully owns it.
A "private company" that is fully owned by the government is private company in name only; hence my calling it a pseudo-government agency. Especially for a legally-privileged function that is serving postal mail.
The government isn't meddling in the daily operation of Postnord. They can, via the board, replace the CEO. A blunt tool. The privileged function that is serving mail is clearly defined by law, but the right to strike is also clearly defined in law.
Unionization shouldn't be there to disrupt another company. It should be there so you can bargain against your employer. This seems really inappropriate.
> Unionization shouldn't be there to disrupt another company. It should be there so you can bargain against your employer.
That's what Tesla's employees are doing.
The point of a sympathetic strike is so that a small country's workforce can stand up to the likes of Tesla. Tesla can always withdraw from the Nordic market if they don't like the rules (which never changed). They don't want to do that because there is something there worth negotiating for.
> it's not a sympathetic strike...They aren't striking against their employer.
You're defining a sympathetic strike.
I don't have a view on whether this is justified. What I'll contest is that it was unforeseeable. It was obvious a refusal to negotiate would infuriate--it's happened dozens of times, almost always with American companies, and it's close to an element of national and regional pride at this point. It wasn't a certainty, but there was a definite risk of it escalating across Sweden. And from there it was and is a virtual certainty that it would spread across Scandinavia, and from there will across the Nordic countries and eventually Northern Europe.
This is a stupid molehill to die on for Tesla. They should bite the bullet and devolve Swedish operations to a local franchise who can enter into a collective-bargaing agreement .
You're missing the point. I'm not debating the validity of whether people should leave Tesla and go work somewhere else. I'm saying that it's not a strike if you're just refusing service to a customer.
A strike - whether because of your circumstances or another's - is you downing tools and stopping working.
> it's not a strike if you're just refusing service to a customer...a strike...is you downing tools and stopping working
This hasn't been what a strike has meant in Scandinavia for a century.
I'm American. I broadly think unions are ineffective and corrupt. But it's ridiculous to claim this strike is unprecedented. Even the pattern of an American company being flummoxed by it is deeply precedented.
If you want to do business in the Nordic countries, you respect the collective-bargaining process. That doesn't capitulation. It doesn't even mean you must enter into one. But you can't blow it off, and at that so dismissively.
> If you want to do business in the Nordic countries, you respect the collective-bargaining process.
And if you want to do business in many other countries, you have to pay bribes -- or campaign contributions or hire someone's incompetent nephew or hire people with the right "discriminated against" skin colour. That's not legal, either.
> I'm saying that it's not a strike if you're just refusing service to a customer.
> is you downing tools and stopping working.
These aren't exclusive, it's just they've downed tools and stopped working for the customer the strike is against. People don't join unions for their employer, they join unions for their industry. Therefore a union can strike against an employer while maintaining working for those not breaking collective agreements.
Pretty sure Rand would say that if you join a company on a certain employment basis, you shouldn't then decide it's suddenly not good enough. But I haven't read any of her books, so I won't claim that very strongly!
No, I’m not. I’m on mobile, and failed to convey my message.
What I tried to say is, postal workers are increasing pressure on a company which is treating their workers unfairly, and these workers are connected to the postal workers in a way.
I'm not saying that employees shouldn't do certain things if they really don't like a company. Don't buy their products. Post opinions publically. Actually go on strike at your own employer.
I'm saying I don't think that refusing individual service to a customer is a good idea. It seems highly prone to groupthink and as it comes at zero cost to the striking party, prone to misuse as well. Actual striking is moderately balanced because it's limited and comes at a cost to both parties.
It seems simpler to just not work for the company. My understanding is they aren't treating their employees unfairly; they just aren't entering into the union merry-go-round. Their current employees all agreed to employment under the current situation, and now seem to be changing their minds once they've secured employment. But I could be wrong on that last part - perhaps this was promised and that was withdrawn.
> seems highly prone to groupthink and as it comes at zero cost to the striking party
In most cases, there is an alternative service provider. In this case there isn't, but there is also zero public will to change that due to the facts and circumstances of the dispute. Were those different, Postnord would be risking its monopoly on license-plate delivery.
I mean, in this case this is both their legal right and higher court ruled that it’s legal and doable.
So, who are we to judge? It’s their country and their laws. I just stated that, their laws and the way of action they took resonates with me. That’s all.
On the contrary, it's a crucial part of collective bargaining. You have to be large enough to bargain effectively.
Companies in the Nordics aren't alone either, they have employers' organizations where a whole sector of employers band together to bargain with the unions. These discussions then produce collective agreements that bind the whole sector for a given timespan.
It might sound alien to some, but it has guaranteed stable work conditions and a dedicated workforce for a century already.
I'm not saying they shouldn't go on strike. I'm saying that they aren't on strike, as they're still working. Refusing to service one customer isn't striking.
It's just one company that doesn't play ball so a full strike wouldn't be appropriate reaction, especially as employers' organization apparently isn't a participant here. Say, striking dockworkers can paralyze the whole economy, all sectors. It's not a step to be taken lightly.
It's not just one company "not playing ball". Spotify, with ten times as many affected employees in Sweden, also doesn't have an agreement.
> It's not a step to be taken lightly.
Well, there's no balancing downside to doing it this way. Workers still get paid. So they can do this pretty lightly, assuming their employers allow them to just discriminate against certain customers.
> Well, there's no balancing downside to doing it this way.
With the dockworkers example there is a massive downside: you mess up all industries doing any export or import. You really need a large buy-in before doing something that can mess up all unrelated industries, and thus potentially employment. In a small country no union operates in a vacuum, you'd quickly lose all goodwill.
Edit: I think I answered off your point, which was about the specific company. Yes I don't think there's any big downside now, but if Tesla was playing by the book they would have the industry behind them. They are just choosing a more difficult way.
To be clear: they are playing by the book. This is a power play to get them to set up a locally-owned subsidiary that runs things. It happens in various places. In China it's even more strongly enforced.
Well, while it's completely legal, it's not entirely by the book. It starts to get a bit of a gray area when you reach a certain size.
The unions, including the employer unions (NB!), have during the past century kept the country's lawmakers mostly out of regulating workforce agreements, including things like minimum pay, workplace insurance, and large parts of the pension system. These things are regulated by sector, and the regulations are re-bargained on a set schedule by these parties alone.
You can't stay out of these agreements for too long once you reach a certain size. The unions are trusted to handle this by their own. That is mostly done by sweetening the deal until it is accepted, usually by signing away the fundamental right to strike. It is not obvious if such fundamental rights really are bound to contract, especially not with the European Court, but it has resulted in a society where strikes are almost unheard of. Calling a strike without the backing of a union is pretty ineffective anyway, and the unions have their self interest in strong companies that can compete internationally and provide new jobs for the workforce.
The only times strikes are called are when some company will not present a counterparty to a contract negotiation, which is what this situation is. That happens once every decade and when it happens the unions all move in unison with several decades of money saved up, to show their might in order to make the affair as swift as possible. It's something that is often rehearsed often and seldom practiced.
Solidarity strikes are expected as a show of force. Things will escalate from there. While the part about an offer you can't refuse clearly has some similarities with mafia operations, the boundaries are clearly defined by law. There are lawyers specializing in this their entire careers.
Comparing this with the Chinese system misses the point by a mile.
And protection against that is one of the things a company gains by making a collective agreement with a union. Without such an agreement, it is a grand melee between companies and unions.
It seems like the people of the country were willing to do business with Tesla, but elmu refused to negotiate the terms under which the business would be done. No negotiation = no terms = no business.
If this is what elmu wants, so be it. The people of the country will continue deciding how to run their country without this particular arrogant rich narcissist.
I don't understand - haven't the people to do the work already been hired? Wasn't business already being done? This is a post-hoc change to the agreed terms of employment by the employees.
I would be happy to help you understand. Two concepts at play here, which are important to understand, are sympathy strikes (I'll leave it to you to check out the term and read up on the logic behind the action) and precedent setting (the people of the country don't wish to set a precedent of employers refusing to collectively bargain with workers).
Postnord is a bit of a red herring. If the tender to distribute the registration plates had gone to UPS instead, Tesla would have had exactly the same problem with UPS workers.
Don't know why this was downvoted.. This is not Postnord's decision, it's the workers, and the same workers at UPS or any other postal delivery service could do the same.
In theory that would not absolve the government from providing core services. For example, teachers can go on strike but children are guaranteed a primary education. It'd be the government's responsibility, not the individual citizen or business, to ensure core services enshrined in law are properly staffed.
Agree, I don't know what Transportstyrelsen has to say about the interruption in their service this provides. My guess is that they do have the contract with PostNord and are just pretty hesitant to break that and rather wait and see if the problem goes away. The government wouldn't get involved just for a few weeks of postal problems for newly registered very expensive cars, it's not like a crucial service to the people.
On this side of the atlantic at least, the government tends to just mean the prime minister / head of government and their cabinet (and to an extent the associated political parties in charge).
Ok so what is a general term for your courts, your legislature, your bodies responsible for defense and foreign policy, your securities and banking, your monetary policy, etc? It's all government.
Yeah so basically they're complaining they've got a court approved government sanction. They're technically free to whine like North Korea does, as they see fit, I guess.
> And just to add, the postal service in question is private and works like a private company, though the states of Sweden and Denmark fully owns it. Employees are not state employees.
I don't think you understand how a private company works. You can't say it is a private company owned by the state - if that is the case, it is a public government agency, no matter how you want it not to be. So in short, a government agency chooses if it wants to work or not...
Why would you say that? It's clearly not a government agency. It is a company.
It's not something one can have an opinion on. It is a fact, and an important one for the people working there. Being a government worker comes with certain rights and responsibilities, neither of which is the case here.
But even if it had been a government agency, government workers have the fundamental human right to strike too. There are a few exceptions, and then there are special laws for times of war, but none that are applicable now.
And then you can strike by selectively refusing to deliver mail for _one_ entity?
I mean, call it whatever you want, but it is a selective strike and a government agency shouldn’t have the right to do that. You either don’t deliver _any_ mail, or you deliver it all.
Btw I can totally empathize with the reason of the autoworkers strike, yet not agree with this.
The only example of this exact thing in there is...the exact thing against Tesla we're talking about. Everything else is striking against a related company to one's employer's company.
They're not public workers anymore after the liberalisation in the early 2000s. They didn't have the right to strike before that. Because it's a private company, they can strike. Who owns the shares is irrelevant in that context.
From your previous comment, you’re stating you are okay if the union declined to deliver everyone’s mail, which sounds like you’re fine with unchecked power that expresses itself without discrimination.
It doesn’t make sense to consider indiscriminate withholding of services through a strike not “unchecked power,” while selecting specific targets (which is far less disruptive to the market as a whole) as such.
It’s also not an arbitrary choice. It’s a business that’s clearly in dispute with another union, that this union has decided to intervene on behalf of. It’s not like they’re striking against a company that was just minding its own business.
Perhaps there can be labor relations boards and anti-discrimination regulation and such to prevent abuse of selective striking, but this is obviously a situation where everyone is a player and knows what game they’re playing.
There’s nothing arbitrary about it. A worker can’t just declare a strike, that’s illegal. The company the postal company works for, also agreed to these terms.
It’s the same thing as delivery drivers refusing to cross a picket line. You stand in solidarity with fellow striking workers, because their wellbeing is directly related to your own.
It’s collective action and should be praised in an age where opaque corporations and oligarchs run everything.
Seems like if the reason for it is within the law regulating worker action, it is, in fact, union activity, and is, in fact, a strike against Bob, according to some Nordic countries.
Is your sole problem with the fact that people are calling something a strike, and you personally don't think they should, according to your possibly single-country-centric view of the term, or is there a substantive objection?
You'd have to a) convince a majority of your coworkers, and b) have some associated, relevant labor demand. A strike isn't just "I don't want to do this."
It is not a question of what is allowed. The company delivering parcels must fulfill their contracts, but the contracts clearly have stipulations for force majeure. Which a strike is, by the very definition.
What is not clear here? Sweden has very few strikes, but this is a textbook example of one. The postal worker's union have called for their members to refuse to carry out a specific work. This is well within their rights to do. The union calls for this as part of a collective action for their fellow workers.
The company delivering the parcels could call for their employer's union to lock out the workers on strike. But why would they want to escalate the conflict? They too prefer their collective bargaining agreements respected. And they are clearly not in violation of any of their contracts as this is a legal strike.
There are plenty of gray areas within worker's rights, but this is as simple as it could be.
I probably shouldn't have complicated things by mentioning an individual, I really don't know if that could even be possible. Imagine I said Republican Party.
The key thing is that for a strike to be declared it has to be called for by the union, it would be unprecedented to call a strike for political action against a party.
Compare and contrast the reception Swedish mail workers are getting for their behavior, versus Kim Davis, who refused to issue an otherwise non-problematic marriage license(which was part of her job).
Even Davis was ultimately allowed to refuse to issue licenses personally; she just couldn't forbid the deputy clerks from doing it (only one of whom, her son, also refused). She also had an elected position with an oath of office, not an employment contract.
Actually, the judge ordered that the deputy clerks must issue the marriage licenses(save for her son), unless they wanted to be held in contempt of court.
I'm not sure how the path matters much. It contains language along the lines of "I will faithfully execute, to the best of my ability, the office of...."
I'm imagining having religious qualms about certain behaviors would fall under "best of my abilities"
I find it insane that the workers of the state-owned postal office can decide what mail to deliver based on their personal views.
What's next, the mass transit drivers refusing to stop near Tesla's offices? Court workers refusing to accept Tesla's lawsuits? Firemen refusing to put out fire on Tesla's properties?
I don’t know what I think, it’s not a normal situation in my country. Businesses sign the union agreement, because it is a collaborative process between the union and the employer. The whole system is predicated on good faith. Tesla is openly being adversarial and the union has now after years said enough, and declared a legal strike. Strikes are usually resolved long before this stage. Unions in Denmark and Norway don’t often go on sympathy strikes for Swedish unions.
In my opinion, screw the Musk boy. There are other EV manufacturers.
By living and working in the U.S.. Most commenters here are wrongly assuming workers in Sweden have as little rights as they do, and probably just as exploited as well.
The Swedish model makes it so that we rarely have large strikes, despite having strong unions, as typically companies work together with the unions rather than against the unions.
In a way the Swedish model has found an equilibrium between company powers and workers right that has been very productive.
Until an ignorant American enters the market and think he knows better than everyone else
I'm not sure when Slovakia entered the chat, but I was responding to the parent's question of how could the workers (in Sweden) be prohibited from deciding whether to strike, and was trying to make a point that US commenters go by US laws which do not apply here.
Prohibited is easy. Just pass a law making it illegal for workers in that agency to strike, or to advocate, promote, discuss, etc., potential strikes (that may conflict with existing law, be politically difficult, etc., but the mechanism is clear.)
Prevented, though, is harder. Prohibitions aren't always effective prevention.
There are no agency workers who are participating in any strikes? Unlike the US we have a privatized postal service and the old postal service is now merged with the danish postal service and co-owned between the Swedish and Danish states and competing on an open market with other postal services.
Not everyone has state postal services like in the US
A strike is between a company and its workers, or maybe an industry and its workers. Postal employees, the fire department, transit employees, they don't work for Tesla.
_Sympathy strikes_ only make sense when directed towards the target of the original strike.
If all sympathy strikes were to be total walkouts then it would result in a general strike and that doesn’t target any specific party and thus doesn’t put pressure on them
I think the next one will be payment processing not being completed for Tesla. Mass transit drivers could do that. Court & Firemen must guarantee a minimum level of service on their strikes, so that’s unlikely.
Firemen and police are unlikely to strike, but expect to see them to start losing bank service, office services, and trash services next. Then, expect neighboring countries to start doing the same.
Sweden has few strikes. In fact, hardly any. Worker's rights are generally by contract rather than by law. When the unions move in unison like this, they come prepared and expect to win.
It is an existential issue for them, in a literal sense. Should they lose, laws will be rewritten and trade agreements will have to be renegotiated.
I’m not sure what exactly the rules are in these foreign countries, but it doesn’t seem unbelievable that the state could end up bound by a contract with the union. In a good country, the state also follows rules and laws and makes contracts, after all.
Particularly, as you note, in the case of a pseudo-government agency like Postnord.
The only tricky bit, IMO, is the requirement that the plates must be delivered by Postnord. If it is a bit of law, it seems a little unfair that there should be a legal requirement to do business with Postnord.
I thought there’d been a story recently about some alternative arrangement where the plates were instead delivered to a dealership or something, and the people could pick them up… I wonder if that changed.
Please, if you want to call it pseudo-something, call it pseudo-state agency. The government own nothing except their personal stuff, hopefully.
Its owned by the State. Two of them even. One of them can call for a board meeting and fire the CEO (who does not have any right to force his employees). But it is not owned by the government.
Please continue the discussion,i just wanted it out.
That’s fair, I was just sticking to the language used in the comment I responded to.
Of course, it is an easy mistake for those of us in the US to make; we tend to use “government” more generally. I guess because we used the name “states” for our province-sized administrative unit thingies.
Yeah, it wasn't against you or your take, it was the nth post saying it and it bothered me. I also just wanted to disagree with some on the internet because I'm procrastinating.
Swedish postal service is open to any private actor and does not have any law enforcement wing.
Lots of companies have access to the mail boxes. I know of at least three companies that deliver to my mailbox + one that delivers marketing materials to it.
PostNord is experiencing a force majeure under Swedish law, i.e a strike. I would think that the govt Transport Agency's exclusive contract with them provides an out with them in cases of force majeure to use alternate means, like allowing Tesla to pick up the plates from the factory or use a different carrier to deliver plates, since plates are mandated by the state and the Transport Agency is required to provide them by law.
Also it's one thing to refuse pickup, but PostNord employees are picking up the plates from the factory and then storing them at PostNord. The plates are definitely not the property of PostNord, they are either the property of the state Transport Agency, Tesla or the car owners. Accepting the package and then holding someone else's property seems a bit strange, especially given that these are not even Tesla's striking employees. I wonder how strong property laws are in Sweden.
At this point, I honestly just hope the standoff continues because I want to see how many moves each side has. This is really interesting to watch as somebody who isn't affected by it directly.
Government workers deciding not to provide services to specific entities or people they are in dispute with is a bridge that I can only assume should have some pretty serious consequences.
Eventually, Tesla Sweden will go bankrupt. IF Metall will go to the union for the financial industry at some point. That means no more financial services for Tesla Sweden. Then they can't sell cars(must be in SEK in Sweden), they can't pay suppliers and their workers. If they can't pay their workers, it triggers automatic bankruptcy proceedings where the courts start seizing things to ensure that the workers will be paid. They began the same process with Toys'r'us and the company immediately folded when they realised the consequences.
Don't worry, the courts aren't on strike against Tesla.
The sad truth is there is plenty of room for Musk to make things much worse. I imagine he can deny them SpaceX payloads. Starlink was just made available to them as well. He could throttle or deny their uplinks and downlinks.
Well, he can. But if he does then every other country that currently uses SpaceX for their payloads may end up thinking twice about giving the megalomaniac even more power.
Because: normal people just obey the laws of the countries where they do business.
Musk will end up self destructing over something like this sooner or later, the guy has no sense of when to back down and just keeps on taking on parties with power until he loses and when he loses it will be at a level that he won't be able to recover from. You pick your battles with care, and this is one that was utterly unnecessary. After all the damage the Tesla brand has suffered on account of his Twitter antics (I refuse to call it 'X') he really doesn't need more, especially not in a market that was so far a substantial plank in Tesla's strategy and a country with massive early adoption.
Starlink is such a niche product in Sweden, it would be such a pointless move that would go by totally without notice. The vast majority of Sweden is covered by 4G and 90% 5G coverage is excpeted within a year. Broadband via fiber is ubiquitous and a lot cheaper than the USA (at least in the comparisons I've seen).
Can't speak about spacex not sure if any Swedish companies do business with them.
It does not, totally irrelevant product for most people, especially since it is way more expensive than uncaped 4G/5G and most people have a cheap and fast physical unlink at home.
Might be useful for some cabins way out in the wilderness or on an island. But maybe not even then, my grandparents cabin has fiber
They're almost all private workers exercising their right of association (or lack thereof) with a person who they believe is mistreating or trying to mistreat workers.
If a "customer" walks into a store and starts mistreating workers, it's totally reasonable for them to tell the customer to buzz off, and for their employer to support them. What kind of terrible boss or society would force workers to service their abuser?
If elmu wants to throw his money around to exploit and abuse workers, he can do it somewhere else. Few others seem to be having this issue, so it seems the root cause is him and his behavior. Whether or not he fixes himself, Sweden did and will do fine without this 1 rich narcissist with oppositional defiant disorder.
It’s fun to see Americans upset over private workers exercising their rights and the fact that Swedish postal service is a private business, must hurt to realize that the Nordics in many ways has less government overhead than the US :D
Easy. Should Tesla continue to play hardball, the next step is likely the union of bank workers cutting off their financial services.
There are few courier companies large enough to take their service, even in a scenario where the contract for license plate delivery can be breached (which it isn't, as this is force majeure by definition), but there are even fewer banks. And they're all unionized.
Not much need for popcorn. Refusing to negotiate is clearly not a winning strategy. And it's not supposed to be.
No substantial bad factory conditions or request for higher pay, "just agree to collective bargaining agreements, that's all."
I was a welder back in NY in 1997, and joined a company and I was told by the Union's lackey that joining the union was voluntary. At the end of my three months, the thug came looking for dues. He clarified, "it's voluntary, you can take another job." Since then, the taste of a mobster mentality has steered me away from unions for the rest of my life. They once served a purpose, but my opinion is they have become less important and do not really do what they advertise.
The Swedish Trade Unions are dropping due to the ratio of native workers vs. immigrant workers, so it is a matter of time before the homogeneity of the population goes down, and trade unions with it. They're partially isolated from the EU, but too dependent to not suffer the coming collapse of the EU economies. Musk could just say FU to them too. With over 125,000 global employees, and a lot of countries subsidizing EVs to hide their real costs, the 170 Swedish laborers would quickly be out of a lot of work, and Sweden can buy other EVs and deal with them. The Tesla is most popular in Sweden, then Norway, and finally Denmark. The people who have already bought them would know who was responsible for them not being able to get their Tesla's fixed - not Elon, but their own government and unions. See how many other businesses get cold feet doing business in Scandinavia from this.
Maybe we'll see graveyards of Teslas in Scandinavia like we do of EVs due to failed startups in China. No win for anyone.
Unions are too adversarial in relation with business owners/managers for a Pareto efficency in most of modern economies. What they do mostly is forcing a price on labour due to their cartel like strenght, when they are not sitting on their asses.
Maybe - just maybe - Tesla should just give in instead of destroying their brand in the Nordics, which is what they are doing.
The workers are in charge, and they are also the ones buying Teslas (Yes Americans, in Sweden/Denmark/Norway Teslas are affordable enough for normal people who are in unions because they are paid correctly).
Maybe it's a good idea not to destroy your entire market while also destroying the means to facilitate the market.
Maybe Tesla is the problem here.
Maybe the rest of the world needs to catch up to the societal norms of Sweden when it comes to worker's rights.
They will have to give in or close shop. Simply two options available. Musk is pretty irrational when it comes to backing down so I suspect the latter. I was just about to buy a new Tesla when this kicked off and don’t fancy the risk of having a car I can’t service, so shopped around and discovered other EVs can be just as good with better build quality nowadays! So that’s a nice outcome for me.
The Finnish dock workers just announced that they are also joining the strike. Tesla would lose the whole Nordic market for something that surely is peanuts in the company scale. One could assume that an agreement would make financial sense.
Yes, but there are only 10M people there (and only 25M people in the nordic countries).
To put it in perspective, the total number of Teslas sold over the entire history of Tesla in all of the Nordic countries is less than half of how many Teslas were sold in the US in 2023 alone.
One factor that could be a thing in the next few years is the R&D on EVs, green mining, and rare mineral deposits found in Northern Sweden. Sweden now has the largest despot of materials used in EV batteries in Europe and is leading in green mining to be able to access those minerals while meeting climate targets. These materials are expensive and hard to transport - Tesla could use this as an opportunity to set up some R&D there and get access to the materials logistics to bring them to Germany, etc. Which I'm sure has crossed their minds. But if they fight the unions and storm off they're not going to be winning any bids for that extra stuff.
Countries like Sweden have form on using their natural resources to build vast state funds which are then used to improve conditions yet further, creating a virtuous cycle of opportunity and innovation in the process. Norway did this very successfully with oil money. There's no reason to think Sweden wouldn't go this way with their rare minerals.
While the rest of the world looks on in envy, wondering why it is seemingly so impossible to replicate elsewhere.
which almost always is immature behavior, whereas adults think solution-oriented, which sometimes is called "Realpolitik" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik).
Doesn't get better in this particular case where musk is opposing to officially agree to common worker protection rules, wages, ... he already follows. Just another case of "dumb behavior".
Yes, I'm not talking about money here. Irrational means making bad decisions. The bad decision here is to continue playing with a bad hand against someone who isn't going to fold. Sweden is not going to fold so either Musk folds now to avoid more embarrassment & costs, or keeps going and folds in the future. It'd be more rational to just pull out of Sweden than fight a losing battle, as you said money isn't that much of a factor here.
I would actually like to know if there have been any. I'm quite open to criticising things that he has actually done, and have made criticisms of him plenty of times. But I'm not aware of any journalists that he's kicked off twitter/X. The closest to such a scenario that I'm aware of is him (so far) not allowing Alex Jones back on, but he didn't actually kick him off.
> Twitter has suspended the accounts of several prominent reporters who cover Elon Musk, including Ryan Mac of The New York Times, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, The Intercept’s Micah Lee, and Mashable’s Matt Binder, Aaron Rupar, and Tony Webster.
Thanks for that link. I wasn't aware that he suspended journalists at that time. However, I do note that they were only suspended and not banned. And this is consistent with what he has said on a number of occasions, that people might get 'timeouts' (in this case for doxing) but he's against permanent bans. Just checked two of the accounts (Ryan Mac, @RMac18 and Aaron Rupar, @atrupar) named in the article and they are active today.
I would like to know if there are any journalists he has permanently banned. As used to happen quite often on twitter, pre-Musk acquisition.
Ok, this particular case is interesting and certainly looks concerning.
Checked his handle [1] and yeah, it's still "suspended" over 6 months later. And while it only says "suspended" there, according to this thread [2], the message he originally got was that he had been "permanently suspended", which does imply a ban. And is also somewhat disingenuous because a suspension should imply temporality.
Appreciate you providing the link. Perhaps I've been living in a bit of a bubble because I hadn't heard of this.
Tesla already is going to have to shake off Musk’s odious personal rebranding, I think they are in really tough shape branding-wise. Add in the poor build quality rumors… I dunno, I’m actually shocked that none of the more established brands have taken over the electrics market.
Tesla feels like the Apple of cars in the worst way. Perceived as a hip luxury item by many, when it's far from it, and much better quality options exist. Let's hope their reality distortion field doesn't last as long as Apples has.
That's not how people like Musk think. People are just tools for them, workers strike means the tool is malfunctioning and should be replaced or "fixed".
I'm not sure what's the definition of an "ordinary worker", but as an electrician in Denmark I could absolutely have a Tesla if I wanted to. Which I don't, I really like my Leaf.
So in the UK most sparkies (as we call them :D) probably could as well.
But what I think people in the US (and many in the UK) don't grasp, is that someone (plucking an example out of the air) who is a manager of a retail shop in a small town in Sweden could afford a car like a Tesla. Partly because of the strong democratic socialist economic historical context underpinning decades of economic and workplace policy, and partly because of the decades-long subsidy and support of EV sales and supporting infrastructure in these countries making them cheaper and more practical than in many other countries.
This couldn't be further from the truth in the USA, because work life there has been going in the opposite direction effectively since the cold war.
Depends on what you mean by ordinary workers. But a lot of people can. A Model 3 is not a status symbol at all. Same with Model Y. They're just.. People movers. What makes Teslas expensive is its repairability, and therefore insurance.
And a family might not have more than a single car, so it might be two adults paying for a single car. We only had a single car in the family when I was growing up.
Tesla is the problem. It’s a good idea to not destroy your market and the means to facilitate. More workers rights are needed by the rest of the world.
Hell yeah! Let's get those lazy workers on the lines working harder. Innovation and growth at all costs. Workers are cogs and if they're not behaving correctly they should be fixed or replaced. I, personally, am happy with a 21% illiteracy rate in America - workers don't need to be literate to make my flying cars faster.
Sweden might rank top for happiness and health but that's not going to make my bank numbers get higher for my annual two week holiday.
> Sweden might rank top for happiness and health but that's not going to make my bank numbers get higher for my annual two week holiday.
The US seems to expect service workers to pretend to be happy in the hopes of receiving enough money to get by. Whereas the Nordics seem to take the approach of "let's make sure your service worker is happy" first and foremost.
The Nordic model seems more stable and less stressful for all parties involved.
I've lived and worked in the UK, the Bay Area, and Stockholm. Sweden does not pay as well but the employee/union perks & lifestyle is night and day compared to the other two. I definitely miss Bay Area salaries but I'm getting more holiday, I get paid extra for going on holiday, I get a years paternity leave & IVF bonuses, I get free healthcare (and most employers offer free private healthcare), I get a company car for very cheap, rent/properties are cheap and actually pretty large, the cities are built around nature, poverty is low, crime is low, people are happy...
I prefer the Nordic model so far!
Edit: I forgot the best one - unemployment insurance. If I get laid off I get my salary covered at 80% for 6 - 12 months (depends on the policy). This is through the union. Such a nice relief with all the layoffs happening in tech nowadays.
Unlike the wildly successful US model, where everything is made elsewhere and the majority of the population is one major illness away from bankruptcy. Sorry junior, no tertiary education for you.
Unions are simply like GPOs[^1] but with the most valuable asset in any organization. Their workers. It baffles me to read anti-union comments from fellow tech-workers.
It's so clear that unions give back a tiny bit of negotiation power into your own hands and yet people side with the exec whose only purpose is to extract as much value from the organization as possible.
You are supporting the "competitive labor wage based on your location" and the "we're a perfectly functioning organization but we'll layoff 10% of the staff because it looks good to stakeholders".
It has been a very competitive market, so companies have to give something to employees. If it weren't, they would enjoy the spoilers and pay the minimum they could - given the amounts of layoffs, we may be going into that direction.
It would be wonderful if they were just GPOs. I would be very much in favour of such a state of affairs.
In practice, they are more like mobs, parasites, and treacle and they are -- in practice -- allowed to do all sorts of shady extra-legal things.
3F, the Danish union that supports IF Metall (Swedish union), has a history of performing dangerous sabotage against scaffolding at construction sites that almost got people killed. Just as an example...
The biggest problem for Tesla right now is that they can't get registration plates since the appeals court reversed the lower court's decision about allowing them to get them during the suit against the transport authority and failing to convince the court in the PostNord suit that they should get temporary relief during that suit.
I think the postal carriers are within their rights to refuse to make deliveries in support of Tesla purchases, but the government will need to explain why Tesla shouldn't be allowed to explore alternatives for customers to comply with legal requirements.
I very much support workers collecting in solidarity to support each other.
I'm not sure that I like the idea of official agents of a state office, or de facto state office, being authorized to independently choose how to execute their duties.
Would it also be permitted for a group of socially conservative postal workers to refuse to deliver wedding licenses or legal documents to same sex partnerships? To determine which mail had documents for refugees and refuse to deliver those?
Dock workers not offloading boats is one thing, but disrupting the mail is a real challenge for me to get right in my head.
If the postal service would be that important in the eyes of the Danish and Swedish governments, then they wouldn't have re-structured their postal services as a state owned company, but kept it a state agency.
But they didn't. In turn the postal workers are no longer state officials, which comes with a loss of job security, but instead they gained the right to strike.
You can petition the government to undo this semi-privatization of course.
Strikes are regulated in Denmark and Sweden, and usually need to be organized by a proper union, and can be deemed unjustified by a court - like it happened in this case, until that decision was overturned again. This makes your fears of "socially conservative" "unions" unlikely. :)
My question is if there comes along a candidate for Swedish prime minister, who a union doesn't like, can members of the campaign organization begin a strike against that candidate? And can sympathy strikers then choose to shut down that candidate's whole campaign operation?
Conservatives would perhaps refuse to engage in strikes against Swedish companies, but an American company they'd want to drive them out. Conservatives in the Nordics are just nationalists.
> Does this mean that any company operating in Denmark, that happens to be in a work dispute may have their mail stopped?
The special case in Sweden is the law that requires Postnord deliver license plates. That doesn't exist elsewhere. Instead, it's a broader rebuke of the company as a whole. So yes, if you manage to needlessly piss off Scandinavia, you will have difficulty doing business there. The same can be said of Florida or New York.
Well if its 'just Tesla' that is being denied use, then Tesla can hide their main company behind offshore corporations, so dozens of corporations need to be cut simultaneously to stop the plates.
Someone needs to do that work. Cue a strike of the people that are supposed to help with the hiding. Tesla will back out of Sweden or they will play ball. Those are the options.
It is interesting to read the comments. Why do some americans view the strike action in a black/white perspective?
If you define a strike very narrowly as to stop work with (partial) loss of pay, then this does not make sense. But a strike can be against one entity, one action or even one person. The workers can say "I will not do this action" and that is a strike too.
Speaking as an American, it's because we have a long history of collaborative efforts between capital and government to depress or destroy labor movements. The black/white perspectives on strikes is one such example, particularly because almost all of our jobs start with some anti-labor training [1]. There was also the air traffic controller strike that was deemed illegal by Ronald Reagan [2] and the more recent efforts by companies such as Starbucks outright shuttering stores or harassing employees to stop unionization.
Within this framework, there's a lot of people who view strikes as not just wrong but morally wrong.
>But a strike can be against one entity, one action or even one person.
For the purposes of a business negotiation, a strike means to refuse to sell your labor for under a certain price. Picking and choosing who you refuse to sell your labor to quickly encroaches on tribalism that has historically played out with negative consequences.
I imagine the reason this has not gone badly (that I know of, I guess) is Sweden is relatively monocultural. In a society with more tribal boundaries like the US, I feel like this could be a bigger problem.
In my opinion, these groups striking would be engaging in business negotations if they chose to completely stop working until their demands were met (which in this case seems to be another group's minimum compensation).
>For the purposes of a business negotiation, a strike means to refuse to sell your labor for under a certain price. Picking and choosing who you refuse to sell your labor to quickly encroaches on tribalism that has historically played out with negative consequences.
When hollywood actors did a strike in support of the writers, it is to enable business negotiations for the writers, not necessarily for the actors. Worker solidarity means that if I support your cause today and I face similar situation tomorrow, you will support me. It sounds to me like collective action to force a business to negotiate.
I do not understand the tribalism argument very well. All of us form tribes and our social structure depends on it. Tribes are formed based on membership (either by birth, where you live, your political beliefs, your economic status etc) and you can argue whether that membership is a good thing for society, but I do not believe the argument is whether tribes are good or bad. They just are.
>I do not understand the tribalism argument very well.
The Hollywood actors' union did not stop selling to a specific entity, they stopped work across the board. Also, I think their most recent strike was because their contract ended.
Another difference is also negotiating a pure luxury good (entertainment), versus negotiating access to legally required license plates.
> The Hollywood actors' union did not stop selling to a specific entity, they stopped work across the board.
Not entirely true; they stopped work for firms with which they did not have a labor agreement in place; they reached interim deals with a number of indie productions allowing work to proceed, even while the negotiations with the AMPTP were taking place.
It's quite interesting. They have proxy legal systems in these countries: the unions. Since the union "strikes" are not the same as traditional strikes that I know of, they can sustain the strike much longer.
Rather than strikes where workers don't work and don't get paid (and must be compensated from union dues), these strikes involve the majority of workers continuing to work and just shunning one or two companies across all aspects of society.
The proxy legal system comes up when the de jure system nominates the proxy system into a position of authority. In Sweden, irrespective of who nominally decides a car will have plates, the real gatekeeper is PostNord and its workers. The government and non-union-worker citizens are sort of an irrelevant bunch.
So the proxy legal system is the union that serves PostNord members. Interesting. In the US, I imagine this would be rapidly subverted by a crime lord who would extract surplus by simply holding Tesla hostage until they pay up some large personal bounty and then some increased benefits to workers. Hoffa and friends.
The reporting doesn't hint at anything like that in Sweden and crime lords are rarely international so that's interesting to see.
If organizations (the unions) deciding not to do business with you is, by your definition, a “proxy legal system,” what do we have in the US? Proxy legal system of credit agencies and corporations? I’d take the unions I think.
One must read the whole thing to understand it. If certain organizations can just choose to not do business with you and the de jure system says that the only way to get a legally required document is through those organizations, then those organizations are a proxy legal system.
This does not seem particularly controversial to me. Yes, credit agencies and banking approximate such a proxy in the US but the limits of such a system in the US were tested when marijuana and pornography sellers were able to find a way to bank despite the rest of the system attempting to stop them.
I can't legally drive without car insurance, and insurance companies can just decide not to do business with me.
I can't get the service of TSA Pre without going through a private corporation that can easily decline to do business with me.
Our national parks are largely run by (private) concessionaires. While I've never been banned from a national park, I bet I could be de facto banned from, say, Yosemite by pissing off Aeromark enough, even if I didn't violate any law or do anything against park rules.
Almost everything you said is wrong, except the requirement to get car insurance. There will always be a car insurance company willing to do business with you, they'll simply charge you higher rates if you have no other options. (It's called "high risk" auto insurance.)
TSA Pre-check is operated by the federal government, but I assume you mean the LiveScan portion of the application process? That service is offered by both private companies and public agencies liked the DMV. The rest of the application process can be handled by the applicant, though you're also free to pay a private company to manage your application.
The national parks are run by the NPS. The concessions are run by concessionaires. If you piss off Aramark, you might not be able to buy anything from their restaurants...until you switch credit cards. But they have no control over banning you from the park because the NPS rangers control park entry. Also, concessionaires only operate some of the campgrounds in national parks; in Yosemite Aramark only operates the "lodging" facilities (i.e., hotels and the fancier tented campgrounds).
Right, but the state does not mandate you receive insurance from a single company. You could, should you do desire, set up your own insurance company. There are open regulations that can be obeyed by anyone.
TSA Precheck is administered by the TSA AFAIK, which is a DHS agency, not a private corporation. It's been a while since I signed up but IIRC it's run by the government.
I actually believe that if Aramark (I assume that's who you meant by Aeromark) didn't let you visit Yosemite and you legally are allowed to, you'd probably win against them in court (in contrast to what's happening in Sweden).
TSA precheck is run by private corporations - the TSA are of course the people that operate the actual airport, but the corporations are the people you sign up with that assess you.
Aramark (you're right, my mistake) couldn't ban you from the park, but they could definitely ban you from their campgrounds. So you could drive into the park, but you wouldn't be able to camp in most of it (except for backcountry).
I'll grant you the competitive marketplace for insurance, though I'm not sure it fully eliminates that point.
Only 12 employees of Tesla are striking i.e. not showing up to work. Those employees might very well be compensated from union dues.
The rest can hardly be called a strike. It's called "sympathy strike" but it's more like "sympathy sabotage.
For example, the postal workers (who are not employees of Tesla but of postal office) are not striking. They are showing up to work, just decided not to deliver mail to Tesla.
Some other company decided to block ships with Tesla cars from entering ports etc.
I doubt this would be legal in U.S. I certainly haven't heard of anything like that.
One does not hire a crime lord. The crime lord is your boss. Like in the US, where labour unions were notoriously controlled by violent criminals who used them successfully to extract surplus value that people could create.
Does it? It seems like a world without violent worker repression and criminal organized labour is mostly possible. Many things have a use lifetime. I'm sure once upon a time, I would have needed a personal firearm to protect myself out on the Wild West but today I have lived more than a decade in the US unarmed and no bandits have accosted me yet.
No doubt organized labour had value once and perhaps even the crime lords who controlled them provided societal utility but smashing the criminal element within has been good for America. It still exists but cut down quite a bit.
You’re arguing against the utility of the Second Amendment here which already puts you out of step with the entirety of American custom and political culture. Good luck trying to apply logic or reason against entrenched tradition and identity.
> smashing the criminal element within has been good for America
That’s good, sounds like organized labor is now free to exist without any crime issues.
Does IF Metall already represent all of Tesla's employees? Does that mean there are no active Tesla services in Sweden during the strike?
If union membership is really the way of life in Sweden, is there anything preventing the government from a legislative solution? Just mandate collective agreements?
To quote myself from the other day: "Basically, the government has left to the industry and unions to agree on a lot of stuff that is decided by law in other countries. E.g. Sweden does not have a minimum wage. This system has led to much fewer costly conflicts and strikes compared to many other countries for almost a century."
Counterpoint: if something pretty much works without a law being in place, why write a law?
Laws are never perfect, and writing one just for the sake of it both makes complying with the law more complex and opens opportunities for people with money to create legal moats around interpretations and case law precedence.
> Counterpoint: if something pretty much works without a law being in place, why write a law?
Well, I'll see that and raise you:
If remuneration packages at Tesla (including in Scandinavia) "pretty much works" (in the sense that Tesla are able to attract and retain talent, which they apparently are), why write a collective bargaining agreement?
Because they are working in the short term. Once corporations find a wedge, it's only a matter of time before they exploit it and reduce wages over the long run. I a glad that unions are taking a long view on this matter.
It's essentially mandatory unless you provide better terms on your own. If the unions want a CBA in that case, it doesn't change a single thing. You sign and nothing changes. Tesla claims to provide better than the CBA but openly refuses to sign which doesn't pass the smell test.
Tesla wants to punish anyone who joins a union which is super illegal. We're talking prison time if they don't back down. They can't take away the stock benefit when IF Metall wins. They've put it out there, and if they take it away because of unionisation, they'll lose. It's a huge fucking no.
> If union membership is really the way of life in Sweden, is there anything preventing the government from a legislative solution?
Nordic countries actually have relatively weak labour laws. What might be handled in legislation in US (e.g. minimum wage), is handled in collective bargaining agreements, that are negotiated between trade unions and employers' associations.
And the trade unions and the employers' associations like it this way, that the power is in their hands, and not in legislation. A government that would try to step on their turf, would be asking for a lot of trouble.
> And the trade unions and the employers' associations like it this way, that the power is in their hands, and not in legislation. A government that would try to step on their turf, would be asking for a lot of trouble.
Part of the reason the US has so many onerous labor laws is not necessarily from anti-labor sentiment (though it didn't hurt), but part of anti-crime efforts to fight the mafia in the 50s and 60s.
"Sign this agreement with the Teamsters, or else your parts will sit at the dock and your customer deliveries will sit in a warehouse" was a very real and common tactic. So the US passed a bunch of laws against sympathy strikes.
Obviously the mafia is no longer a bit issue in the economy, but the laws are still on the books, and people in the US still feel uneasy about general strikes.
I guess I had the dates wrong. Nothing was done about labor racketeering until Jimmy Hoffa was murdered. And there are still active RICO cases to this day.
The de facto minimum wage in Northern Europe is actually set by the relatively high unemployment benefits. Few people want to work for less than that.
Most wages are of course higher than that because the market can bear more. Those wages are mostly set by market conditions but the unions and the employers' associations do perform a big ritual every few years (and they do affect the wages a bit). The problem comes in sectors with a high degree of monopsony -- only one or a few big employers. Examples are schools and hospitals -- the unions and various levels of the state apparatus (often including parliament and government) have a large influence on the wages there.
It's a very sweet deal for the unions and for large employers. The unions make sure to collectively "bargain" each year for extremely low pay raises and even for nominal pay cuts for their members. In exchange the large employers force every employee to sign up for union membership. Sometimes the company itself signs the employee to the union, without any consent from the individual.
In exchange the unions get to collect their fees on the salaries of their members, which is used for political influence and funneled to political parties.
This was a thing in Denmark probably 20 years ago, now it's no longer legal to demand union membership for employees. But there was one incident 4 years ago where union members at Kastrup Airport tried to bully a coworker to join them. They even went on strikes three times because of this, with zero effect. Can't tell if the bullying is widespread though.
> In exchange the large employers force every employee to sign up for union membership. Sometimes the company itself signs the employee to the union, without any consent from the individual.
I know for a matter of fact that it is the case in Sweden with some employers. They'll sign you up for the union without your consent and without informing you. Then the union in their turn will sign you up with insurance companies and other third parties without consent of information. Just a bill suddenly arriving in your mail that you have to pay.
You'll have to link to how they mention its fine for the employer to force sign you without your consent, and to sign you up for expensive insurance again without your consent.
Now you have the truth right in front of you. Use a translator if you don't understand it.
I'd like for you to apologize for slandering me here in the comments and repeatedly calling me a liar. Will you do that, or will you just down vote and move on, like a hacker?
No, you should apologize because you clearly didn't read the article.
It's just the difference between opt-in and opt-out and you can simply opt-out and anybody that is subject to these arrangements is aware of them. But then you also don't benefit from the union in times of strikes and such. With the very high fraction of employers that sign up for these programs it's pretty common to automatically enroll them in the union for that segment and usually - but probably not always - the HR department will ask you when they onboard you if you want to join the union or not.
Opt-in and opt-out? Somebody unilaterally "opts" you into a union, a home insurance contract and in the past "opted" you into being a paying member of a political party. That is extraordinary.
Edit: Apologies for confusing you with the other poster.
Come on, that playbook is ancient by now. Deny facts and call people liars, then when irrefutable evidence is shown say "Oh, but it's a good thing!". I just stated the truth, and if you think it's fine or even great that this happens, then sure. But why deny that it happens then? Why is that still in the playbook? If people think it's great, then say so. We're in the information age, anybody can look up stuff easily.
I don't know why you keep digging, but it is getting a bit tedious. You've had multiple people correct you, you persist in your rabid anti-union posts and purposefully mis-interpret the available evidence. I'm not sure why you do this but I guess you're welcome to it.
How about this: I apologize for confusing you with the other poster. And I ask you to apologize for calling me rabid.
Nobody has corrected me, it is a fact that some large employers in Sweden will sign you up to a union without your consent.
I should know, because it happened to me. Decades ago the company I was working for was sold to Sweden. One day I received a bill for a home insurance from a Swedish insurance company. I didn't own a home. Called the insurance company to ask what it was about. They apologized and said a Swedish union had signed me up with them. Called that union and they said yes now you're a member. Told them I didn't want to be a member. They told me I can't exit the union, my new employer had signed me up as a member, talk to them. I called HR and said that I'm not going to be a member of any union. They told me that it wasn't optional and I had to be a union member. I told them I'll get my lawyer if that's the case, and they relented and asked me to hand in a signed statement that I didn't wish to be a union member. And that was the end of it.
Then hackers here say that these things don't happen, even though the union clearly states on their webpage that this is standard procedure. And if it did happen, then it's a good thing. It is a bit funny, and dumb at the same time.
How would you feel if your company was sold to Utah. Then without you knowing, your new boss signs you up as a paying member of the Mormon church, and then the Mormon church signs you up for home insurance? It's kind of the same thing. The union - or the church - might be wonderful, but I'm not going to allow anybody to sign any contract in my name without my permission. That's fucked up.
No it doesn't, the practice is still exactly the same – as clearly stated on the union website in the article published in 2022. You're not even fooling yourself.
Nowhere does it says it's okay for them to sign you up without your knowledge or consent, which should happen when you begin your job.
If that doesn't happens then they've made an error.
Your link also states that membership is entirely optional, and you can choose another union or none.
Finally, signing you up for expensive insurance absolutely requires your consent, as doing that is otherwise illegal. Your link also don't say anything about this, so no I don't have "this truth" in front of me.
Source or it did not happen. That sounds extremely illegal, no one can be forced to sign a contract. Not to mention it would violate GDPR and several other laws. This sounds like myth that gets passed around or something you misunderstood.
What? The same laws that protect workers from being fired for being in a union keep them from being involuntary joined to a union or any other association unless they want to. Freedom of association is very strong in Swedish law.
> If union membership is really the way of life in Sweden, is there anything preventing the government from a legislative solution? Just mandate collective agreements?
The entire point of the german / Nordic union model is that by avoiding legislative action they can be more nimble and reactive to changes. Companies and unions don’t want legislation, and the governments are perfectly happy to let them handle things like adults.
Which is the case for 99% of companies. It’s only American ones internationally expanding who don’t realise other economies operate differently that get stung with this.
Not sure what the difference in products has to do with how the company is governed. Ford of Europe is a direct subsidiary of Ford Motor Company, and they both have the same CEO and Executive Chairman.
It’s hardly a shock to most in Europe that many American corporations (whether by virtue of a subsidiary or not) attempt to bring their American sensibilities to the European labor market.
>is there anything preventing the government from a legislative solution? Just mandate collective agreements?
I am not sure, but it is ironic when the guys complaining about over regulation want to regulate a free market that worked well in those countries for so long.
I did not seen that much support for Tesla in Europe communities so the US government would be needed to have any chance to force such regulations.
Seems to me that the core issue right now is that of Swedish regulation requiring Tesla to follow a license plate procedure, but then not providing any method for Tesla to follow that regulation and obtain the license plates.
Why would that be an issue? Isn't that just the normal cultural expectations surrounding how companies and labor unions handle disputes? What I'm saying is that the license plate issue has to do with a government entity failing to perform its function, something outside the scope of Tesla and the union.
>If union membership is really the way of life in Sweden, is there anything preventing the government from a legislative solution? Just mandate collective agreements?
Yes, the unions and the companies. Neither wants that.
> Does IF Metall already represent all of Tesla's employees? Does that mean there are no active Tesla services in Sweden during the strike?
From what I understand they initiated action on behalf of Tesla's workers and did not need to represent all or most of those employees to initiate the strike.
Yeah, the whole "voting for union membership" is foreign to Sweden, but in some industries membership is a rule rather than an exception. At some point, when there are enough union members at a company, unions tend to start working towards "collective agreements".
> Does IF Metall already represent all of Tesla's employees?
No, but Sweden has mainly unions based on industries (like IF Metall represents workers in industrial and metal-sector, you have Transport that represents workers in transport industry, Unionen of white-collar trade workers, etc). There might even be no workers in the specific union at the specific workplace and they might still go on strike since they are the union you are supposed to negotiate with.
There are requirements of negotiation but no requirements of results from that, which is the cause of the current situation at Tesla. Tesla "negotiated" but flatly refused any outcome involving the union so they fulfilled the lawful requirements. Now the Union uses the tools they have in place when the negotiations ends badly so everything is going as expected.
>Does that mean there are no active Tesla services in Sweden during the strike?
Like I wrote above, Tesla might have all services running if they have workers doing it, but chances are at least some are members of IF Metall. There is also the effect of sympthy strikes from various other unions:
https://www.ifmetall.se/aktuellt/tesla/darfor-tvingas-if-met...
This includes transport (loading/unloading in harbors, transport of goods, etc), Electricians (yep, you can guess it, practically everything involving electricity), Builders (maintenance and construction of buildings), service and communication (This is postal workers refusing delivery of post/goods to/from Tesla), etc. The effect goes beyond Teslas services and will extend to all kinds of infrastructure and other parts of society unless Tesla manage to get their own self-sufficient (and probably totally isolated) mini-society without any needs from other parties.
So the more Tesla refuses to find a deal, the more the unions can escalate and it will get quite tricky to find laborers who want to deal with you. Other companies might refuse to deal with you with risk having the strike extend to you to if this goes far enough.
> If union membership is really the way of life in Sweden, is there anything preventing the government from a legislative solution?
It is really complicated, but the main thing preventing government going in with a legislative solution is that no-one (neither the industry or the laborers) wants it. It has been a solution that the union(s) and industry can solve this by themself and as long as they can, the government will stay out of it. This is kind of unique relaxed solution that puts a lot of responsibility on both the industry and the unions to sort things out and has worked well so far. Playing hard-ball like Elon will probably not end well for Tesla in Sweden (possibly Europe) if this continues since the system is kinda built on being mature and able to negotiate. My way or the highway attitudes are not well regarded.
>Just mandate collective agreements?
But what collective agreement? The system in Sweden is built on negotiation between the involved parties and finding some kind of common and sensible ground. There is really no easy top-down fix for that if one party refuses to play ball. Either the other party need to fight back or the whole system collapses and we risk ending up with government moving in, which neither party wants.
Question: Is the issue worker wages and benefits or is the issue not engaging with the union?
From the article:
IF Metall workers in Sweden – where Tesla doesn't manufacture vehicles but has a number of repair and service shops – have been on strike since October after what they described as years of Tesla refusing to bargain with the union. IF Metall-represented employees claim Tesla hasn't guaranteed them good wages, a pension or insurance.
From a translation of the IF Metall website:
The employees at Tesla deserve nice and safe working conditions, just like everyone else in the Swedish labor market. IF Metall has therefore negotiated with Tesla for a long time. Unfortunately, they have declined to sign collective agreements and thus violate basic principles in the Swedish labor market. Therefore, IF Metall has been striking since October 27 at Tesla's Swedish service points and workshops.
Note that its simply a matter of principle here from elon musk. The union agreements wouldn't cost him more than he already pays. I don't think that elon actually is _dumb_ but I guess this is pure ideology getting in his way, especially that right wing capitalist propaganda shit.
Remember that the striking countries rank top in the world for nearly every metric that matters, they do have a point when they insist that something has to be a certain way.
At least elon really puts his money where is mouth is, this will have negative financial consequences... also norway is the posterchild of EV/tesla adoption in europe, making them angry could have cascading effects.
Don't forget there are also interactions with consumers, who will now be deprived of the ability to purchase Tesla products. Alternatives include buying from Volvo, a Chinese-owned company who only recently got a few middling EV options to market. Consumers in Sweden may be fine having their purchasing options diminished out of solidarity with the union, but these actions do have consequences for consumers.
Have a look at the unionization rates in the Nordics. Taken together with the Nordic model: what do you think is going to matter more?
Or actually, let’s turn it around: do you think attacking the interests of a large portion of the working population is going to strengthen or weaken the Tesla brand?
It is not so much ironic as it is disingenuous on Mr. Musk's part. We don't have to pretend that Elon doesn't understand this. It's okay to call bullshit.
> “44.2 million people lived in households that had difficulty getting enough food to feed everyone in 2022”
That line comes from a report[0] produced by an entity that as of last check had an annual revenue of $6.6T.
They're probably in a better position to address food insecurity than Elon Musk, whose entire net worth, if you could liquidate it at that phantom price of $245B, would pay for one year's food budget for each of those 44.2 million people before running out.
You should ask ChatGPT the following: "explain "lords and peasants""
It's a bit long to reproduce here but the gist of it is that lords had rights and privileges that peasants (serfs) didn't.
Those privileges were not based on merit (e.g. you started a successful business and made lots of money) but on bloodline or being given the lord title by monarchy.
Musk made this comment in the context old blue checkmark regime at twitter where Twitter was the monarchy (i.e. the king) bestowing status of a lord (blue checkmark) not based on objective merit but based completely on whims of Twitter. And everyone else was a peasant: no blue checkmark and no way of escaping the status of a peasant other than hoping the King (Twitter) will bestow that status onto you.
In capitalistic society some people have more money than others. What makes capitalistic society different than feudal society is that everyone has the same right under law (even if that's not perfectly implemented) and you're not forever bound to low status in society. You can go from a peasant to a lord.
> Musk made this comment in the context old blue checkmark regime at twitter where Twitter was the monarchy (i.e. the king) bestowing status of a lord (blue checkmark) not based on objective merit but based completely on whims of Twitter.
He used the phrase the other day as explicitly the reason he doesn’t like unions. It was part of that interview that was full of painful awkwardness and “holy shit, did he really just say that?” moments, in which he constantly exuded big dude-everyone-avoids-at-the-party energy, which left us all wondering which drugs he was on, so we can avoid them.
“Dealbook summit musk” will find you various long clips. It is indeed a fascinating watch, and entertaining if you’re the sort who finds stuff like Tim and Eric funny (I do)
The part that got the most attention was when he literally told objecting advertisers to “go fuck themselves” and, when the interviewer repeatedly tried to extract from him what his plan is to turn the company profitable while turning off advertisers, he dodged, implied he didn’t care about that, and finally said some insane shit like “oh yeah, it’ll kill the company. But the world will judge them” (?!?!)
[edit] to emphasize how nuts this was, because I’m not sure the above captures it, he also told those advertisers to stay gone (separately from “go fuck yourselves”) and when the trying-his-damnedest-to-be-sympathetic interviewer tried to prompt Musk to explain what his plan is for the company in the face of substantial advertiser (so, customer) revolt that he just encouraged, Musk dissembled, then finally just said the company is doomed but that he’s ok with that because he feels he’s winning a moral victory. It’s batshit crazy and I can only imagine what it’s like as an employee to see the CEO/owner say he expects the company to fail and display a total lack of interest in preventing it.
Considering Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have some of the highest wealth per adult considering their size and labor practices, I think they're doing just fine.
Don't wanna play by Swedish rules? Don't go to Sweden.
> Sweden absolutely will lose out on billions of FDI. Actions have consequences.
Zero precedent for this. Scandinavia has had the same economic model since WWII. There is a pattern of foreign companies naïvely blundering into it. But that has never changed that it's a valuable (i.e. wealthy, capitalist and early adopting) beachhead into Europe, from America, and the West, from Asia.
This fight Tesla got itself into was avoidable and predictable. The escalation, too, to the region and--soon enough--continent, is also as predictable as it is unavoidable (absent a course correction from Tesla).
This system has been in place for almost 100 years. Literally all other multinational companies shrug and negotiate an agreement with the unions, they know that Swedes are pretty cheap labor all told and that strikes are exceedingly rare here. The only reason Tesla is having problems is because Elon Musk is on an ideological crusade, there is no way this is economically rational.
You’re talking about countries that constantly rank top 10 for all the metrics that matter (happiness, innovation, education, healthcare, etc). And this has been a model used in practice for a hundred years. It’s why there’s so many stable old companies in the Nordics.
I am not sure why you argue for capitalism and then want the government to interfere with small details such as this. Why would the government deal with things such as minimum salary?
There's plenty evidence that uncontrolled capitalism creates a few very wealthy individuals and lots of others barely scraping by, often holding multiple jobs. The US is not a great example that everyone benefits from capitalism, too many people don't.
Economy and energy availability are highly correlated. It could be that any system, under abundant energy, would grow. You have to demonstrate that capitalism grows better than others under restrictive conditions, which I haven't seen any evidence for. We have had exponential growth in energy and resource use for over 100 years. Under that regime, it's hard to fail. Except it seems we are now reaching the limits.
Stockholm ranks very high for Unicorns per Capita which most people don't seem to be aware of. Some sources say it's just under the Bay Area. Certainly there are many for a small country. Spotify, Klana, Tink, Northvolt, Kry, Einride, Voi, H2 Green Steel, etc...
The other notable thing is many of these are in the green energy space which Tesla will want to be part of. Northern Sweden has Europes largest deposit of rare minerals required for green batteries which are heavy and awkward to move around, so having access to those in Germany would be huge for Tesla down the line. Also, as mining becomes more targeted by climate crackdowns, Sweden is globally leading at carbon-neutral green mining.
There's loooooads of innovation in the green space in Sweden and avoiding this for a couple hundred technicians pensions is just insane to me.
Doing so would prevent people from striking against unfair conditions, because they would lose the ability to feed themselves, and so would rather suffer bad working conditions. If you care at all about human beings, you should not be able to fire people simply because they voice their concerns about unfair working conditions, etc.
> so would rather suffer bad working conditions. If you care at all about human beings
Or social stability. We came to a consensus on striking workers because before that it was violent. Reprisal against those speaking a common view on despised conditions is how you make martyrs.
> On the contrary, it would simply put both companies and workers on the same standard.
If by “same standard” you mean equal footing, then I don’t see how you’d square that circle.
By definition an employer-employee relationship is asymmetrical, so is landlord-tenant, corporations-consumer, doctor-patient, teacher-student, etc.
In all those relationships one has more leverage than the other.
Which is why, in most developed nations, there are guardrails in an effort to equalize that relationship.
Wait, is that an offer to pay for mine and my families' housing and basic needs? Please let us know, cause most people would absolutely stop working their miserable jobs if they were provided for.
“Free” workers under capitalism used to often not be free to leave the job. As in they’d be locked in, or some big dudes would encourage them to stay, or they’d be in some remote area and paid largely in scrip, and practically unable to quit, or a despotic local “big man” major employer would ensure they’d have to leave town if they upset him, which could include things like “wasn’t back in the bunk house before curfew”. The labor movement is largely the reason capitalists don’t/can’t still do those things.
Striking workers aren’t paid in the first place. Allowing collective bargainers to be fired creates an unbalanced system where employers always have more leverage than workers.
Think about it this way: how do I fire the corporations that I’m forced to patronize? Can you survive modern life without buying a single product from Unilever/Nestle/P&G/J&J? How do you make a video call to your family without Google/Apple/Microsoft/Meta being involved? How do I make a phone call without AT&T/Verizon/T-Mobile? Can I buy a microwave that isn’t manufactured by Midea, LG, Panasonic, or Samsung? What about an LCD/OLED panel that isn’t made by LG or Samsung? How do I fly anywhere without Boeing or Airbus? How do I buy a phone/computer without patronizing Foxconn, Qualcomm, TSMC, or Samsung?
Corporations get a captive audience of consumers but they’re allowed to fire people for negotiating the terms of their employment? That doesn’t seem balanced to me.
> Striking workers aren’t paid in the first place.
Mostly correct. But unions save the union dues and pay it back to striking workers as compensation for the lost income from work.
For example union members at Tesla get 100% wage compensated:
> Members at Tesla receive conflict compensation from day one when the conflict breaks out. The compensation is 100 percent of the income you would have received if you had worked. This also applies for you who apply for membership during the conflict and the compensation is paid from day one of your membership.
Thanks to good planning by the union, the workers are being compensated - but the point remains that the striking workers aren't costing the employer any money, which was one commenter's claim for why it's unfair to Tesla.
Lol, nordic states do have one of the highest living standards in the world and are ranking among the top on all important parameters and they do have this union system in place for some decades already, but sure, some strikes will ruin EVERYTHING... I wonder do ppl really believe in such silly things?
The way I would do it is simply: no matter what, the employees get to vote down things their managers do. They can vote to do nothing, have no organizing body, and pay no dues, but they still get to vote, so if they want to prevent their bosses from doing something exploitative to them, they get to.
This model does not put you in a group anymore than being an American citizen puts you in a group by giving you the right to vote on things. In my version it is like how you get to be in a political party if you want to and not be in one if you don't, but you get to vote either way. The right to have some say against your manager's power in your life (short of quitting, that is) should be unassailable.
The fact that quitting is "all or nothing", and often not an option to people because the cost of finding a new job is high and often prohibitive to specifically the people who are most disenfranchised, makes it a poor and almost useless way to exercise power. Unions allow, in principal, for there to be intermediate pressures between "quitting" and "asking nicely".
Because it benefits the public good, the same way you're forced to be part of any country, state, city you reside in.
Also freedom of association is very clearly intended as freedom to associate, not freedom not to associate, so it's a little confusing for you to refer to it.
I believe you are arguing I could always choose not to work. I wish to work for an employer and the employer wishes to work with me. In this hypothetical there is required membership with an unrelated party I do not wish to associate with.
If I wanted to go to a coffee shop and that shop wanted to serve me coffee but the mafia is standing outside saying I have to pay them before I can go in, they are in fact forcing me to pay or turn away.
I've never been forced to become a member of a corporate board. This proposal however is that I be required to join a union. That is the material difference.
True. You’re merely forced to be subject to their decisions, made on behalf of and in the interest of people who aren’t you.
[edit] I’m getting the sense that if we just restructure this so the union exists and does normal union stuff but you don’t have to “be a member” (but do have to abide by its decisions or else leave, as with a board) you’d be ok with it? Like it’s mainly a semantic problem?
I see it as more than a semantic problem, but the problem does boil down to the membership. If they are the lawful structure I'll abide by their decisions, I just don't want to be forced to join.
I hate the idea. I've been in a union once and will never willingly do that again, but it would be more palatable if they couldn't claim me as a 'member'.
Not all unions are great, but the median unionized worker earns more than a non-unionized worker in the same field. So the main reason people wouldn't want to join a union is because they've been conditioned to think they're bad, against their own economic interests.
I feel like you're reducing everything to material conditions. Joining a union would (statistically) help me economically but my objections to being in a union again are all moral convictions. Perhaps workers are optimizing for concerns you do not share?
Yes, I am reducing unions to economic concerns, but I should mention that most people's "moral" objection to unions is conditioned by parties whose interest is solely economic. When the Koch foundation buys airtime on news programs (effectively) to spread the idea that unions are evil and striking is immoral, it's not because they actually care about morals, it's because unions shift the economic playing field in a way that they don't like.
I think that would be acceptable to me assuming I had assurances I wouldn't be asked to participate or be represented by union actions that would be violent. No threats, no breaking things, no vandalism, etc.
Strikes are generally non violent, and the majority of times that they become violent, it's instigated by strike breakers hired by the company (including police). There is over a hundred years of history of this - plenty for you to read if you want to learn more.
This strikes me like the people who (after a big contentious election AKA every election) tell the people whose candidate lost, "if you don't like it, move to another country"
Except I think switching trades (which you would have to do since the union is all encompassing and forces membership) is a lot more onerous than emigrating, and emigration is no slice of cake.
Always remember that historically striking is the friendly alternative to dragging the factory owner and their family from their home, killing them, setting their house on fire and running the factory yourself.
Companies and unions have contracts. It isn’t a matter of what’s legal or not, but what they were able to negotiate for. Organizations should have wide latitude in terms of what sorts of contracts they bind themselves to, and that includes additional requirements for firing union members. It’s all part of the negotiation.
This is false. Labor laws passed in the 1900s in most Western countries give you a right to strike without the risk of getting fired. It doesn't have to be bargained for. There's lots of caveats, but that's the general rule.
A cynic would say that Americans are deliberately kept in the dark as to what people actually had to do in order to win their labor rights, and quite how awful conditions were even for skilled workers.
>They'll bring back company towns if you let them.
In fairness, I'm not actually against company towns, in theory. I'm sure company towns existed in Scandinavia the same way they did here. However, following WWII, when they adopted their current economic model, that same town's residents inherited rights from the larger collective bargaining agreement, allowing them to bargain in good faith with the company that basically owns that town.
You see how their model of basically having cascading collective bargaining agreements that start from the top and empower everyone under it make me less opposed to company towns? However, it works better in countries where most people aren't brainwashed into thinking they'll all be billionaires one day and should look out for the interests of billionaires first.
It's pathetic how your position on violent strikebreakers is so lenient that you don't even feel them worth mentioning. Sort of a testament to how effective American brainwashing is.
It's equally pathetic that you think the role of the state is to expend unlimited funds to keep the enemies of private enterprises incarcerated, even when it would cost us all far more than adopting an enlightened policy regarding collective bargaining.
While it's great you're adopting a less horrendous position, you're still not acknowledging that incarcerating everyone entails massive costs. Costs that far exceed the amount of marginal pay increases that would go to workers in an enlightened legal system that regards collective bargaining rights as a fundamental human right. "Just arrest everyone" works neither on paper nor practice.
Why stop there? Should to back to the good old days of Pinkertons and military having a small scale war with strikers. And corporations knowingly letting workers work in conditions that will kill them to earns a few dollars more.
Only someone ignorant of history can spout nonsense like this.
This should be allowed from time to time so the prols can see what a spectacularly bad idea this is and taste the fruit of their impoverished ideologies.
Every work condition you take for grant--8 hour days, weekends, vacations, paid leave, to name a few--is the fruit of the labor movement, labor organization and strikes.
Consider the Homestead strike [1] where companies hired private mercenaries (ie the Pinkertons) to commit violence to break the strike. People died.
Consider US auto makers [2]:
> Tesla workers earn on average about $55 an hour in wages and benefits, compared to $66 to $71 an hour at Detroit’s Big Three, according to CNN research. If the Detroit automakers come to agreement with the UAW, it will widen the gap between those unionized and non-unionized wages.
Unions benefit non-union members too [3]:
> Each 1 percentage point increase in private-sector union membership rates translates to about a 0.3 percent increase in nonunion wages.
The disdain for unions (by Americans in particular) while being completely oblivious to the benefits they enjoy because of unions has to be one of the most successful propaganda wins of the last century. Siding with the world's richest man over your own interests makes absolutely no sense.
I find it funny how in every example I have ever seen of "companies oppressing poor workers on strike" every single time the workers started it by doing illegal and wrong things, and attempting to force the company to give in by force.
Every. Single. Time.
If someone can give me one example where the poor oppressed strikers were 100% in the right and did not actually start with the violence or credible threat of violence before being set upon by the state/company I would really appreciate it, because so far after going through dozens of such events not once have I found one
To my knowledge, healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente of California haven't burned any buildings down or had a brawl in the middle of the parking lot. The Starbucks workers strike was also non-violent. The most recent Writers guild of America strike didn't seem violent to me, but maybe that's Hollywood. The Oakland teachers union strike also didn't result in bloodshed as far as I know, but also it's Oakland.
Views on collective responsibility for riots have changed a lot. These days, it's only the individual rioters who commit specific crimes that are thought of as bearing responsibility. But before the 1960s or so, a violent crowd was seen as collectively responsible, and it wouldn't have been considered unjustified to treat them accordingly, the way you'd be justified in violent self-defense against an individual rioter today.
I'm not saying they have to be 100% victims, but if you start off by violently assaulting people I'm not going to say that the people stopping you from doing so by force are in the wrong for doing so.
If you want to say a company was evil for sending armed goons to break up a group of armed goons assaulting people or destroying stuff, then you're just plain in the wrong.
PensionDanmark, one of Denmark's largest pension funds, has decided to sell its holdings in Tesla over this dispute. [0]
[0] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/danish-pension-fund-s...