Tesla may have picked an unwinnable fight with Sweden’s powerful unions — The first ever strikes and a solidarity blockade against the US carmaker could force it to rethink its entire anti-union model::The first ever strikes and a solidarity blockade against the US carmaker could force it to rethink its entire anti-union model, says journalist Martin Gelin
For you outside Sweden: There is no such thing as minimum wage. It’s perfectly legal to hire someone for 0 SEK / month.
The whole idea is that a collective agreement should be negotiated and agreed upon by the employers and employees in each business area (like telecom, healthcare, factory workers, electricians etc etc). The idea is that the employers and employees, not the politicians, knows more about what their market/business area requires and is able to deliver in the form of minimum wage, yearly salary increase, vacation and overtime (among other things) .
Here’s the thing that often is different in discusions like the one about Tesla refusing to sign a collective agreement: Collective agreements only limits the minimums. So the only reason to refuse to sign is if you intend to keep some thing below the levels that are the norm in your business area.
Essentially, you’re trying to get unfair competitive advantage.
I am always impressed by the European laws, they are way ahead of anything. Honestly congrats to Sweden
Kudos to them for figuring this out. One worker might be convinced that they should only get a small amount of pay for their working hours. But gather a large group of workers in the same field of work, and the group is harder to manipulate into a low pay situation. Nice.
It’s similar across Europe it sets a bare minimum. It doesn’t work as effectively across Europe though.
In Italy for example there is a set of National contracts depending on the type sector. But there’s plenty of ways to bend the rules.
There are plenty of water to bend the rules in Sweden too. Sweden always sounds like the utopia when the press describes things like this.
Journalists also wants food on the table and roof over their heads I guess…
This is the guy who shit-posted so hard he had to buy Twitter. I don’t think smart business is at the front of his mind.
Tesla is taking out wanted ads to hire scabs.
Disgusting company, adapt to our model or go home.
that would be great of course but you know who’s very ready to double down and lose billions instead of saying ‘uhmm you know what I think I was wrong and I need to correct course’?
yeah that guy
Scandinavia is pretty hooked on EVs. If Norway and Denmark pick up on this, it will not only harm Tesla but give the competition a really strong advantage to establish a competition that already is threatening Tesla’s market shares
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Yeah… The absolutely completely pro-union Chinese EV car makers…
It’s possible competition will just recognize their advantage and pay workers more to get that step ahead.
Polestar? ID3-5? There are options.
Polestar is Chinese.
But Polestar has signed collective agreements in Sweden.
Signing a collective agreement doesn’t in any way change the fact that Polestar is a Chinese company that manufactures their product in China and that China is not pro union.
So does Volvo and they haven’t done much against unions. Chinese companies seem to adapt a bit easier to wherever they do business while American companies seem hellbent waging war against themselves like tesla do now.
American workers: scribbles notes furiously
Then throws the notes away and calls everyone commies, guaranteeing their own low wages, long hours, and unsafe work conditions.
This is how strikes work. Not 1000 Amazon employees on black Friday.
Have to build up enough momentum and regulation to overcome the very determined, active, anti-union attacks of Amazon (or Sbux, etc)
A US business rethink an anti-union model? Even businesses with unions would be happy to get rid of them here. They’re not going to rethink anything, they’ll expend every possible effort to avoid bending a knee to a union, especially a foreign one.
They literally can’t sell cars any more in Sweden, on account of the postal service having a sympathy strike and no longer delivering registration plates to them. Using the postal service is the only legal means of obtaining registration plates, and without them it’s not permitted to sell a car.
So either they rethink or they leave the Swedish market entirely.
Billionaires like to talk a lot about different kinds of ideologies, but at the end of the day, they all have the same ideology - Money. Put them in a situation where they clearly are going to make less without signing, and the signature will all of a sudden not be an impossibility any more.
the postal service having a sympathy strike and no longer delivering registration plates to them. Using the postal service is the only legal means of obtaining registration plates, and without them it’s not permitted to sell a car.
Best.
Makes you tear up a little with pride, doesn’t it.
This is actually the one part of this whole strike I disagree with.
The government signed an agreement that prevents license plates from being delivered other than via this postal union. You can’t pick them up or get them any other way (that I’m aware of today)
It is a de-facto ban on car sales if you don’t sign a collective agreement, and there’s no way this was intended by the government.
IMO this is going to be challenged. The government should not have been able to make an agreement like this. It’s just some unintended consequence that has never surfaced before.
What if something else happened that prevented the mail from this one union from being delivered indefinitely? ALL auto manufacture sales would halt if that happens.
I think there’s a fair chance of this successfully being challenged, OR, the agreement being altered prior to being challenged to provide another way to get plates directly from the government, or to allow the citizens themselves to pick up the plates.
Edit: And in case it wasn’t clear, I don’t see a problem with this as long as citizens can get a plate, even if that makes Tesla and their lives more difficult.
To be clear, this is the government-owned postal service that does the deliveries of these license plates. They have other privileges on account of being the official postal service.
There are other legal consequences to not bargaining and signing a union contract in Sweden, this is quite simply the way the Swedish labour market works.
Other companies have been de-facto banned from the Swedish market before by refusing to bargain in the past (Toys’R’Us for example), I don’t see why Tesla’s case would be any different. Were I to be a judge to receive this case, I would question why Tesla would refuse to do something so mundane and universally expected as to bargain with the unions. Upon not receiving a good reason as to not do it, I would then promptly throw that case into the trash where it belongs.
As expected, Tesla has sued, and won an injunction pending the lawsuit to be allowed to pick up the mail.
This is why this is different.
Toys R Us wasn’t legally prevented from selling anything. It was just wasn’t worth the trouble it was causing.
Tesla cannot sell anymore due to a government signed contract that prevents delivery in any other way.
That’s why this is different.
Communist Sweden
/s
I’m honestly surprised, that there are not more Americans loudly calling the Scandinavian countries communist. Being some of the most socialist countries in the world.
Meanwhile in the USA I believe the supreme Court recently ruled that unions are responsible for repaying companies for striking…
If memory serves, I don’t think there were any actual damages in this case. They left a truck with a bunch of wet concrete and told someone, and the company had to haul ass so the concrete wouldn’t solidify and break the truck. They did just that. It’s ridiculous to ask for damages for that.
If they had left a fire or volatile process unattended, that would be different. Or if they created a gigantic mess for their coworkers to handle. But this isn’t either of those.
I fucking love this story.
May the might of the Swedish unions always be in their favour.
Euuuuurope!!
get fucked capitalist scum
Thank you Europe for help fix our companies.
Even if Tesla capitulates here, they won’t change their domestic policies. This will only benefit those who are actually willing to stand up for themselves.
Fight on Swedish Unions! Let that Son-of-a-Musk get a black eye for trying his BS over here!
