Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in
theregister.com
theregister.com
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...
https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/tesla-model-y-wins-crushing...
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).
That either they convince Tesla to sign an agreement or they sell it all.
Norwegian politicians are also acting and eg. requesting discussions with Tesla in Norway to discuss the Nordic model with them.
Also, you might agree with some activist fund exclusions, like tobacco or gambling.
https://www.anheuser-busch.com/newsroom/bud-light-next-celeb...
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-01-12/not-ev...
The Swedish National Pension Fund had about 500k of TSLA shares as of their latest 13f.
Source: https://capedge.com/company/1318605/TSLA/institutional-owner...
DISCLAIMER: our company owns CapEdge.
This is no longer true. A higher court overturned that decision and the license plates are again blocked from reaching Tesla.
For example as a mail worker should I be able to opt out from delivering mail to politicians whose political statements I find deplorable?
If the plates were to be delivered not to Tesla, but to an individual, then they wouldn't be allowed not to deliver them?
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.
And is there a precedent for what's happening now?
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 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.
What does that mean?
It defines the concept pretty well, which is somewhat valuable, but has few citations, which is unfortunate.
Unchecked power is bad. Doesn’t matter if it’s a government, a company or a union.
I don’t know if you thought there was a contradiction there, but I don’t see it.
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.
However, it appears the striking mail workers are being paid, even though they are not delivering mail to Tesla.
That in turn gives them a lot of power, because they can keep this strike going for as long as they like with no cost to themselves.
It’s collective action and should be praised in an age where opaque corporations and oligarchs run everything.
If Starbucks workers go to work all day and serve every customer but Bob, that's not a strike or walkout. Those terms have real definitions.
That doesn't mean it isn't a union activity.
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?
Ironically, I think this would be illegal in Sweden but might be legal in the US under Title VII exemptions.
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"
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?
Prevented, though, is harder. Prohibitions aren't always effective prevention.
Not everyone has state postal services like in the US
The thing is that government services must be provided to everyone or (if enough people are on strike) not at all.
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
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
In my opinion, screw the Musk boy. There are other EV manufacturers.
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.
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.
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.
This is what unionization is, protects the worker regardless of 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.
These workers are friends, wives, husbands, relatives…
It’s more than justified.
A strike - whether because of your circumstances or another's - 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.
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.
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.
So, what postal workers are doing is justified.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Tesla, welcome to a free country where the state doesn't interfere. Truly a Rand-ian paradise. ;-)
Perhaps you are thinking of a general strike? This is a solidarity strike.
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 .
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Sweden is not the USA.
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...
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.
I dunno much about Europe but if it's a private company, then rules and services are obviously different.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2023/10/12/maersk-signs...
Can't speak about spacex not sure if any Swedish companies do business with them.
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.
Don't worry, the courts aren't on strike against Tesla.
Then the unions have to figure out their next steps.
Get your popcorn
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Yet Scandinavian workers seem to be able to join in on disputes they aren't party to.
Yes, there is a difference between association and contract. (As well as not doing something versus forcing someone to.)
> 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.
I don’t know Swedish law. But this certainly isn’t the case in America.
My Visa card has a clause that the bank isn't liable if it stops working due to industrial action.
What contract is Tesla party to that they would invoke this on? OP suggested Transport Agency invoking force majeure, which makes sense.
> has a clause that the bank isn't liable if it stops working due to industrial action
Who is suggesting liability for Tesla?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The interests of the people and the interests of the union don't overlap much.
The government isn't doing this, workers are.
Wouldn't it be more problematic if the government stepped in and forced the hand against their workers, and in favour of a private company like Tesla?
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 latter is more easily able to be used for extortion.
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.
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".
We aren't talking about people here. Corporations don't have that kind of consideration in most of Europe.
Call it a "boycott". It's perfectly legal and obviously not comparable to cops targeting people in the slightest.
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.
Why would the government purposely try to restrict their rights, to appeal to a foreign company?
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?
So please consider that other models are possible that are cooperative not antagonistic.
It's absolutely bizarre to claim that self-determining nation has too much power against a foreign corporation.
That's how all business works.
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?
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.
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.
Now there's a hot take in light of the largest worker gains in decades, entirely because of unions, just in the last couple years.
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.
Article in Finnish: https://www.hs.fi/talous/art-2000010043398.html
What from the outside looks "irrational", from the inside may look like "not compromising on principles".
Money is not the main variable that Musk is trying to maximize at this point.
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.
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".
Not compromising on free speech worked well... Until he started banning journalists from Twitter.
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.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/15/23512004/elon-musk-start...
> 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.
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.
This distinction is meaningless until someone is un-suspended.
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.
[1] https://twitter.com/dellcam
[2] https://twitter.com/stevanzetti/status/1648785112748662784
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.
While the rest of the world looks on in envy, wondering why it is seemingly so impossible to replicate elsewhere.
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.
Own your opinions, maybe.
No.
> unions are no more corrupt than the business itself
No way.
No, this is an issue for other smaller companies too (with less media coverage)
> Maybe the rest of the world needs to catch up to the societal norms of Sweden when it comes to worker's rights.
I hope not. I kind of want a flying car ASAP. Not never.
This might still be true tho. We'll see.
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 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.
Nordic model is such a great success.
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.
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".
Why is that?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_purchasing_organization
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...
Tech workers is one of the most well-paid and privileged working classes on the planet.
We have it so good that we don't need the extra bargaining power unions provide.
It's not surprising, we humans have a hard time understanding circumstances that are very different from our own.
Sure, from Tesla. We're talking about a purchase and sale between private parties and a contract dispute between private parties.
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.
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. :)
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Within this framework, there's a lot of people who view strikes as not just wrong but morally wrong.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j3ZNUxqo9M (this is an older example, but this is the kind of stuff I saw when I worked for target long ago)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...
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.
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.
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.
Only old broken soldiers still fight won wars.
> 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.
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 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.
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).
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.
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).
https://www.ifmetall.se/aktuellt/tesla/
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?
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.
Yes, the unions and the companies. Neither wants that.
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.
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."
(From the outside) it seems hard to understand why something should be effectively be mandatory without being officially mandatory.
If collective agreements are to be mandatory, the government should just pass a law making them mandatory, then that's done.
Hiding behind the claim "it's up to each employer and their employees" to decide is just silly.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 is not the case in Sweden.
Maybe in the US?
Anyway, here's the link: https://www.sjofolk.se/nyheter/2022/medlem-automatiskt/
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?
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.
Edit: Apologies for confusing you with the other poster.
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.
What he said.
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.
Just making up anti-union statements all over the place.
https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/penge/3fer-bag-trusler-og-boelleme...
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 can't help but wondering if this is merely an ostensible reasoning. Do you happen to have more information about the "anti-mafia" struggle?
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/labor-ra...
https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-vcrs/infiltrated-l...
There's also a great interview with former mob boss Michael Franzese where he talked directly about how it worked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27p-USEQxe4
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.
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.
No they do not, and there are workers who work in Tesla services so it's not a complete standstill.
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.
That however only works when everyone plays ball.
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.
For decades, Ford and others have factories in Europe and have union members.
Because it largely is.
> For decades, Ford and others have factories in Europe and have union members.
These were handled very differently.
For the most part those were independent subsidiaries, under the same brand but playing with their own set of rules.
They commonly had different lineups entirely, for instance the Ford Focus was created in cooperation by the british (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_of_Britain) and German (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Germany) teams of Ford of Europe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_of_Europe), and while the Focus was designed as an international car, it is the direct descendent of Ford of Europe's first passenger car the Escort (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Escort_(Europe)), which itself directly descends from Ford of Britain's Anglia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Anglia).
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.
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.
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.
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.
(Somehow I doubt Elon Musk bothered understanding what he was getting himself into here. This could get really ugly)
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?
In this matter, the union agreement is more or less what we call a "convention collective" in France ?
This is particularly ironic coming from Elon Musk, net worth $245Bn in a country where
“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.
[0]: https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/107703/err-325...
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.
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.
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.
No thanks.
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.
In Sweden we have a very good social safety net, but just that isn't enough.
If workers want to use their power to pressure companies, so should companies be able to do the same.
Yes? Was this disputed?
Why is that?
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.
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 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.
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.
[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?
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.
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".
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.
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.
Daily reminder that Norway has NHO, a national union for employers/enterprises. (I don’t like it but it is what is.)
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.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike
[2]: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/10/26/tesla-continues-to-be-a...
[3]: https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/labor-unions...
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
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.
Only someone ignorant of history can spout nonsense like this.