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Swedish dockworkers are refusing to unload Teslas at ports in broad boycott move

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Re: Swedish dockworkers are refusing to unload Teslas at ports in broad boycott move

#91
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If I'm legally required to work, isn't that forced labor?" Not if you signed a contract declaring that you will show up. So a strike is in one way organised contract breaching - but one that is allowed under certain circumstances under the bigger contract, the state laws (which you accept by being in that state).

> Not if you signed a contract declaring that you will show up. Yes, even then. A contract violation is not a violation of law. My question is about it being illegal.

> A contract violation is not a violation of law.

False; contract law is, as the name suggests, law, and there are legally established remedies for violations.

Re: Swedish dockworkers are refusing to unload Teslas at ports in broad boycott move

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy what average folks can do when they collectively own the means of production.

. Edit: deleting my comment. didn't add much value to the conversation.

> average folks get fired immediately for not doing their job. A job that they agreed to do.

The entire point of a union is that you have enough collective agreement so that the company can't just fire everyone who pushes back. They can fire one person, or even many, but what if half of the workers are pushing back?

> also, mail workers don't "own" mail delivery.

They may not own it, but they do control it. Good luck getting your mail if every mail worker collectively decided to stop working.

Re: Swedish dockworkers are refusing to unload Teslas at ports in broad boycott move

#93

Recent blog post about unions that I found interesting: >Let’s say a nation is concerned about poverty. So it passes a law that says the rich will have some of their money redistributed to the poor. But instead of a progressive income tax used to fund cash payments to the unfortunate, the government decides that wealthy people who happened to be born in the spring will give their money to poor people whose birthdays…

You say that only a cartel of CEO could exist?

In a regular employee-employer relations there is a big difference in negotiating power. Unions can mitigate that.

Re: Swedish dockworkers are refusing to unload Teslas at ports in broad boycott move

#94
post #15

Sweden GDP is roughly equal to Tesla market cap. It's a fair fight.

GDP is “per year” and market cap is just some absolute number, better to compare annual revenue or sth.

I mean why one year? Why not 10 months and 8 days? Why not a decade? It’s totally arbitrary and you can only use GDPs to compare with other GDPs (or other annual totals).

Re: Swedish dockworkers are refusing to unload Teslas at ports in broad boycott move

#95
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, gdp is a snapshot of current activity, but the market cap is a guess of the amount of money the company will throw off in total, adjusted for time and risk.

Market cap is not that at all, that's why Twitter's market cap was 44B and now undefined because its not on the market. Market cap is the price of the last share trade times total number of shares. Company's current performance and prospects don't really change that much from day to day but you can have large market cap changes because what you are observing is just live betting.

> what you are observing is just live betting

Yes, and those bets are guesses on how much the company will return as the poster you responded to said.

Re: Swedish dockworkers are refusing to unload Teslas at ports in broad boycott move

#96

Meanwhile, statement from the Union: https://www.arbetaren.se/2023/11/13/if-metall-strejkkassan-r... "Our strike fund is enough to keep this up for 500 years."

On one hand, that is epic. On the other hand, it means the union has leached a monumental amount of capital out of the workers and industries they are involved with. A union should not have that much cash in the bank.

Why not? Is there something wrong with workers pooling and leveraging their economic assets in pursuit of their own interests?

Re: Swedish dockworkers are refusing to unload Teslas at ports in broad boycott move

#97
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that even work? I am, and should be, free to not show up to work for any reason I choose. If I'm legally required to work, isn't that forced labor?

You can choose not to turn up, but in the UK at least, you may not encourage anyone else to do the same.

Interesting. That is certainly not true in the US.

Re: Swedish dockworkers are refusing to unload Teslas at ports in broad boycott move

#99

I don't actually agree with unions, but not for the "usual" reasons. Unions are a scotch-tape fix to a broken economic system, which gives enormous powers to the capitalistic class at the expense of all others. The correct solution is to fix the actual system. All large companies should be by constitutional law (controlling) majority owned 1/n by their workers. All this exploitation will disappear because workers wil…

That solution doesn't work in practice because a nontrivial number of those workers are perfectly willing to exploit others for their own personal gain. Turns out people have flaws. Unions are the best compromise anyone's found between capital and labor.

Is there evidence of this happening in existing worker-owned cooperatives?

Re: Swedish dockworkers are refusing to unload Teslas at ports in broad boycott move

#100
post #65
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So fake EV (PHEV) Volvos that send profits to China and gas profits to MBS will keep the upper hand in Sweden perpetuating the climate crisis on-ramp. Very cool /s

Well then Tesla should treat their workers better so this doesn't happen. So rude of them.

Let’s not assume Tesla treats its workers badly though. I’ve talked to Tesla workers and they were very happy.

The union is just butthurt that Tesla is not unionized and has happy workers.

You’ll find plenty of negative media if you look, but there are reasons those stories get planted and promoted, reasons having little to do with truth.

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