And they won [1]! At least an interim decision forcing the government to let Tesla collect new license plates from the manufacturer.
1. https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/domstol-teslas-registreri...
Tesla sues Swedish state agency over number plate blockage
161–170 of 364 posts
Re: Tesla sues Swedish state agency over number plate blockage
#162[dead]
Re: Tesla sues Swedish state agency over number plate blockage
#163On a related note, I think you have to consider very carefully whether or not you can manufacture in Sweden. For some companies like Teenage Engineering, Elektron, etc.,it can make a lot of sense as your labor cost is such a small fraction of the total value of the product. But if you are in some kind of competitive market where the labor cost has the potential to erase your margins (and therefore return on the project investment) then I don't think it makes sense in this globalized economy to base in Sweden.
Where do electric vehicles fall on this spectrum? I don't know TBH. I would suspect the Model S and Model X it doesn't matter really ... but say for batteries or the Model 3 ... maybe Sweden is a bad choice. The Chinese are very smart about how they base their manufacturing. Tesla should be smarter too. You can't just get around 50 years of labor interests.
And paying workers a lot is not enough ... labor interests want more than just high pay ... there's lots of other restrictions and controls on what you can do. You have to let them control how labor works in your plants. You can't just innovate on process however you like if you are at large scale. That's how Europe works. Everything is slow and deliberate with a pace that runs over decades or sometimes generations. You can't just fire/hire/automate/reconfigure on the fly as you evolve processes. Go to China or Texas if you need that.
Re: Tesla sues Swedish state agency over number plate blockage
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Are you telling me that refusing to distribute mail is legal in Sweden? In most, if not all EU countries that would not be on several levels as per my previous comment. So please at least try to write something substantive... Edit: In fact it looks like this is indeed a breach of at least EU law: " The universal service obligation (USO) is the core of the Postal Services Directive (97/67/EC, amended by Directives 200…
PostNord is prevented from fulfilling this obligation by the lawful strike carried out by workers. The right to strike would be practically meaningless if employers could just sidestep it by replacing strikers with non-unionized workers, so the laws have been constructed to prevent this.
Think of it as force majeure.
Re: Tesla sues Swedish state agency over number plate blockage
#165The hubris is just off the scale. How about you simply follow the law. How hard can it be, if the Chinese can manufacture cars in Sweden then so can Americans.
Under EU law mail has to be delivered to all addresses 5 days a week.
I strongly suspect that what is going on with Tesla's mail is illegal.
Re: Tesla sues Swedish state agency over number plate blockage
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are breaking the law. They have (repeatedly) threatened strikers that they would take away their options which is how they managed to match compensation to begin with so this is very much a legal issue as well. That's why so many sympathy strikes broke out. What Tesla execs need to realize is that the world isn't North America and that different countries have different relationships between labor and management…
>They are breaking the law. Wait, I'm super confused by this. If they really are breaking the law why isn't the government shutting them down instead of the unions striking? Isn't that the job of the government, to make sure every company follows the law? In my country, if you don't follow the law, the government institutions don't even let you open up shop, the unions are only there to negociate yearly wage increase…
> I don't get this. If they really are breaking the law why isn't the government shutting them down instead of the unions playing hardball? Isn't that the job of the government?
That's the tricky bit about worker/employer relationships: it would still require a worker to bring a complaint and that worker will then surely be fired by Tesla because they're pretty good at retaliation. That would still make it worse for Tesla but the worker than also has an issue. You'd have to be pretty principled to put your family through a thing like that. But it may well come to it if this keeps going on, Tesla doesn't really realize yet who has the power in this engagement. But they're about to find out.
> In my country, if you don't follow the law, the government institutions don't even let you open up shop, the unions are only there to negociate yearly wage increases, but follwing the law is a given.
In theory Sweden is no different. But they're not going to step in to this until the unions and Tesla have had their options exhausted and so far nobody got fired (as far as I know). The moment Tesla fires someone instead of just threatening to harm them financially the gloves will come off for sure.
As it is Tesla may not realize it yet but they are already losing in the court of public opinion and this stuff is headline news all over Europe, I've seen two articles related to this in the Dutch press in the last week alone and the sentiment is 'you can't bully Swedish workers and expect to get away with it'. Time will tell if that is true and what it will do to Tesla brand perception in Europe.
Re: Tesla sues Swedish state agency over number plate blockage
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are breaking the law. They have (repeatedly) threatened strikers that they would take away their options which is how they managed to match compensation to begin with so this is very much a legal issue as well. That's why so many sympathy strikes broke out. What Tesla execs need to realize is that the world isn't North America and that different countries have different relationships between labor and management…
>They are breaking the law. Wait, I'm super confused by this. If they really are breaking the law why isn't the government shutting them down instead of the unions striking? Isn't that the job of the government, to make sure every company follows the law? In my country, if you don't follow the law, the government institutions don't even let you open up shop, the unions are only there to negociate yearly wage increase…
Likely it isn’t criminal code, so the legal process is typically very slow.
Re: Tesla sues Swedish state agency over number plate blockage
#168The hubris is just off the scale. How about you simply follow the law. How hard can it be, if the Chinese can manufacture cars in Sweden then so can Americans.
Under EU law mail has to be delivered to all addresses 5 days a week. I strongly suspect that what is going on with Tesla's mail is illegal.
Oh, no doubt. But this isn't a cause, it's a (minor) symptom at best and Tesla just threw a bunch of oil on the fire. This isn't going to end well if they keep bringing American strong arm tactics to the EU.
Re: Tesla sues Swedish state agency over number plate blockage
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
>They are breaking the law. Wait, I'm super confused by this. If they really are breaking the law why isn't the government shutting them down instead of the unions striking? Isn't that the job of the government, to make sure every company follows the law? In my country, if you don't follow the law, the government institutions don't even let you open up shop, the unions are only there to negociate yearly wage increase…
> I don't get this. If they really are breaking the law why isn't the government shutting them down instead of the unions playing hardball? Isn't that the job of the government? That's the tricky bit about worker/employer relationships: it would still require a worker to bring a complaint and that worker will then surely be fired by Tesla because they're pretty good at retaliation. That would still make it worse for…
>that worker will then surely be fired by Tesla because they're pretty good at retaliation.
Fired how? I though you can't fire people just like that in Sweden.
>In theory Sweden is no different. But they're not going to step in to this until the unions and Tesla have had their options exhausted
This still doesn't make sense. The law is the law, and breaking it is just as bad with or without union discussion, no?
Like if the law says you need to give your employees X, Y, Z and you haven't , the that's breaking the saw and the state should immediately intervine.
>Time will tell if that is true and what it will do to Tesla brand perception in Europe.
I doubt it. VW reduced hundreds/thousands of collective years off our lifespan and their cars are still flying off she show floors so I doubt Europeans are gonna stop buying Teslas because of union disagreements in Sweden.
Re: Tesla sues Swedish state agency over number plate blockage
#170On a related note, I think you have to consider very carefully whether or not you can manufacture in Sweden. For some companies like Teenage Engineering, Elektron, etc.,it can make a lot of sense as your labor cost is such a small fraction of the total value of the product. But if you are in some kind of competitive market where the labor cost has the potential to erase your margins (and therefore return on the proje…
Sweden has been making cars for almost 100 years now.