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Norway Joins Denmark in Swedish Tesla Strike/Blockade

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Re: Norway Joins Denmark in Swedish Tesla Strike/Blockade

#121

Post by mathverse »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #81
p_l wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also what's crippling progress in many places in Eastern Europe. Depressed wages and fighting on price only to be assembly plant for higher-tech components does not let you build local prosperity, it makes you fungible cheap labour.

What was the better alterative at the time? EE was basically bankrupt in the early 90's. How could they have caught up to join the wealthy innovation driven countries like UK, Netherlands, Germany and Nordics, on mere fractions of their education and research budgets and considering the massive social damage 45 years of communism has done to eradicate free thinking, innovation and entrepreneurship. Basically, post 19…

People truly underestimate the level of incompetence and corruption after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The EE lands were ripe for the taking and WE companies made sure to take everything as fast as possible. It was not even a battle it was just a pure massacre.

That left those countries without any local champions or easy options to elevate themselves. I've said it many many times that it will take dozens of unicorns like UIPath in Romania to offset the loss of industries now dominated by DACH companies.

Romania would need to become another Singapore which is almost impossible.

Re: Norway Joins Denmark in Swedish Tesla Strike/Blockade

#122

Post by WJW »

pbasista wrote: post #39
sorenjan wrote: post #13

This and the Danish solidarity actions are mainly to prevent Tesla from shipping cars meant for the Swedish market to Danish or Norwegian ports and then trucking them to Sweden. The Swedish transport union stopped unloading Tesla cars at Swedish ports November 7, but Tesla Y was still one of the most sold car models in Sweden in November (second place between Volvo XC40 and XC60).

I believe that Tesla does not need ships to transport Tesla Model Ys from Giga Berlin to Sweden. They can use railroad. Or trucks.

As long as Danish railroad workers and/or truckers don't join the blockade of course.

Re: Norway Joins Denmark in Swedish Tesla Strike/Blockade

#123

Post by yreg »

Leherenn wrote: post #101
yreg wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand only a small portion of Tesla workers are on strike. It's mostly union members working at other companies and institutions who are striking. E.g. the postal office workers refused to deliver Tesla's mail which is baffling to me.

I looked it up when the story broke out, and as far as I could find, it's private shipping companies (FedEx and the like) that are refusing to deliver stuff, not the national public post office. They still get regular mail delivered just fine.

It was PostNord, the state owned post office:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...

Re: Norway Joins Denmark in Swedish Tesla Strike/Blockade

#124

Post by ZeroGravitas »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #88
ramesh31 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah we've been trained well in the US. Only our corporate overlords should have that kind of power.

Never heard of a shipping company refusing to ship based on political belief

Just pretend that the workers have a patent on this (and/or that patents are a "political belief") and you'll think of lots of examples of organisations using leverage over other organisations to achieve some goal, sometimes to the public good and sometimes against it.

Re: Norway Joins Denmark in Swedish Tesla Strike/Blockade

#125

Post by simion314 »

andsoitis wrote: post #34
toomuchtodo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon simply doesn't believe in unions and wants to operate like a dictatorship (his public personal history has a substantial paper trail on this matter, both with personal and business relationships). It works until enough people say no. Certainly, just as Elon disagrees with the idea of unions, there are likely enough folks who disagree with the idea of Elon. If he wants to be remembered as the dude global labor ha…

> If he wants to be remembered as the dude global labor had to organize against, I mean, the bar is already pretty low where he's at but perhaps we have yet to hit bedrock. Probably with a bit to be said about dying a hero or living long enough to become the villain through the appropriate lens. Highly recommend watching the full interview that Andrew Ross Sorkin did with Elon Musk (it is the one where he told advert…

In this one he admitted something about he said some very dumb shit on tweeter, so maybe his fans can accept that he does say dumb shit and stop defending that, let his lawyers and PR team defend him.

IMO soon he will admit all this anti union stuff was also dumb.

Re: Norway Joins Denmark in Swedish Tesla Strike/Blockade

#127

Post by stiray »

I think that whole thing is just a huge misunderstanding of elmu thinking that whole world works like USA. And even in USA, union members in average earn 18% more than others.

On the other side, strike and unionizing is one of basic workers rights here and you just don't fight unions in EU. As you will be losing more money than if you get to an agreement with them.

When elmu started his crusade against unions, I was laughing: "another USA manager that doesn't understand that he is no longer in states". But I never thought that he will be stupid enough to continue.

--- edit ---

I think also that most of young in USA and EU are in misunderstanding what Musk did and what he is fighting against. But I think they should and they SHOULD understand what solidarity means and what it can do. And why employers are trying to discredit unions, prevent them etc. - here you can check the Last Week Tonight on union busting in states: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk8dUXRpoy8

(the numbers are just for illustration, google them, they are public)

Musk fights against one union. With 100.000 members. That union is in federation with 10 other unions with 100.000 members and federations are joining into confederations.

Even first federations presents a formidable force, from political perspective (number of votes on state elections), to pure money and people power.

You cant win, this is now, for unions and federations of unions, cultural fight. Initial union is no longer important and even if they would want to stop, they cant. If he will be poking long enough whole EU will fight him, from politicians that cant afford to lose votes from unions members and on top of that, do you think that German car industry is happy about him on EU soil? They would gladly cover wages for anyone striking.

If ETUC joins (largest EU trade union), he will be against 45 million workers and 41 EU states, and additional 10 union federations, probably bringing together numbers of 100 million workers, 1/5 of EU population without counting smaller unions. There is no politician that would want to lose their member votes and absolutely no EU capitalist that would be stupid enough to fight them even in worse nightmare. The backlash will be so huge all over EU that he wont sell even a free sample of Tesla car except to the greatest "individualists/fanboys" and they will have car windows broken on daily basis as quislings.

That's why never before something like this happened. As no one would be stupid enough to tease them.

If I would be him, I would pull back when second union was in play and reach silent agreement that wouldn't come to the news. Now, with 20 unions in protest? With two countries involved and potential for whole EU?

That's why I am saying, that he just didn't understand what is he fighting against. My honest advice. Stop. Now. Dont wait.

Re: Norway Joins Denmark in Swedish Tesla Strike/Blockade

#128

Post by holgerschurig »

njarboe wrote: post #65

From what I understand Tesla employees in Sweden do not want to join a/the union. The IF Metall union I believe. So these actions are unions trying to force people to do something they don't want to do. If people are happy working for Tesla without a union (stock options, flexible work rules, etc.) from my (American) perspective, why should they be forced to create an additional administrative system you would have t…

Well, then you completely misunderstanding things. It's not about joining, not at all. Actually what they ask for changes things for all employees of an industry (e.g. cars, or generally metal), not just for unionized workers.

So let me explain on this, as european union culture is VERY different from US union culture.

In Europe a lot of countries have a system of "Tarifvertrag" ("tarrif contract", but really "collective agreement"). In such contracts the workers union of a section (e.g. metal) do a contract with the business union of the employers. They settle then down to "give 28 days of holidays and x EUR per month to each" ... and then they won't strike for some time, e.g. 2 years. After this, they negotiate anew.

The special thing about this "Tarifvertrag" is now that EVERYBODY benefits from them, union member or not! In Sweden, for example, such general tariffs apply to 90% of the employees. So you can see how normal it's seen there. Anything that fights against this normality is thus seen not favorably (in Denmark it's 80% of all employees, in Germany it's much less, just 51% --- but still way more than in the US).

Now, Tesla Sweden says that they don't won't to follow such a model. The collective agreement is to them null and void. It seems that Elon Musky is, as many US brainwashed business people, strictly anti-union. Whatever comes from unions is surely coming right from hell :-) They have NEVER learned that with good unions you can have "peace at work", or more motivated people. The effect of this is visible, e.g. when you look at efficiency of e.g. german workers compared to their US counterparts. And this despite --- due to unions --- e.g. german cashiers can sit while checking people out. Horrors to US employee ... but effectively better for the people. So, in my view, US business people never learned how to use unions to their advantage --- which clearly is possible!

Now, with Musky's staunch "we ignore unions" stance, some reaction had to happen. Actually it was an escalation:

* in October 130 Tesla employees in various service stations went to strike

* in November 470 employees did strike

* now late December workers from other swedish unions said "We don't load/unload for Tesla in Sweden"

* and now, in early December, Danish and and Norwegian workers joined as well

Currently 12 different unions joined the "make Tesla think a bit more european" strike.

Re: Norway Joins Denmark in Swedish Tesla Strike/Blockade

#129

Post by ZeroGravitas »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #94
kristofferR wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are effectively saying: "It is crazy that they have an effective mechanism for ensuring good working conditions in their societies"

That's a very narrow view of the situation. It's not up for a small group of individuals to decide that for the whole society. Say they decide tmrw to not accept shipments from Israel. Why should a dock worker have disproportionate say in that?

For a real life example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nae_Pasaran

> Nae Pasaran is a 2018 documentary directed by Felipe Bustos Sierra about a group of workers at a Rolls-Royce factory in East Kilbride, Scotland, who refused to work on Chilean Air Force parts from 1974-78 due to the atrocities carried out in Chile by the Pinochet dictatorship

Re: Norway Joins Denmark in Swedish Tesla Strike/Blockade

#130

Post by jplrssn »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #94
kristofferR wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are effectively saying: "It is crazy that they have an effective mechanism for ensuring good working conditions in their societies"

That's a very narrow view of the situation. It's not up for a small group of individuals to decide that for the whole society. Say they decide tmrw to not accept shipments from Israel. Why should a dock worker have disproportionate say in that?

I'm not familiar with Norwegian labour law, but if it's anything like the Swedish equivalent there are narrowly defined rules about when you can and can't engage in solidarity action.

It's only permissible in response to an active dispute and refusing to unload all shipments from Israel definitely wouldn't qualify.

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