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Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

theregister.com

391–400 of 541 posts

Re: Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

#391
post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't see what so bad about the union action here. Would honestly love to understand what you don't like about this.

You don’t see anything wrong with public workers selectively punishing _one_ entity of their arbitrary choosing? Unchecked power is bad. Doesn’t matter if it’s a government, a company or a union.

They're not public workers anymore after the liberalisation in the early 2000s. They didn't have the right to strike before that. Because it's a private company, they can strike. Who owns the shares is irrelevant in that context.

Re: Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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…

One union in Norway and one union in Denmark do not equal the "citizens" of Norway and Denmark.

I'd say we the citizens are largely in agreement and want Tesla (and Musk) to stop waging war on our model. The US having an antagonistic relationship with unions is not how we operate. Unions negotiate with our blessing and employers are by and large happy to deal with them.

So please consider that other models are possible that are cooperative not antagonistic.

Re: Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

#393
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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. "Si…

> part of anti-crime efforts to fight the mafia in the 50s and 60s 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.jstor.org/stable/1147700

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.

Re: Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

#394
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing so would prevent people from striking against unfair conditions, because they would lose the ability to feed themselves, and so would rather suffer bad working conditions. If you care at all about human beings, you should not be able to fire people simply because they voice their concerns about unfair working conditions, etc.

On the contrary, it would simply put both companies and workers on the same standard. If workers want to use their power to pressure companies, so should companies be able to do the same.

> If workers want to use their power to pressure companies, so should companies be able to do the same.

Why is that?

Re: Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

#395

> Postal workers even decided not to deliver mail to the electric automaker, including license plates – an action that Musk called "insane". The local court has since put a stop to that action. This is no longer true. A higher court overturned that decision and the license plates are again blocked from reaching Tesla.

At this point, I honestly just hope the standoff continues because I want to see how many moves each side has. This is really interesting to watch as somebody who isn't affected by it directly. 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.

Eventually, Tesla Sweden will go bankrupt. IF Metall will go to the union for the financial industry at some point. That means no more financial services for Tesla Sweden. Then they can't sell cars(must be in SEK in Sweden), they can't pay suppliers and their workers. If they can't pay their workers, it triggers automatic bankruptcy proceedings where the courts start seizing things to ensure that the workers will be paid. They began the same process with Toys'r'us and the company immediately folded when they realised the consequences.

Don't worry, the courts aren't on strike against Tesla.

Re: Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musk is pretty irrational when it comes to backing down 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.

> "not compromising on principles" 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".

Most things are iterated games so "not compromising on principles" can be a really good strategy if you can afford it.

Re: Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

#397
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's wild! As a (pseudo-) government agency, it seems like the postal service shouldn't be legally allowed to pick and choose whose mail to deliver and whose to withhold.

I’m not sure what exactly the rules are in these foreign countries, but it doesn’t seem unbelievable that the state could end up bound by a contract with the union. In a good country, the state also follows rules and laws and makes contracts, after all. 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…

Please, if you want to call it pseudo-something, call it pseudo-state agency. The government own nothing except their personal stuff, hopefully.

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.

Re: Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 deliveri…

Sure, use firefighters not putting out certain fires. 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".

> I would classify use of infrastructure as a right. Like if a toll booth operator refused to take money from certain people.

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.

Re: Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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…

One union in Norway and one union in Denmark do not equal the "citizens" of Norway and Denmark.

The nordic countries, Norway, Denmark and Sweden have unionization rates in excess of 50% - to almost 70% in Sweden. The nordic countries have always shown solidarity when it comes to union negotiations all the way down to the rank and file. To pretend that this isn't desire of the electorate in those countries is willful ignorance.

It's absolutely bizarre to claim that self-determining nation has too much power against a foreign corporation.

Re: Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

#400
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Required by who ? What is this entity that compels government employees to work? Is it Tesla? If so why? Or is it their citizens, who are by and large supportive of this movement?

> What is this entity that compels government employees to work? 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 employer here is the government. That's why they are _government employees_. Last I checked, Sweden wasn't under a dictatorship. So again, if the citizenry largely support the strike, what is this shadow entity that is requiring them work?
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