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Swedish court rules against Tesla in dispute with postal service over deliveries

reuters.com

161–170 of 409 posts

Re: Swedish court rules against Tesla in dispute with postal service over deliveries

#161

The article does not explain the background. What relation does Tesla have to Swedish workers? Is there a Tesla Gigafactory in Sweden?

Tesla is refusing to sign a collective bargaining agreement which is basically the norm in Sweden. This has been going on for a couple of weeks and garnered a lot of attention in Swedish media and social media. Sweden has a strong tradition of unionization which clashes with 'big American capitalism'. Swedish subreddits have lately had frequent posts with the comment sections filled with comments that more or less in unison are saying 'go get them, grabs popcorn' in support of the actions taken against Tesla.

Re: Swedish court rules against Tesla in dispute with postal service over deliveries

#163
post #146

Tesla is shooting itself in the foot by not being pragmatic. Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are combined the 3rd biggest market for Tesla. During some months we even edge out China temporarily becoming Tesla's 2nd biggest market. The way our unions are being portrayed by Americans is ridiculous. Even pro-union Americans are making our unions sound far more aggressive and subversive than they actually are. A "blockade" j…

[deleted]

Re: Swedish court rules against Tesla in dispute with postal service over deliveries

#164

> Musk said last week: “I disagree with the idea of unions. I just don’t like anything which creates a lords-and-peasants kind of thing.” This sounds ridiculous.

He probably said quite a bit more than just that. If you extract just one sentence from somebody's position, you can make anyone look ridiculous. Looking at this from a distance and without picking sides, I can see both sides have a point and a bigger agenda. The actual conflict seems like it is a sideshow to this bigger agenda. In Scandinavia the unions are historically very strong. Strong as in they are mostly soci…

Unions getting the best deal for their workers is "political posturing"?

Re: Swedish court rules against Tesla in dispute with postal service over deliveries

#165

Why do I have the feeling one of the main outcomes of this is PostNord loses business of deliverying the license plates and other courier gets the tender instead?

That's tricky in Sweden, PostNord is by a far distance the best delivery mechanism (it customer service still sucks though), if you go far up North or rural many other delivery services are hard to find. There is a lot of things to be said about PostNord but its most reliable.

Re: Swedish court rules against Tesla in dispute with postal service over deliveries

#167

This article uses the words "workers' decision" several times which sounds like individual workers are deciding to not deliver to Tesla. The truth is that a sympathy strike involves a union deciding to take industrial action against an organisation to support another unions industrial action. So these workers are legally striking against Tesla too, it's not just an ad hoc decision made by individuals. PostNord employ…

> a sympathy strike involves a union deciding to take industrial action against an organisation to support another unions industrial action

Interestingly that's not quite what's happening either. The workers in question are not in a union. IF Metall is the union being supported, and merely wants to represent them (more correctly, they don't want a non-union shop operating in their market).

Everyone is just nuts here. Tesla needs to just cut a deal here, but at the same time this kind of escalation, with all this economic disruption, all for the "benefit" of 160 (or whatever) unrepresented workers who aren't even part of the story and don't seem to be asking for union representation or higher wages or anything is just batshit.

Re: Swedish court rules against Tesla in dispute with postal service over deliveries

#168
post #134
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Tesla have a binding agreement with the workers on how to handle layoffs when business is bad?

Do they need to? That's what laws are for, in the case of Sweden it's the Employment Protection Act. The union can negotiate a better deal but it's not wild west at-will employment like in the US.

This is about mass layoffs, not terminating individual employees for "personal reasons".

I am not an expert, but I think the union claims that this is one thing that is now worse for the Spotify employees who are laid off?

Meaning, sure, there is a degree of basic legal protection, but during layoffs, having a collective bargaining agreement will give you better conditions than that?

Re: Swedish court rules against Tesla in dispute with postal service over deliveries

#169

> Musk said last week: “I disagree with the idea of unions. I just don’t like anything which creates a lords-and-peasants kind of thing.” This sounds ridiculous.

… I’m not even sure what he’s getting at. Are multinational corporations the exploited proletariat in this analogy?

Re: Swedish court rules against Tesla in dispute with postal service over deliveries

#170

> Musk said last week: “I disagree with the idea of unions. I just don’t like anything which creates a lords-and-peasants kind of thing.” This sounds ridiculous.

> “I disagree with the idea of unions. I just don’t like anything which creates a lords-and-peasants kind of thing.”

Says the oligarch to the masses.

That word is often used in only a post-Soviet context, but the word is Greek and far older than the Soviet Union, and the Wikipedia page has a pretty clear definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy and whilst the word triggers near-allergic reactions from Americans it does seem to reflect the power control in the US recently.

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