181–190 of 409 posts
Americans don't get it. We Scandinavians are not built on a cultural foundation which circles around creating our own safety nets.
We are not lucky. We worked hard for it for hundreds of years.
Same thing goes for Wolt or Uber etc. They are not welcome here if they can't treat workers by their unions commitments.
Fuck the money and hail solidarity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of what Musk says and does sounds ridiculous. That doesn't make it wise to dismiss out of hand. I actually agree that a lot of unions reinforce an us-vs-them mentality that might be necessary in local disputes but certainly isn't as good as having everyone's incentives aligned. What I think Musk might be missing in this context is that European unions have a deep history in the guild system and are related not…
>a deep history in the guild system and are related not just to bargaining with employers but also disseminating best practices and standards, so they add a lot of value as well. This is the first time I've seen someone mention this as a good thing. Most of the time its mentioned in outdated regulations dragging out the economic output of Europe in favor of old people who don't want to use new technology. I think eve…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of what Musk says and does sounds ridiculous. That doesn't make it wise to dismiss out of hand. I actually agree that a lot of unions reinforce an us-vs-them mentality that might be necessary in local disputes but certainly isn't as good as having everyone's incentives aligned. What I think Musk might be missing in this context is that European unions have a deep history in the guild system and are related not…
> disseminating best practices and standards What is a good example?
The important detail which most people seem to miss is that Tesla's workers aren't behind this. They don't want to unionize, because there's no reason to. The IF Metall union is striking because they just want to get their cut.
> The IF Metall union is striking because they just want to get their cut.
What sort of people do you think IF Metall is made up of? It's the second largest union in Sweden, the people who are a part of the union are also workers at Tesla and other companies. It's not made up of "career-unionists" if that's what you thought.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.…
Aggressive American union busting tactics don't go down well in Europe. This isn't the first time this type of thing has happened. Walmart famously crashed and burned in Germany, for example, because they treated the German unions like uppity communists.
For many reasons, the US has a model which is not cooperative but built on bitter enmity. This is repeated throughout the nation with e.g. cars vs bikes.
We do not have that here. This is Musk bringing all his prejudice to a bunch of countries he doesn't understand the norms and culture of.
Spotify also had a breakdown with unions and its workforce. With no where near the fall out that Tesla is getting. Surely that is a bigger deal than Tesla service centres!? Anti Elon, anti American sentiment?
Spotify is Swedish and there is currently no ongoing strike. If you look for articles in Swedish, you'll see plenty.
Considering all Tesla imports come from Germany or China, I feel Sweden will be on the losing end of this.
How do you reconsile that such belief with democracy?
Because that set of beliefs is only compatiable with belief in some kind of trans-national oligarchy. Or maybe some sort of America-centeic-colonialism, i am struggling to think of better term.
> 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?
> 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…
The Danish prime minister is from the social democrat party.
Spotify also had a breakdown with unions and its workforce. With no where near the fall out that Tesla is getting. Surely that is a bigger deal than Tesla service centres!? Anti Elon, anti American sentiment?
Different unions.