Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

281–290 of 409 posts

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

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The way our unions are being portrayed by Americans is ridiculous. Americans policymakers believe in freedom of association only when it suits them. Its cool for Google or banks to close all your accounts without any reason, and make your life impossible. Its wrong for all unions/workers to refuse to work with Google and make their business impossible.

This feels very disingenuous, and pretty unfair. I don’t think most Americans think it’s ok for google or banks to act that way, and I also feel very uncomfortable about a sort of “mob rule” system… where informal agreements dictate which businesses are allowed to operate. They both feel weird for roughly the same reasons: arbitrary decisions instead of laws dictate which behavior is tolerated for which group of peop…

> I don’t think most Americans think it’s ok for google or banks to act that way

Will Americans support laws to encode that Google or banks can't do that? I don't think so. You'd think it could be a bipartisan slam dunk, but, hey!

> where informal agreements dictate which businesses are allowed to operate.

They're not informal. They're part of Swedish law and the Swedish economic system. Tesla is attempting to act like a not-Swedish company in Sweden and is reaping what they've sown.

You say that "laws dictate"--sure, and the Swedish system delegates the particulars to the employer/union interaction much as, for example, the United States delegates to the regulatory regime. Unions can agree to pretty wide-ranging outcomes in Sweden. They, collectively, are refusing to do that.

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

#282
post #273
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The union doesn't force anyone, it's a collective action, the workers are the union, they've decided to not deliver to Tesla because Tesla is infringing on the most fundamental labour right in Sweden. Stop thinking about Nordic unions as a boogeyman, a mafia, or whatever other "oppressive" figure you want to make them out to be, the way unions work here is different than what you are probably used to. It's a cornerst…

>The union doesn't force anyone, it's a collective action, the workers are the union, they've decided to not deliver to Tesla because Tesla is infringing on the most fundamental labour right in Sweden. That's a strange way of putting it. Is the us federal government notification not "forcing" anyone to pay taxes, or not smoke weed, because the us is a democracy and therefore it's "collective action"?

What? I really do not understand the analogy, would be good to expand on how it relates to the current situation.

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

#283
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Exactly the same in the Danish subreddits. I'd assume the same in Norwegian and Finnish subs too. The feeling of camaraderie is nearly unanimous.

Unanimous support in the Norwegian subreddit as well.

I don't think Tesla's will be as popular in the future. They've greatly damaged their brand through these actions already.

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

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But sympathy strikes goes further and now affects superchargers, offices and even Swedish suppliers to the gigafactory. Lucky for Musk that he picked a Finnish supplier for the Cybertruck steel…

A union in Finland was already asked to support by Swedish unions and they already agreed. But only regarding stuff exported to Sweden. Tesla in Finland already follows the agreements agreed by the unions and the employer representative in the so-called kolmikanta. Because it's the law. Sweden has more loose laws there. Finland had a devastating and bloody civil war with whites and reds and a somewhat different histo…

Yeah - and i bet you that small concession is going to be a huge loss for hydro. I'm sure elon eithier is spinning up his own cyber truck steel line or using a different supplier by the end of the year in spite.

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

#285
post #179

Tesla should crush pesky swedish unions, no matter what. Buy ports, buy ships, buy trucks, buy electricians, buy a brand new postal service etc. The $26 B cash on hand should be used somewhere, instead of usual executive package and share buyback. Edit:- If my comment is not as per HN guidelines, I am willing to delete it.

So the first thing I think of here is Toys'R'Us when they tried to break their strikes. Banks stopped processing payments. So if they did try this, they would be unable to pay for any of those things! Plus most employees like their unions. They offer a lot of perks beyond what companies offer. So they'd probably not find any staff.

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

#286
post #123

> A Swedish court said on Thursday that PostNord did not, for the time being, need to deliver licence plates to the electric carmaker that were being blocked by the postal service’s workers, in the latest twist in a battle over collective bargaining agreements. How exactly is this done? Do they refuse to accept the license plates when the Swedish Transport Agency wants to drop them off? Or do they accept the plates,…

They just don't deliver the license plates. Tesla can go and pick them off at the postal center themselves.

I imagine they're just thrown into the corner of a warehouse somewhere.

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

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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'…

The point is that it's not Tesla's employees that are behind it. It is people working elsewhere -- or rather, the management of the labour unions that organize those other people.

> The point is that it's not Tesla's employees that are behind it.

How do you know this though? Union membership is anonymous. You have no reason to tell your employer you're a member. If there's a strike all employees can legally take part to help stop identification of members. Every member of Tesla could be a union member saying they aren't to avoid pushback by Tesla. That's just as likely as none of them being a member.

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

#288

With the kind of humor that Elon Musk has he should love the Swedish unions, as the Swedish name for union is “fack”, which is pronounced “fuck” Sounds like something he would like, in addition to his S,3,X,Y range of cars

So, the Swedish word for union is fackförening, where fack is pronounced exactly as English fuck. There’s a story that Stig Malm, at the time the head of the biggest Swedish union, LO, went to Brussels and orated lengthily about the Swedish fack unions.

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

#289

Refusing to deliver to Tesla is one thing, but when you get to the point of refusing to surrender their property when their representatives show up at the location where it is stored, that's just plain theft.

I imagine the post office told them something along the lines of:

'Go fuck yourself'

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

#290
post #178

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.

This is pure propaganda and can be ignored outright.

IF Metall are driving these negotiations on behalf of their members working at Tesla - had they not shown any interest, IF Metall would not have bothered.

Post reply on HN