Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 409 posts

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

#311

Post by avgcorrection »

SCM-Enthusiast wrote: post #295
danielovichdk wrote: post #181

Fuck these companies that think they can break the unions our former generations built for the purpose of being treated fair. 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…

Yeah... As an American, i don't get it. Why is the Swedish union forcing the workers at Tesla to sign an arb agreement when they get paid much more than the average union worker in the country? Does strong union actually result in better pay? If you compare the average software salary from the US to Sweden, it seems like it's doing the opposite, no?

You live on the other side of a world ocean (at least). Not everything has to make sense to you or be expressed in Silicon Valley terms.

Try to make an effort yourself.

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

#312

Post by avgcorrection »

randall wrote: post #202
danielovichdk wrote: post #181

Fuck these companies that think they can break the unions our former generations built for the purpose of being treated fair. 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…

Can you tell me more about the safety net thing? As an American I actually don’t understand that point. Are you saying culturally your family wouldn’t feel obligated to be a safety net if another family member was struggling? And that the unions defacto provide that sort of guarantee?

My name is Walter Hartwell White and I don’t understand these words either.

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

#313

Post by surgical_fire »

pard68 wrote: post #280
VoxPelli wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s easy to avoid actions like this: Sign a collective bargain with a union and all unions are bound to leave you at peace for that agreements duration. So far two international companies have refused this: Toys R Us decades ago, eventually they had to give in. Tesla now.

Why? They pay taxes. They pay shipping. Why do you also have to pay extortion fees?

> extortion fees

They have options of course:

1) Stop doing business in Sweden.

2) Sign a collective labor agreement that ensure worker's rights just as every other company that operates in Sweden.

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

#314

Post by gruez »

SwedishExpat wrote: post #292
gruez wrote: post #273

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. 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"?

Can you realistically have a vote to stop paying taxes or to smoke weed? Because Seko could have a vote to deliver to Tesla if they wanted, but ultimately the Unions are on the employees side so we're okay with their decisions.

> Can you realistically have a vote to stop paying taxes or to smoke weed?

This is inevitably going to turn into a quibble about whether representation and/or the electoral college constitutes "true" democracy, so I'm going to head that off by amending my previous comment to be at the state level (rather than the federal level). There's several states that had ballot measures on tax increases and/or marijuana legalization, and failed, for example:

https://ballotpedia.org/Arizona_Marijuana_Legalization,_Prop...

https://ballotpedia.org/Missouri_Proposition_C,_Medical_Mari...

https://ballotpedia.org/Nevada_Marijuana_Initiative,_Questio...

In those cases it would be strange to characterize the dissenters as not being "forced" into anything, even if it was a collective decision.

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

#315

Post by surgical_fire »

gafage wrote: post #3

Tesla should leave the market and let Swedes buy automobiles from their own brands... like... err... Saab which no longer exists... or Volvo, which now belongs to a Chinese conglomerate...

Eh, plenty of decent cars from other brands (most better than Tesla).

None of the other brands have issues to operate in Sweden.

I think the Swedish will be fine.

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

#316

Post by AYBABTME »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #227
AYBABTME wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It creates two castes in the company, management and unionized workers. Aristocrats and the peasant workers.

Without unions you already have the management and worker castes. Source: I've worked in non-union jobs for 20+ years. What unions do is provide an opportunity for the workers to collectively apply power. Of course, there's a lot of nuance in the implementations, and of course people can be corrupt as hell. But in no way, shape, or form did unions create the management/worker caste split. Holy hell that requires some…

I'm just presenting the argument, which can be made. Reasonable people will disagree.

In my particular experience, I always hated working unionized jobs I had and much preferred being a free actor with minimal fuss. I don't feel like "management versus workers" is a real divide in most non-union jobs I had (in which case you could say that systematizing the difference materializes the difference). But I also think it would likely be very different in different companies and industries. Unions aren't for me and I think they've had their use in the past, and I'm ambivalent as to their necessity in modern times (since governments now enforce a good set of minimums).

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

#317

Post by Geee »

capableweb wrote: post #184
Geee wrote: 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.

> 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'…

It's a huge organization and has definitely a lot of people employed as "career-unionists". Who do you think the membership fee goes? The membership fee is typically 1.5% of employee salary. Just with a quick calculation 1.5% of 300,000 members x $50,000 average salary results into $225,000,000.

Despite what HN seems to think, these unions are bullies and completely unnecessary middle men.

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

#318

Post by Hikikomori »

SCM-Enthusiast wrote: post #295
danielovichdk wrote: post #181

Fuck these companies that think they can break the unions our former generations built for the purpose of being treated fair. 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…

Yeah... As an American, i don't get it. Why is the Swedish union forcing the workers at Tesla to sign an arb agreement when they get paid much more than the average union worker in the country? Does strong union actually result in better pay? If you compare the average software salary from the US to Sweden, it seems like it's doing the opposite, no?

There's other things just as important as salary.

https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/teslamedarbetare-ingen-har-koll-pa...

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

#319

Post by aforwardslash »

pard68 wrote: post #280
VoxPelli wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s easy to avoid actions like this: Sign a collective bargain with a union and all unions are bound to leave you at peace for that agreements duration. So far two international companies have refused this: Toys R Us decades ago, eventually they had to give in. Tesla now.

Why? They pay taxes. They pay shipping. Why do you also have to pay extortion fees?

Just because you pay something, it does not give you free reign to go against the local customs and traditions. Go to a cinema, buy a ticket and be loud and obnoxious; see how fast they throw you out, regardless of having paid. Its not illegal to be obnoxious, but it is frowned upon.

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

#320

Post by gruez »

piva00 wrote: post #282
gruez wrote: post #273

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. 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.

If you support taxes (or striking) and the government (or the union) forces you to pay taxes (or strike), you're not being "forced". So far so good. But what if you don't support taxes (or striking)? You might think taxes are a good thing and are necessary for a functioning society, but it's still pretty clear that for someone that doesn't want to pay taxes, they're forced to pay taxes.
Post reply on HN