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

reuters.com

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

#211

Post by VoxPelli »

onethought wrote: post #173

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?

Klarna also had a breakdown with unions but ultimately signed an agreement in the last minute before strikes started to happen.

What makes Tesla different from Klarna and Spotify is that Tesla has a global policy to never sign. So Tesla’s Swedish company is prohibited by Tesla to do any kind of negotiation, and that escalates things drastically.

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

#212

Post by randall »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #172
0xDEF wrote: 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…

> 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 people. In both cases the rights of individuals seem like they’re subject to the whims of other groups of people, instead of “liberty and justice for all.”

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

#213

Post by andsoitis »

emptysongglass wrote: post #185
pydry wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. This is about our entire model under threat. And it will be Tesla's Afghanistan. Membership in unions is the norm in Sweden. People want to be in unions. I want to be in my union. We feel good about them and employers (who respect our model) feel good about it too because it is cooperative. For many reasons, the US has a model which is not cooperative but built on bitter enmity. This is repeated throughout t…

>> don't go down well in Europe.

> Exactly. This is about our entire model under threat. And it will be Tesla's Afghanistan. Membership in unions is the norm in Sweden.

Unionization rates differ significantly across European countries. While the unionization rate in the Sweden is quite high at 65.2% (as of 2019), it is much lower in Germany at 16.3% and even lower in France at 8.9%.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1356735/labor-unions-mos...

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

#214

Post by noirscape »

felipemnoa wrote: post #191
peterpost2 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I really don't think this is tricky at all. If Musk is serious about the fight then I'm sure that for the right price they can find other couriers to meet their needs. Even if they had to pay an order of magnitude more money. It would only be for the short term.

This isn't possible for Tesla because PostNord currently has the exclusive right to deliver license plates - they literally can't hire any other courier company to do it.

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

#215

Post by cornholio »

pard68 wrote: post #166

So a shipping company is refusing to deliver packages to a specific company? This sounds like a shakedown.

What is striking here is that the Government offices all use the services of PostNord. So Tesla has no choice over using PostNord, they are mandated by law to do so to receive their plates, yet a private interest group can arbitrarily deny them access to public services.

There is a lot of verbiage about how Tesla is shooting itself in the foot for peanuts, and I guess it's a legitimate position to hold.

The far larger elephant in the room however, is a very public example of how a concerted labor action in Sweden can essentially bankrupt any international company setting offices in the country - by denying them access to public services they already paid for in taxes. This is bound to have profound chilling effects on any investor looking at Sweden as anything other than a consumer market into which to dump products.

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

#216

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

andsoitis wrote: post #201
cardy31 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the various unions view Tesla’s actions as a threat to how labour works in Sweden. There apparently isn’t even a minimum wage in the country as everything is governed by these collective agreements. So if they let Tesla come in and not play by the rules it could open the floodgates for other large corporations to come in and do the same, slowly eroding the system.

> So if they let Tesla come in and not play by the rules Tesla complies with the country's laws, no?

The other companies and unions are also complying with the country's laws, and they're exercising their choice to not do business with a company that is choosing to operate in a way that contradicts the existing social structures.

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

#217

Post by Gravityloss »

VoxPelli wrote: post #196
piva00 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is only about repair shops. Which makes it all more stupid from Tesla.

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 history than Sweden regarding the labor market.

IIRC some Finnish union people have tried to export labor union concepts to say China but I've heard that labor activists are persecuted there.

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

#218

Post by piva00 »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #210
SwedishExpat wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doesn't the union have a vote to decide these things This was decided by Seko's union board, the union that covers most PostNord and other delivery companies employees > PostNord says it can't force it's workers to do something It is illegal to prevent a strike, yes > So if it's not the workers decision it's PostNord's decision and that is very different It's the unions decision https://www-seko-se.translate.goog/p…

So what you're saying is the union is forcing them to not deliver to Tesla?

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 cornerstone on how the labour market functions in the Nordics...

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

#219

Post by peterfirefly »

dybber wrote: post #189
jillesvangurp wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> One little problem though, Sweden doesn't actually have a socialist government currently. Neither does Denmark. And Norway has a minority socialist government coalition. So, socialists are fresh out of power all over Scandinavia and struggling a bit. The Danish prime minister is from the social democrat party.

It's a coalition government. The Foreign Minister is from a freshly minted party that he basically owns -- which he created after losing a power struggle back when he was head of the party Venstre. The third party in the coalition is Venstre.

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

#220

Post by capableweb »

andsoitis wrote: post #201
cardy31 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the various unions view Tesla’s actions as a threat to how labour works in Sweden. There apparently isn’t even a minimum wage in the country as everything is governed by these collective agreements. So if they let Tesla come in and not play by the rules it could open the floodgates for other large corporations to come in and do the same, slowly eroding the system.

> So if they let Tesla come in and not play by the rules Tesla complies with the country's laws, no?

There are laws and there are norms. In Sweden, both are equally important and you'll get left out if you break either. It's sad in a lot of cases, as it removes some individuality, but it's how the country been operating for a long time.

Expecting to run a company against the norms in a culture that so heavily leans on norms is bound to create conflict, which is what we're seeing here.

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