Tesla may have picked an unwinnable fight with Sweden’s powerful unions — The first ever strikes and a solidarity blockade against the US carmaker could force it to rethink its entire anti-union model::The first ever strikes and a solidarity blockade against the US carmaker could force it to rethink its entire anti-union model, says journalist Martin Gelin
For you outside Sweden: There is no such thing as minimum wage. It’s perfectly legal to hire someone for 0 SEK / month.
The whole idea is that a collective agreement should be negotiated and agreed upon by the employers and employees in each business area (like telecom, healthcare, factory workers, electricians etc etc). The idea is that the employers and employees, not the politicians, knows more about what their market/business area requires and is able to deliver in the form of minimum wage, yearly salary increase, vacation and overtime (among other things) .
Here’s the thing that often is different in discusions like the one about Tesla refusing to sign a collective agreement: Collective agreements only limits the minimums. So the only reason to refuse to sign is if you intend to keep some thing below the levels that are the norm in your business area.
Essentially, you’re trying to get unfair competitive advantage.
I am always impressed by the European laws, they are way ahead of anything. Honestly congrats to Sweden
That’s broadly not how the labour market works in Europe - but it does in Scandinavia, where the unions “won” (and long may they reign). Almost EVERYONE is in a union, most unions have negotiated a seat on the board of the business and as a result, the union-employer relationship is SO different to elsewhere. This includes the need for state interventions like minimum wage or work time maximums (except the EU directives on work time maximums, which the Nordic countries felt very uncomfortable adopting as it felt like an unnecessary intervention).
Consequently, the unions have “grown up” and don’t reflexively reject any labour market adjustments required. They act as a mature partner, even through redundancies, working to minimise and help people move on.
Partnered with the Scandinavian “flexicurity” model, where it’s very easy to hire and very easy to fire people, but the state has strong support for unemployed people in between jobs (education, financial support), the labour market is probably the most efficient in the world.
Social democracy, yo. It works.
I agree except for my point in life and with all factors consider, I need it to be hard to fire lol
If your flat, food, and education gets paid for by the government while you are in between jobs, why be afraid of being fired?
Because i live in NA and its expressly NOT like that and also we dont have any free shit to the extent thats a viable option to be able to just suddenly decide to go do.
Edit: my flat/food/education are nowhere near paid for, our welfare state sucks and and thats why I think Nordic countries are superior and we’re American bootlicking fucking morons.
ah sorry, I thought we are talking about a hypothetical where you are living in a system similar to the nordic ones.
Kudos to them for figuring this out. One worker might be convinced that they should only get a small amount of pay for their working hours. But gather a large group of workers in the same field of work, and the group is harder to manipulate into a low pay situation. Nice.
It’s similar across Europe it sets a bare minimum. It doesn’t work as effectively across Europe though.
In Italy for example there is a set of National contracts depending on the type sector. But there’s plenty of ways to bend the rules.
There are plenty of water to bend the rules in Sweden too. Sweden always sounds like the utopia when the press describes things like this.
Journalists also wants food on the table and roof over their heads I guess…
I think Musk is caught up so deeply in his far right delusions by now that rethinking anything is just not on the cards.
The further you go, the harder it becomes to question why something is wrong, because if this small thing is wrong, is that other thing also wrong, and then this other thing, and before you realize it, it’s all been wrong, and that’s too hard to even begin to explore.
Tesla is taking out wanted ads to hire scabs.
Disgusting company, adapt to our model or go home.
Keep pressure on both sides- shame the people that still buy them. Make those scabs useless
May the might of the Swedish unions always be in their favour.
Meanwhile in the USA I believe the supreme Court recently ruled that unions are responsible for repaying companies for striking…
If memory serves, I don’t think there were any actual damages in this case. They left a truck with a bunch of wet concrete and told someone, and the company had to haul ass so the concrete wouldn’t solidify and break the truck. They did just that. It’s ridiculous to ask for damages for that.
If they had left a fire or volatile process unattended, that would be different. Or if they created a gigantic mess for their coworkers to handle. But this isn’t either of those.
get fucked capitalist scum
That’s why you don’t fuck with vikings.
Or just the Norse in general, reminder that it was Norsemen who guarded the Roman Emperor in Constantinople.
Viking was not a nationality, it was a job, so your point is in some ways more accurate.
That and what we generally think of as “Vikings” were actually Danes, which is an insult to Swedes.
Hence why I specified Norse, Vikings could just as easily be called pirates or reevers.
But then the She Vikings, ooofff
Thank you Europe for help fix our companies.
Even if Tesla capitulates here, they won’t change their domestic policies. This will only benefit those who are actually willing to stand up for themselves.
they also forced Apple to finally adopt usb-c!
Fight on Swedish Unions! Let that Son-of-a-Musk get a black eye for trying his BS over here!
I fucking love this story.
“capitalists have picked an unwinnable fight with unions”
Tale as old as unions.
What’s the Swedish version of the Hatfields and the McCoys?
It could, but it won’t.
Despite the rightwing government currently in power in Sweden, calls to change the employment model are rare.
I thought rightwing means conservative, do they use the word to mean pro-capitalist now?
That is what “right wing” means in this part of the world. Liberals and conservatives usually work together when they can form the government.
Liberals here are mostly economic liberals with little care for other freedoms
Why not just shorthand it and say rich assholes. Unless someone enlightens me further, the only rich person who wasn’t an asshole in terms of his moral compass and aggregate decision making is John F. Kennedy…smh
Kennedy did some good things, but he was a major asshole in plenty of ways. The Bay of Pigs invasion was both stupid and a disaster, he escalated things in Vietnam, he put a huge stall on civil rights while claiming to be championing it to the point that Lyndon fucking Johnson had to do something about it, and then there were those 13 days in October, 1962 where he almost helped end the world. And that all started when he decided to deploy nuclear weapons in Turkey.
So I wouldn’t even include him in the ‘not an asshole’ category.
As it always been. The democrats are right-wing in Europe and the republicans are more on the right.
In Europe, you can’t dissociate the economic agenda of a party. The right is pro-capitalist and neoliberalism. The center too. The left is different. They are for a regulate capitalism and the more on the left, the heaviest on regulations.
I thought rightwing means conservative
Well, Sweeden was not a part of USSR, but it is possible for left party to be kinda conservative one.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
What started as a minor local disagreement has grown to the point that it could have global implications, with potential ripple effects for labour movements and auto workers across Europe and the US.
The financial tech company Klarna recently had to give way after several years of attempting to resist collective bargaining agreements, and settled with employees in a victory for white-collar unions.
In the US, Tesla has been involved in a number of scandals over the past decade, with allegations relating to workplace safety, racial discrimination, sexual harassment, labour violations and unlawful practices to curb unionisation efforts.
When United Auto Workers organised strikes at the “big three” car companies – General Motors, Ford and Stellantis – in Michigan this summer, three-quarters of Americans said they supported it.
(Donald Trump also showed up in Michigan, but gave a speech at a non-unionised car parts maker, which was equally characteristic of his signature working-class cosplay without policy substance.)
For Musk, there are reasons to worry that his business model could be challenged, as the fight in Sweden reverberates with the strengthening power of labour organisers across American unions.
The original article contains 959 words, the summary contains 187 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
