Tesla sues Swedish government after worker rebellion cripples car biz Tesla is suing the Swedish government to force it to take action against widespread strikes that have crippled the electric car maker's operations. Tesla sued the Swedish Transport Agency Monday after employees affiliated with Sweden's public service union, Fackförbundent ST, stopped delivering mail, including license plates …
Yet another stupid lawsuit from Musk who seems to believe that all should bow down before his greatness.
“One hundred idiots make idiotic plans and carry them out. All but one justly fail. The hundredth idiot, whose plan succeeded through pure luck, is immediately convinced he’s a genius.”― Iain M. Banks
I had a boss who was utterly useless; people management, project management, technical competency, customer relations.... you name it and he could bugger it up. In the dim and distant past he'd managed a stunning bid win which did wonders for the company and won him promotion after promotion based on that one success. He never stopped referring to the bid and we ended up playing "When I managed the xxx bid..." bingo in meetings.
> Michelangelo was an artist, the pope who hired him obviously couldnt paint or sculpt...
Great, you have moved on from "CEOs are useless" to "managers are useless" to "anyone who hires someone else" is useless!
The whole bleedin' point of working as a painter or sculptor is to be hired by someone who isn't as good as you at painting or sculpting! You don't want Michelangelo to have ever been given a job?
Who is next? Maybe you want brickies to be left unemployed? No ceilings, nothing for Michelangelo to do anyway!
AC: Great, you have moved on from "CEOs are useless" to "managers are useless" to "anyone who hires someone else" is useless!
cow: So you agree with me ?
What part of my statement is untrue ?
AC: The whole bleedin' point of working as a painter or sculptor is to be hired by someone who isn't as good as you at painting or sculpting!
cow: You are missing the BIG point of this. In most companies my observation is extremely valid. Management dont have the skills in the business their only contribution is what exactly ?
You havent actually disagreed with my statement that management are nothing more than an expensive tax, who contribute the least and demands the most compensation comapred to the rest who contribute to the core business.
Goal posts ON THE MOOOOOOOOOVE!
> AC: Great, you have moved on from "CEOs are useless" to "managers are useless" to "anyone who hires someone else" is useless!
> cow: So you agree with me ?
No, how on earth could you reach that conclusion from the sentence you quoted? Language skills failing you? Simply quoting and re-stating what you said is not a way of agreeing of you!
(Goal posts accelerating)
> You havent actually disagreed with my statement that management...
No, because I was explicitly responding to your statement implying that *anyone* who hires anyone else is useless. You don't get to try and walk away from *that* claim by deciding that it is part of some kind of "big picture" or commentary about management - no, it wasn't, it was just you pushing your personal tirade against management well past the breaking point and then being called out on it.
Well, I really *hope* that it was pushed too far, because otherwise you really do believe that Person A hiring Person B to do a job, any job, is abhorrent - in which case I am wondering how well you are getting on pushing all the data from your keyboard onto all our displays by hand!
(Goal posts closing on escape velocity)
No you are the one who is moving the goal posts.
You just dont appreciate the difference between the worker who gets things done and the parasite who talks but cant do.
~
AC: No, how on earth could you reach that conclusion from the sentence you quoted? Language skills failing you? Simply quoting and re-stating what you said is not a way of agreeing of you!
cow: Your claims are completely circular.
You claim you are right, because you say you are right. You dont even attempt to disprove the very points i share.
~
AC: No, because I was explicitly responding to your statement implying that *anyone* who hires anyone else is useless.
cow:
Let me ask this with a different appraoach.
How many managers types are actually able to do the tasks of those they manage ?
AC:
You don't get to try and walk away from *that* claim by deciding that it is part of some kind of "big picture" or commentary about management - no, it wasn't, it was just you pushing your personal tirade against management well past the breaking point and then being called out on it.
cow:
Here we go, ou attack me because i make a statement and yet in all your replies you have yet to actually addres the inbalance of taking credit by managers for the work done by those they "manage".
I made a statement previously about the pope who hired Michaelangelo...
Now let me ask you another q about this statement... lets pretend Mike left Italy and went to China, could the pope have "found" someone else to produce half of Mikes genius. No he wouldnt, ...
Please show me other examples from later centuries where others have reproduced half of what Mike did ... please show me another vatican etc.
As I get older I see that the Peter Principle applies more and more, the closer you look at any organisation.
I have yet to find an exception - self included (the Principle actually addresses what happens when a worker is self-aware enough to recognise the Principle in action and tries to mitigate its effects; tl;dr - the worker can't mitigate the effects!)
Beer becasue it beats working at the level of my incompetence....
> Michelangelo was an artist, the pope who hired him obviously couldnt paint or sculpt...
Fascinatingly - Michaelangelo signed every one of the letters (progress reports, etc) he sent to the pope as "Michaelangelo, sculptor" (source: audio guide in the Cistine Chapel) as he didn't really want to do the painting! Carving things was his preferred work.
I wonder if that actually makes the management in this case smart? - they got amazing work that might not have been done had the worker just been left to his own preferences....
> When you are as good Mike, you can get jobs anywhere. There was only one Mike, rich men were plenty back in those days
But, but - earlier you were incensed that "Mike" was getting hired by one of those rich men (namely, the Pope).
If we follow your rules, none of those rich people would give Mike a job!
What part of Mikes art is Mike Responsible for ?
Are you really going to tell me the Pope had the skill of any kind to repeat any of those pieces ?
What is smart about taking credit for work others have done, that you couldnt do ?
I can think of many other words, but smart is not one. There is no honour in using your position to pay yourself more than others who actually did the work.
> What part of Mikes art is Mike Responsible for ?
Um, all of it, That is why we say "This was done by Michelangelo".[1] Nobody ever claims that any Pope grabbed a brush and started daubing (unless you have been reading some VERY strange "history" books).
> Are you really going to tell me the Pope had the skill of any kind to repeat any of those pieces ?
No, which is precisely *why* the Pope arranged to have "Mike" hired - because he was well aware that that was the way to get a good result. Even if he wanted to "repeat" any of those pieces, he'd arrange to get someone in who had the appropriate skills to finish the job.
As for the rest of this comment - you seem to have a very strange idea of what the Pope's role actually is (Hint: the Pope is not expected to be slapping paint up the nearest wall, nor is hiring anyone else to paint anything considered a major part of his day to day workload).
Perhaps if you want to try to make an actual point, you could perhaps think about your examples a little more, before typing them in?[2]
[1] Actually, Michelangelo had a load of people helping him - as well as being an artist, he was *also* one of those Management people you so despise.
[2] On second thoughts, no, don't try to make any clear and salient points, that would take away all the laughs we get from your crudely considered comments.
AC:
[1] Actually, Michelangelo had a load of people helping him - as well as being an artist, he was *also* one of those Management people you so despise.
cow:
Here we go...
Now tell me what did mikes assistants actually do ?
Heres a clue, they didnt sculpt David, they did far simpler tasks, like preparing the frescos, washing brushes etc.
How about you actually provide details of your statement instead of making broad statements that are dishonest.
https://www.deseret.com/1988/5/15/18766067/researcher-says-michelangelo-did-sistine-standing-up-and-with-help
> > In Italy, he spent hours compiling scattered information on the Sistine project, which took from 1508 to 1512, and came up with a list of 13 assistants who helped Michelangelo.
An architect friend helped design the overhead scaffolding and a carpenter named Piero Basso built it, Wallace said. Michelangelo also hired assistants to grind colors, mix paints, trim and clean brushes, and take care of other mundane tasks, and he recruited other artists and instructed them in the technique of fresco painting.
Some historians have believed Michelangelo had help in the project, but workers cleaning the ceiling in the 1930s were the first to notice the tell-tale details, Wallace said. He thinks his book will be the first to provide an overall picture of Michelangelo's assistants in the Sistine Chapel.
"Examination of the ceiling from the scaffold clearly reveals the presence of helping hands, especially painting in the architecture, decoration and many of the secondary figures," Wallace said.
"Much of the architecture, for example, was a reptititous task that required competence but no imagination, and the presence of more than one hand is particularly evident when viewed at close range," he said.
...
now what does that text actually tell us ?
Does that actually sound like the assistants work was on the same level as Mike ?
If its all a questin of management, then Mikes achivements of art should have been repeated many many times all over the world. So please tell me where are the Vatican equivalents today in the Americas ?
Do you want to spend your work time coordinating things on large projects, or just doing your techie job?
Without a good manager, you'll be getting: ring-ring-ring. "Hi, this is Marla from EH&S. Have the computer keyboards you propose to use been approved by our department?" Ring-ring-ring. "This is Brian in Intake. We've been moved into the new building, but who is going to re-paint our computers, and when will this happen? We want our computers to match our soothing, blue color scheme, but the computers here are painted all black." Ring-ring-ring. "Our electron microscopes were moved into the new building and hooked up, but now they're not working." Ring-ring-ring. "Hi, this is Security. The external cameras on the new building quit working. Please fix them." Ring-ring-ring. "Oh, thank God you're there! This is Charlie, I was working on installing a PC in one of the tiny rooms, the staffer left, and now I'm Magna-Locked inside. I don't remember the room number, and my paperwork is on the counter outside, but it's in the new building, in one of the tiny rooms with all-foam furniture and a camera mounted in an armored box on the ceiling in the corner of the room. Please come let me out." Ring-ring-ring ...
I wish I could upvote this more than once.
I'm (now) a manager but used to be an at-the-coal-face techie.
My job as a manager is to keep a-holes away from my staff and get them resources (budget, equipment, staff) to do their job. I have to understand IT systems to be able to make informed decisions about priorities, but it's not my job to dive in and fix them.
AN e-mouse ?
> My job as a manager is to keep a-holes away from my staff and get them resources (budget, equipment, staff) to do their job
cow:
Let me guess those aresholes are other managers ?
So its managers wasting time because of other aresholes sorry manager and you think managers are actually cntributing the company ?
Spoken like a true manager, lots of words that doesnt actually mean anything or convey any meaning on any matter. Your reply is completely pointless and thats my point managers dont have any actual technical or artistic input on any matter they manager.
Your comment has not in anyway addrssed any point i made in any way except try and be smart.
A long time ago I managed a team of about a dozen RF engineers. For this priviledge I got an office, my own printer, a car, no overtime pay and I was paid less then two of the engineers who worked for me (and justifiably so). One of them really wanted a promotion to a management grade for reasons that he didn't really seem to be able to explain - although I think it was because he just liked the idea of being "in charge" and he never missed an opportunity to pester me for more "management" responsibility. I went on holiday for two weeks, so I put him in charge. I briefed him on his responsibilities and warned him about important stuff that might come up and who he had to talk to before doing anything, but he more or less had carte blanche to do my job in my absence.
When I got back he was thoroughly fed up of the job. He complained that he'd spent most of his time chasing test gear that was due for cal., and trying to prise it away from the engineers, hassling the engineers to do their timesheets, getting hassled by accounts for timesheets not done and answering their endless questions about overhead bookings and expense claims. He'd failed miserably in refereeing the booking system for the two RF CAD seats we had and there were some angry PMs waiting for me who were a bit more appreciative of my efforts after this.
After his fortnight of being in charge he lost all his "management" aspirations knuckled down to being a very good engineer and the last time I looked him up he was the top applications engineer for company that makes RF integrated circuits.
Im not going to doubt an engineer wouldnt want to do boring nagging activities, but lets get things into perspective about who actually has skills. Sitting on a phone, sending emails to nag other areshats is a considerable lower skill than being an engineer who actually does engineering.
Once upon a time I worked for a subsidiary of Ericsson. This was the good times, when groth in telecom was exponetial and there was always work, and money, the inter-departmetal fights were over picking the best thing to do out of many interesting areas of the business.
They had these all-hand, all staff in one room, meetings every three months or so. One of the recurring points was the "Who wants to be a manager?". People would raise their hands and Boss would go, "OK, you, you and you" and that was it. Next meeting the same process, because in the meantime a few of "the chosen ones" had asked to be transferred back to their old positions, with no repercussions or anything.
I liked that approach. You got to try the job, see if it fits, then hand it back if it doesn't.
Because some (mostly ) already well heeled individuals get lucky and become the super rich we hold them up as if they were somehow brilliant, rather than the statistical outliers that they really are.
We frequently see the respectful attentions of the world more strongly directed towards the rich and the great, than towards the wise and the virtuous.
Written by Adam Smith in Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
This is absolutely true.
It's like financial advisers, stock traders and bankers. Let's say there are 5000 in the country. Even if we assume it's just pure chance how they perform, 500 will be in the top 10% in a year. The next year, 50 of those 500 will be in the top 10% again. In the third year, 5 of those will be in the top 10% again. Now this is just statistics, it could be more, or less. But based on probability, there will be a few in the top 10% for these three years.
Now the industry lauds them as gods, and they probably believe it themselves. One year would be luck, but three years in a row cannot be luck, surely? They must be special and have special skills. Their employers hike their salaries, bestow obscene bonuses and give them even more assets to manage, and freedom to take even more risks. And so when the inevitable happens the following year, it goes from being a manageable decline to being a massive, economy-threatening catastrophe because they've bet the farm on someone continuing to keep rolling sixes.
The amazing thing is that banks and the financial industry, which absolutely should have the mathematical background to understand very simple chance, get caught out again and again and again. They legally have to put "past performance does not guarantee future success, your funds are at risk" but never take it on board themselves.
It seems that Tesla have been granted an interim judgment requiring the transport agency to allow Tesla to collect the licence plates themselves. Though I can't help feeling that might just backfire.
Of course Sweden is a country of laws, but when you are in court, you show respect as a guest of the government's authority.
When you disrespect the judge and the court room you are disrespecting the country and the laws that shape it.
Nobody is above the law, especially in court, nobody should even try and tell the judge what to do. Im sure the judge is a man or woman of honour and they should be allowed to take care of the court room as they see fit not under directions from a bully.
> allow Tesla to collect the licence plates themselves. Though I can't help feeling that might just backfire.
Like trying to figure where the plates are?
The postal workers took delivery but, you know, the old memory just ain't what it was, we're sure we just put them down for a moment. Never mind, you Tesla blokes look like bright lads, you'll find them. Dearie me, we never did get around to fixing the lighting circuits in there, did we. Careful now, that door tend to slam shut then it sticks something rotten - what, no, sorry, the chippies are out in sympathy, along with the sparks, but feel around, when you find a stuffed tiger you're getting warmer.
I can't help feeling that might just backfire.
Oh, It will. When a Swedish bureaucracy is pushed, a circle of monkeys will form, each pointing at the next one to be "doing something". Nothing will be moving, and nobody will be responsible because everyone are just following the rules. This configuration will stay up until man-baby Musk decides to do it the Swedish Way. Then everything suddenly runs like a clockwork and nobody understands what the problem was.
In this case: The transport agency will respond to the court that this is not the process that they have been instructed to follow (by law), probably adding that deviating for the sake of Tesla is discriminating against other manufacturers, concluding that if they have to do something different, the government has to issue new laws / instructions. The government will do its very best to stay the hell out if the thing. Unions are the core of the Swedish "system" and the "Swedish Public Management Tradition" is to leave the Civil Service alone to do their duties as they see them. It will eventually go to a higher court and then get thrown out.
Dinanziame: “It's impressive to see unions developing their full power. Sometimes you wish it would happen more often”
I've never known a union to do me any good. When there's a down-turn in the market there are lay-offs. But the union execs get to keep their jobs.
--
“The title contains some characters we can’t support” :(
"I've never known a union to do me any good. When there's a down-turn in the market there are lay-offs. But the union execs get to keep their jobs."
Yeah all those people who died fighting the same scumbag bosses like Musk over a hundred years ago did jack shit for you. The conditions they changed in the workforce at the time lead to you having that reasonably safe job you got so you can go on about how the morons in management of the union do nothing for you. Without them you would be working eighty hour weeks in conditions that can and would lead to your death, so bitch on about unions and how useless they are. Oh and as employee of the company you are subject to their staffing requirements and the union agreement governing it, as an employee of the union the management of it are subject to the staffing requirement of the union that employs them.
I thought that too when I had to pay dues from my wages.
Thing was, when I was a young 'un, I got time and a half for overtime, and double time on weekends.
My kids only get ordinary time, any time or day of the week, seem to often get short (paid) working days. Oh and the boss doesn't do beers on friday either.
Yup we were hard done by with all those union "execs" living high on the hog.
There is nothing good about unions having too much power; that was proven when they destroyed British industry post war by refusing to accept modernisation to use new technology that was labour saving. While this protected their members in the short term by keeping jobs in the long term it resulted in the near total destruction of British industry when exposed to competition when we joined the EEC/EU.
However there is also nothing good about total tossers having too much power; they hoard all of the wealth and power at the top by not paying either the workers, or the tax bills.
What is required is a fair balance, and the balance at the moment in the UK/US is clearly tilted too favourably towards business.
"when New Labour came to power they didn't get rid of any 'anti' union legislation"
New Labour = Old Tory. It was a broadly slightly right of centre government, which sadly left the tories nowhere to go but further and further to the right, leading us to where we are now.
Unions of course did not destroy British industry, it managed that all by itself - consider British Leyland, a perfect storm of hugely incompetent management and over zealous unions. Car designs were hamstrung by bean counters, resulting in such abominations as the Allegro, etc etc. Media, government and management exclusively blamed the unions (which to be fair really didn't help).
As a serious question, Why?
According to most things written about the subject Labour had first planned those bits of anti union legislation in the late 1960's. They looked at them again when they were being fucked over by the unions in the Winter of Discontent.
Once in power, the Conservatives, who under Thatcher's leadership had begun criticising the unions as too powerful, passed legislation, similar to that proposed in a Labour white paper a decade earlier, that banned many practices, such as secondary picketing, that had magnified the effects of the strikes.
So the proposals were actually reasonably sensible Labour proposals in the first place, except that Labour couldn't pass them because of union influence on their party.
@Peter2
You will find the big problem was the lack of decent communications & little attempt at collective bargaining involved - when the employers took the approach that the workers were to be treated as if they were shit on a shoe sole, then unsurprisingly that ended up with a fractious "us and them" situation that was not conducive to good behaviour / decision making on either side of the divide.
There will always be some tensions between employers and "shop floor" workers, but steps can be taken to reduce the tensions e.g. management liaising with works councils* (these have proven very successful in some countries e.g. Germany, also have the advantage of typically improving communications with shop floor and increasing productivity)
* In many countries that have a form of works council the members of the works council do not have to be union members & can happily have works councils in a non unionized environment. Works council represents shop floor workers but is not a trade union entity (though in unionized establishments obviously may well be strong links to the union(s) involved)
50 years ago I worked for a company that had good industrial relations. It was completely unionised, but the management worked with the unions for the benefit of all employees.
The main benefits were -
profit sharing
Sick pay decided by managers/shopfloor committee (NEVER any them / us nonsense)
Extra days off if no sickness in a year
Suggestion scheme with BIG payout. £10k one year and a car !!
Everyone worked for their mutual benefit.
British industry was primarily destroyed by bean counters. Sure, the unions probably didn't help. But other countries in Europe that had strong unions such as Germany seemed to keep a successful manufacturing sector.
I worked in Germany for a year in the 90s, for an engineering company (I am a mechanical engineer by degree, but drifted into software development) and the contrast with the UK was quite notable. In the UK, company management tended to be people in suits with voices getting posher the closer to the top you got. Very often they graduated in marketing or business, because of course engineers should stay in grubby workshops doing real work, not making management decisions. In germany, engineering companies were run by engineers.
While the UK car industry had accountants choosing components and making design and investment decisions based on £££, most german companies had more interest in the engineering. Working first hand in germany, I could see that the guys running the company (who were graduate engineers) did things properly because "this is the way things should be done, and we're competing on quality, not price".
Various foreign car companies seemed to have no problem being quite successful in the UK (at least prior to brexit), which was largely down to the way they were managed, not the unions or the workers.
I've seen some statements that claim 90% of Tesla employees in Sweden do NOT want to organize. I'd say that's a slam dunk for Tesla to not try to prevent any votes or other organizing activities. The problem as it's described seems to be more about the obstruction by Tesla than anything else. Is there another take? What am I missing? I know Elon is a rabid anti-unionist, but having a group of employees vote down joining a union sounds like a win for his views. Maybe he needs to post a Xit calling all of the union bosses pedo's.
Yep, 'Zit' is a good analogy to the effluence. An 'X' is also often pronounced as 'cks' as in axe and fax. So 'Xit' could also translate to cksit, which sounds close to a four letter word also describing something that could ooze ouf the platform previously known as twitter. I'll probably use yours when in polite company; thanks for the tip!
> Unions taking action in solidarity is unelected people (union bosses) governing the country.
Union bosses are elected by the membership of the union.
Just like the 'boss' of a political party (e.g. the house and senate leaders/minority leaders, PMs, etc.) are elected by the members of their party and not the general public.
You should read at least a little about unions before you embarrass yourself like that. It's not like a company. The leaders are voted in and out by the membership. You know, like a democracy. Only it is every one or two years, not twice a decade. And the union leadership can't just decide to have a different leader without asking the membership, unlike the UK PM hot seat.
If it really was 90% he would have let them vote, and excitedly tweet about his "win" the moment the results were announced.
The fact he's fighting so hard shows that the 90% is complete fiction. Sweden is a very pro union country, that seems very unlikely to be the case. Even if the vote would be close, all this fighting he's doing is likely to push those who aren't looking to unionize to reconsider. They would have to ask themselves, what is he so afraid of that is causing him to fight so hard?
What seems to be happening here is that Tesla is defending a "principle" - that there should be no collective bargaining anywhere in its operations. It is reported that the local company withdrew from negotiations with IF Metall on that basis.
However, it's a really small number of people who are involved - originally around 120 who work at Tesla-owned repair shops. That's been extended to around 600, to include mechanics at third-party garages who will refuse to work on Tesla models. Also, port workers are refusing to offload Tesla cars and electricians are reportedly refusing to repair charging stations.
This does seem to be the kind of mess that you get yourself into when you're determined to stand on a dubious principle. It's also not great publicity at a time when Tesla's Model Y had just become the top-selling Swedish car.
Interestingly, other Swedish employers are also keen for Tesla to adopt the country's de facto labour model as they see refusal as a form of unfair competition. Around 90% of Sweden's employees are covered by collective bargaining. Ironically, it's perhaps one of the reasons Swedes can afford Teslas.
"Ironically, it's perhaps one of the reasons Swedes can afford Teslas."
Absolutely this!! Trickle-down theory is exactly what it says on the tin - there's people up, there's people down, money should be hosed on to those at the top, and the flow from up to down is a trickle. Not a flood, not a stream, just whatever can escape the water(money)tight dams that the high-ups erect to keep their billions. The result is a very high GDP per capita because the average is highly skewed, while the median is so far away from being able to afford to buy a Tesla that it's tragic.
You should see how bad it is it countries without strong unions then!
In the UK, those first few hundred workers would likely never have been able to get out on strike legally in the first place. And everything from there on would've been illegal.
So the first group would've been outsourced by now. Replacing 150 or so workers is literally everyday in the UK.
@Lars - Interesting links, but not unsurprising per se. You have:
- Tax havens / Offshore financial services
- Oil or resource-rich states
- Micro states (small population means that any small external input is amplified in the per capita values because of small population)
(or various combinations of the above 3)
In the first 2, a lot of the GDP values are either moving other people's money around or concentrated in the hands of a few people, so the actual standard of living of most of the population will not be as high as can be thought of from their position on the list (though still pretty high) eg Ireland, Luxembourg
The others are countries who, while they might have some elements from the above, also have strong industrial / manufacturing bases and relatively large populations, meaning that the high position on the list is more likely to be reflected in real standard of living of most of the population (unsurprisingly Switzerland, the US, and a bunch of Western European countries). If there was a surprise to me, it's how low Australia and Japan are, and how high Guyana is.
And pretty depressing to see that the top ones are more than 100X more than the bottom ones
The way the wealth is shared is also important. If you take out London's contribution (mostly banking) then the UK has a GDP on a par with Mississippi and Mississippi's GDP is growing faster than the UKs. One report I read said that the UK could better be described as a developing country with a few very wealthy people. 50 families in the UK between them are wealthier than the bottom 50% of the population by wealth.
A lot of this goes back to the Thatcher years. There was a real focus on the UK deindustrialising and becoming a service based economy. And pretty much the only way that makes serious money for the nation (i.e. exports) is with financial services.
Anything else is just, to use a phrase memorable at the time, "people holding doors open for each other".
So in the 21stC we earn our keep by providing a safe hiding place for oligarchs and crooked dictators/politicians to launder money. Most of which takes place in and around London.
One thing to remember is that unions aren't that often connected to some specific company and Tesla is not a big company in Sweden. I am not sure about what this is about among people working for Tesla.
Perhaps Musk is living in the age of Henry Ford equally keen to send gifts to the "Hitler" of today like Henry was.
"Even if the vote would be close, all this fighting he's doing is likely to push those who aren't looking to unionize to reconsider."
Exactly.
If the majority of the country's workers are represented by a union, Tesla would wind up as a pink monkey by fighting it.
"The fact he's fighting so hard shows that the 90% is complete fiction. "
That would be my guess and since I'm not in Sweden, it's very hard to gauge. I was mainly addressing why Elon would be fighting so hard against a vote if it was as that would be the crux of his problems, fighting against it.
Fortunately this is happening in Sweden, not the USA. There's no need for any votes or organising activities. Individuals are free to join the union, or not. You can't be prevented from joining a union by your employer strong-arming your colleagues into voting against unionisation.
Everyone is covered by the collective agreement (at sane companies that are part of one) regardless of whether they're a union member.
I can certainly understand why Tesla would be upset that there's this disruption in their ability to get cars to customers, but to try and make it seem like the union is targeting Tesla specifically is just more of the usual shite people have come to expect from anything involving Twitler. He's clearly not just already gone over the deep end, he's still in accelerating freefall and his Twitter-born insanity has spilled over into Tesla. His babysitters minders seem to be increasingly unable to rein him in.
> but to try and make it seem like the union is targeting Tesla specifically is just more of the usual shite people have come to expect from anything involving Twitler.
But "the union"[1] *is* explicitly targeting Tesla, that is sort of the whole point! And more power to them.
[1] which particular union you are referring to is a bit ambiguous, but from the one supporting the original group who are striking for better conditions, to all the ones acting in sympathy towards the first union, yes, they are all targeting Tesla.
But it is a union effectively making government policy. Suppose the US longshoreman decide they aren't unloading Volvos (officially cos of their Chinese owner and uighurs) or no Porsches (cos he was a Nazi)
No, of course the USA hasn't banned the import of European cars, it's just legitimate worker's rights.
Not really. Sweden decided a long time ago that if unions and their industry (etc) counterparts come to mutual agreements there will be a stable situation that benefited the nation as well as both the workers and employers. The workers would not want to harm the companies that employ them, and the bosses have to actually bargain with en entity that has teeth and can hurt them if they step over the line. If all this was ruled by laws then you would get the well known game of "who has the most politicians in their pockets?". Which tend to give the workers the short end of the stick.
So the main opponents are forces that really would want serfs rather than employees, but unfortunately can't do that any more.
In much of Northern Europe the governments prefer to keep out of collective bargaining negotiations. This means less politics and more leeway for unions and employers to find agreements that suit the situation. Consensus generally means higher productivity and fewer days lost to strikesWe had a couple of decades of government involvement and this didn't work very well: politicians often made bad laws to look good.
Don't forget that all tax returns are public so workers will know if they're earning more or less than their colleagues.
> But it is a union effectively making government policy.
What part of any of that is "government policy"?
> Suppose the US longshoreman decide they aren't unloading Volvos (officially cos of their Chinese owner and uighurs)
What of it? Workers withdrawing their labour in protest? How is that related to "making government policy"?
Can you explain the supposed connection at all?
Yep, this is the consequence of Musk/Tesla's actions rather than "I don't like them" or "they've got deep pockets". They're targeted because it's their behaviour and refusal to work to norms in the local employment market that's being objected to.
Attaching a negative connotation to that form of being "targeted" is like claiming a two-year old being told off was "targeted" after smearing shit on the walls. It's semantically correct, but intellectually dishonest to claim that the targeting itself is negative.
As far as Tesla goes: I don't know, but I'd be willing to bet that Tesla localises it's pay-scales - it presumably doesn't apply a flat global rate of pay and (like most international employers) raises or lowers pay depending on the location. Why then, does it consider it acceptable to try and ignore other localised norms?
Are we reading the same article? The unions are targeting Tesla. That's the entire point of what they're trying to do, hence why they're not delivering license plates specifically to Tesla, not anyone else, and a different union is only refusing to unload Tesla vehicles. So when he says that Tesla is the target of the union's actions, he's completely right. Not that he does anything right after that bit, but that part of his statement appears undeniable. This makes me wonder why you express a different view. Did one of us miss an important fact here, or are you making a point I'm not understanding?
"I can certainly understand why Tesla would be upset that there's this disruption in their ability to get cars to customers, but to try and make it seem like the union is targeting Tesla specifically"
My understanding on RTFA is that a large number of unions *ARE* targeting Tesla specifically, in solidarity with the one metalworking union representing Tesla employees that Tesla is unwilling to work with. And as the article also mentions, this is both legal in Swedish labour law, as well as a common occurrence in practice.
Tesla is expecting to turn up in Sweden and shit all over its employees in the same way it does in the US, they are totally in the wrong and now they're throwing their toys out of the pram. That's what bullies do when someone stands up to them. Good for the Swedes!!
EDIT - I see the topic has already been addressed more eloquently!!
This post has been deleted by its author
> Is it so inconceiveable that government employees actually do their job and deliver the plates themselves?
Huh? It is the job of the employees of the Transport Agency to go out and deliver the plates themselves? Should they be hand-delivering all their other postable items as well? That sounds like it might take rather a lot of their time away from getting on with the rest of their regulatory work.
Or are you referring to the postal workers? PostNord is a state-owned company, but that doesn't make them "government employees" in any way that is different or special to employees of, say, any of the other parcel carriers (or even indicate *which* government they employees of - 40% of PostNord is owned by the Danish, so that is what - most of the posties' left hand sides?).
Or are you just saying the postal workers shouldn't be allowed to strike?
If I had to guess what they are asking, I'd hypothesize that they disapprove of specific targeted strikes. This is less common in various countries, where workers strike, not against their employer, but against somebody else they don't like, for example the postal workers refusing to deliver because they don't like Tesla but they don't have any strike against the postal company going on. I'm not entirely sure that's what they were saying, but it is my best guess.
"Is it too much to ask that the government employees and postal services employees do their job that they are paid for?"
It is if the medium-term prospect is the undermining of your working conditions and pay. If Tesla get away with it with their employess then sooner or later someone will come after the postal workers' jobs. It's called "union" for a reason.
Working for the UK Post Office used to be a good enough job to support a family and retire with a decent pension. Then companies like Amazon, Hermes, DPD came in with zero hours and fake contractor jobs. Unlike the Post office they don't pay national insurance, holiday pay, sick pay, etc. and can treat people like crap becase they are not "workers". Because they don't have these costs they can undercut the Post Office and people don't seem to care that their courier is treated like shit and provides a shit service as long as it's cheap. Pretty soon the Post Office (which still has to deliver domestic letters by law, for the sampe price irrespective of distance and is penalized if they miss targets) will be out of business and every delivery to your house will be by a courier whose delivery targets are so tight that they don't even have time to knock on the door.
Of course, in the long term we'll get to the stage where this generation's workers want to retire and have no workplace pension and the workers that are left are earning so little that they don't pay enough tax to pay them a state pension. I guess the likes of Musk will be making their billions in euthanization services by then.
To be fair, in times gone by various sectors like this had a "decent pension" because their workers were on gilt-edged defined benefit schemes that private sector workers could vaguely recall as distant memories. These schemes were "decent" because they were also largely unaffordable, saddling the companies with massive financial obligations they could ill-afford.
Final salary pensions worked fine from the end of the second world war to the mid 00s. Three things killed them: Thatcher taxed surpluses that companies built up in good times to fund the bad ones*, Brown removed dividend tax relief and in the mid-90s the financial rules changed requiring companies to show pension liabilities on their balance sheets. The first two affected the size and performance of the funds, but were surviveable. The last one was the killer. It meant that companies had to treat their pension funds as if they were a single-year investment, not a long term investment which would recover from short term losses. This forced them to keep the pensions topped up on an annual basis, so they binned their final salary pensions and went to defined contribution which took the pension "risk" off the books. A system that worked fine for 60 years was killed by a combination of greedy governments of both colours and a badly thought out accounting rule. I'm sort of alright, Jack, but anyone under about 30 will end up paying dear by having to work into their 70s or 80s paying much higher taxes just to pay the state pensions of the generation behind me when they retire with bugger all in their personal pension pots.
*this meant that companies with pension surpluses took payment holidays. I had at least two years when neither I nor the company put any money in. This was a stupid disincentive because the surplus one year will cover the stockmarket fall and deficit next year. Pensions are multi-year investments.
(I didn't downvote you.)
They can't, any more than you could go collect yours. Safety and security, for one thing. It gets posted out - that's actually written in the law, as well as them having to use the state postal system.
(Clearly someone saw how the tories operate, and banned future anyone from making a mint by inserting themselves as a very expensive exclusive numberplate courier!)
Exactly this. Transportstyrelsen is working as expected here, it's PostNord that is not delivering them. The union there was notified that this would impact Tesla sales and responded with "Noted".
Unions _can_ make a difference and, here in Sweden, it's not unusual to be a member of one.
It does say this: The Swedish Transport Agency has now received an interim decision from the Norrköping district court to consent within 7 days to Tesla collecting license plates directly from our sign manufacturer. It appears from the decision that our sign manufacturer has announced that it is prepared to provide the signs directly to Tesla.
Is it so inconceiveable that government employees actually do their job and deliver the plates themselves?
Their job is to manufacture and deliver the plates to Postnord, who has been awarded the contract for distribution of the plates. Which, they are doing.
So, you don't know, but have "ideas"?!
Official UK Backbench MP salary £86,584
Mick Lynch income £120,000 with perks (from numerous sources) - although he claims his salary was only £84,178 last year - ignoring all the other perks.
So someone buggering up the country gets paid more than someone else buggering up the country.
Hmmm....
Nice gravy train if you can get on it - but as the father of a commuter, I can state that getting on a train is a relief with so many cancelled. (And no early trains on a Sunday so I have to drive her a 100 mile round trip to start work.)
Elon forgot a small detail in that mess... in Sweden, Unions are not optional, to the point that companies can't do anything affecting employees without their agreement.
Another thing : European Workers Unions are not like American ones. And a given union in a country can cover lots of jobs in many branches of the industry.
( for example : a given car maker union is jusst a branch of the wider metallurgy union which is just a branch of an union that covers everything tied to the industry... But that also has branches in banking, TV, and more )
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