Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in Swedish Tesla employees have gone on strike, and unions in neighboring Denmark and Norway have joined boycotts of Elon Musk's electric automaker. Danish union 3F and Norway's Fellesforbundet, the largest private-sector unions in their respective nations, both announced plans this week to get in Tesla's way. 3F, which covers …
I'm a union person. I've been a rep and stood alongside people in arguments with management. To a fair degree I agree with him. If the people in a company feel they don't need a union and the company is treating people fairly, then crack on. The only time I've been needed as a rep is when one side or the other, have gone militant and mutual respect has broken down. The lords and peasants thing is a bad analogy, though. Even with unions present, people rise within good companies.
Unions from outside the company forcing Tesla (and their workers) to have a union when they don't want one, I disagree with. That a union can force other people outside a company, to cripple that company from outside... that's not right IMHO.
In this case, however, there does seem to be a union inside Tesla which is having issues and negotiations aren't working, which have triggered sympathy strikes. So I feel like I don't have the full facts here.
"Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace" was a very interesting read on engagement and although they went full employee ownership, it proves that there are different ways of engaging employees and company operations.
Nobody is forcing a union on employees who don't want to join one. In Sweden joining a union (or not) is an individual matter but it's also not up to the employer whether employees get to join one.
Since you admit you don't have the full facts maybe you should read about the Swedish model for industrial relations? It has been very successful and one of the core parts is that it's up to employers (or employers associations) and unions to negotiate, with the state only guaranteeing people's basic rights.
In this case, the union is forcing itself on the employer. The way I read it is... "If you don't have a union in Tesla, we'll starve you until you do." ... that's not acceptable. It has to be driven by the employees. If they don't want one, then why should a union force itself into Tesla.
Don't be so naive. Every company gets the union it deserves.
If the company was run reasonably, there's no way people could be "forced" to pay their own hard-earned money to subscribing to a union they didn't want.
As for Musk not liking organised labour, that's a very strong cue that he has no idea of the positive outcomes achievable by working with a union (making his workforce happier, more motivated, etc.).
If a company was run reasonably and the employees didn't want a union, then why should a union be there in the first place?
Unions should only be where the employees feel they want them.
We're basically saying the same thing... and you're calling me naive?
Yes, you're naive. You admit to not having all teh facts, and yet you blindly argue for His Muskiness's position.
Fact: Employees in Sweden have been seeking a collective bargaining agreement with Tesla since the very beginning. Tesla have refused to play ball, so the workers have gone on strike. Other unions have joined in on sympathy strikes, because that's what happens in countries with strong worker protections.
Tesla would have been aware of this, and purposely decided to try and force the American model on a country that would not stand for it.
FAFO.
"Train drivers are paid for taking responsibility for other people's well being."
They most certainly are not. H&S on the railways is almost entirely down to Railtrack in the UK. Nobody has been killed by a driver error where there wasn't infrastructure faults as well, for decades. Drivers are glorified bus drivers on three times the salary.
You clearly don't understand what a Train driver does or what the job entails, so maybe shut up about it?? For one thing, it's fairly rare for bus drivers to have to get out of their seat to inspect the bloody smear that remains on the front of their bus and along several hundred yards/meters of track/road because someone decided they'd rather face the front end of something very hard going 100 mph than face living.
How do you know that they don't want a union if one doesn't exist that they can join or show support for without losing their job, for instance?
If the union exists, membership isn't obstructed and nobody joins it, you have a point.
But if the union does get formed and lots of people join it, you're just as wrong as Musk (which is pretty bad!).
And the only way to tell? Allow a union.
It's like those websites who used to always say: "Yeah, our site doesn't work in Opera/Netscape/Firefox because nobody uses it, our website stats show..." and never understood that if people CAN'T use something, you can't use those statistics as if they're proof that they DON'T WANT TO.
I'm anti-union - for completely other reasons[1] - but even I think that an employer that tries to stop a union forming has something to hide. If the workers are truly happy, they'll join the union or not, and that'll be the end of it. A bit more paperwork, maybe a few things jump higher up the agenda, but generally everything will remain the same. Obstructing it and refusing to engage just tells me that Tesla has stuff to hide and is worried what a unionised action would reveal.
[1] - I work in a heavily-unionised industry. My pay has been - without fail - higher than that negotiated by unions for their members. I disagree with some unions "we should all be on equal pay" stuff, because some employees inherently are more valuable than others. And my negotiating a better personal deal shouldn't be used as a trigger to also automatically upgrade everyone across the country doing a similarly-titled job. I've been sworn to NDA for my salary, and I even am still the proud sole-occupier of a payscale created especially for myself in a certain area of a London Borough (after MUCH protest, but I set my price and they either paid that or didn't, and they chose to literally INSTRUCT Borough HR to create a payscale just for me that nobody else has, and the Borough protested like hell because it was so much upheaval and could be so problematic for them across the rest of the Borough). At no point have I been "conned" into thinking I'm earning more either, as I am privy to payroll data in my role even if only incidentally. Also: I don't need union backing to get things done, because if I think something is that wrong, I just raise all the alerts and then move on if nothing is done. I also don't need a union for personal representation. I've literally told HR departments their own obligations under the law before now because they simply weren't aware. I once fought for 3 years to prove that I was doing everything I was supposed to do... on my own... against the entire employer I was working for... including the HR department... including their lawyers... while doing my job... without legal advise... just as a thing to clear my own name out of principle... and then left the day they admitted defeat... after they'd been trying to build a (false, I hasten to add) case against me for dismissal. It was the most fun I ever had.
I've even represented co-workers against the employer that we're both working for on matters rather unrelated to my job. When I sat in on meetings at that co-worker's invitation, there was an immediate 180 about-face in how the employer dealt with them. And the look on the employer's face when they realised that the representation was not some union official or employment lawyer, but me, was priceless. They knew they were in trouble and I wouldn't back down. And not just one instance, not just one co-worker, and not just one employer, either.
Unions should exist. Unions should be available to all. And workers should get a (free) choice of whether they want to join, irrespective of their employer's beliefs on the matter. And I'm someone who has never, and would probably never, join a union even if it was free and acted only in my interests.
First off... full marks for representing someone and getting a result.
> If the union exists, membership isn't obstructed and nobody joins it, you have a point.
The problem is that unions can use muscle they don't have once they are in a place, and can achieve results that the staff who aren't members, don't actually want.
I've been places where unions have done things that both the union members and the non-union members don't want to happen. Militant unions are just as bad for employees as militant employers.
I really don't get why you're getting so many downvotes (apart from this being the Reg, hugely left-leaning, and passionate Musk-haters almost to a man/woman/non-binary entity).
As I understand this case, it hinges on protection racket-esque practices by the unions; "nice company you've got there, would be a shame if something happened to it; join us and you won't have any problems". That's unacceptable, regardless of the wider context. I'm all for legal protections to ensure that a union CAN be formed IF the employees of the ACTUAL COMPANY actually WANT it. I'm against having this 'choice' imposed upon them whether they like it or not.
And you're correct that unions often claim to speak on behalf of employees who aren't members, weren't consulted, do not align with their ideology, and do not want whatever they say they're fighting for. Throughout the years I have worked for several large corporations, and as night follows day, come salary raise time the union was pushing for a "fair and equitable distribution for all" (i.e. 'everybody gets 2%') against the company policy of a greater share of the rewards but only to high performers. As a high performer, the unions did not speak for me; yet they invariably claimed to do so.
overwhelmingly libertarian right: loads of global warming deniers and a general belief that women have no place in IT
Speak for yourself. Most of the IT people I know (or have worked with) certainly do not comply with your stereotype.
Mirror-projection maybe?
I'm not totally sure either, but I do know that if I'm going to speak my mind, I have to be prepared to accept that I'm going to put some people's noses out of joint :-) ... comes with the territory and I'm not too bothered about it.
But I do believe that if they keep pushing this, then Musk is the kind of person who is liable to throw his toys out of the pram, abandon the country, blame the unions and still get a good nights sleep.
I wouldn't like to play chicken with Musk. He doesn't blink that often, even when facing a precipice.
I sometimes have visions of Musk, astride a nuclear missile freshly dropped out of a plane, waving his stetson and shouting "Yeee haaa!" on his way to his impending doom... and damn anyone who is unfortunate enough to be in the blast radius.
"I've been places where unions have done things that both the union members and the non-union members don't want to happen. Militant unions are just as bad for employees as militant employers."
US based I presume? That's a rare thing to happen in the EU. (And unions are losing members and power in general, at least in the Netherlands)
One thing to remember is that lots of big American companies operate in the Nordic countries and I would claim they adopt to the systems without much of a difficulty.
And it wpuld not surprise me if they tried to take something home too.
Also trade unions are not often company specific but "Metal" and "Transport" and such.
More clout that way and when you change company you don't change union perhaps.
"I just don't like anything which creates a lords and peasants sort of thing,"
The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one. That's exactly why anyone working for Musk should be in a union; so that when the capricious Lord in charge decides on a whim to do something arbitrary and 'all you peasant workers can either jump to it or leave', they have some form of protection. Unions aren't about fighting employers, they are about protecting the employees working for employers so that they can do their job properly without having to worry about their employer unfairly canning them for 'reasons.' That said, I'd never work for Musk even if I were in a union because the guys a toxic shitbag who's cultivated this fake aura and cult of being a genius when he really is not.
Just a bit of a check on one aspect of what you're saying. - "That's exactly why anyone working for Musk should be in a union;"
You're making decisions here on behalf of Musk's employees. Give them the legal power to make their own mind up, let them make their own mind up, and the legal muscle to have a union if they want one.
And yeah, I'm not Musk's greatest fan either.
@ msknight
You are completely missing the point. The dispute isn't over union recognition (let alone forcing employees to join a specific union). This about is about signing up to a collective agreement, which on one side is negotiated by the appropriate industry-sector union (IF Metall in this case). All employees, union-member or not, benefit from the agreement.
Don't assume things work the same everywhere as where you are.
"If the people in a company feel they don't need a union and the company is treating people fairly, then crack on. "
Absolutely. But in this case, the people in the company ARE in a Union, and Tesla is refusing to speak to them as a union. Musk himself says that if Tesla employees want to unionise then there is a company failure (ie the employees feel that the company isn't treating them fairly). But when it DOES actually happen, instead of recognising the company failure and seeing what is needed to fix it, he and Tesla management are doubling down
This is not exactly about unionizing, but more about working within a framework of a country. A framework that has proven to be quite beneficial to both employers and employees in this case, so why he is micromanaging this is quite baffling to begin with. He just doesn't want to understand that there are other ways to run an successful company, besides his American way.
they literally only ask that Tesla joins that successful system, in stead of working against it. They don't want any money or extra benefits.
You have got this totally wrong. Go back and read up on the facts. And while you're doing that, you might want to check on the similarities and differences on unions in Scandinavia versus those in the UK and the US. Union membership is common in Scandinavia, but days lost to strikes are very low.
Musk's position is that, as he's such a great employer, no one needs collective bargaining. This is sophistry at best, cynical bullshit at worst. His libertarian capitalism is predicated on extracting the maximum added value from employees and the supply chain and he will sack anyone who disagrees with his decisions on this matter. He will always argue from the position that capital is better than labour.
One of the reasons the Nordics earn more per capita than the British I would claim is due to unions and rather stable work conditions.
Regarding Musk and his opinion on trade unions I think we have to remember he is a white South African who emigrated first to Canada and then to the USA.
My career wasn't anything to do with the automobile industry. But as an electrical engineer, it is easy to see the need for a union. Employers will try to get an H-1B engineers at every opportunity, cut employment the day after announcing record profits from new products designed by guess who, and in general treated engineers as educated dirt bags. Heck, I agree with Elon in principle that employers have failed if it is necessary to get unions. Well, most of my employers have failed miserably, and if I had to choose a career again it would NOT have anything to do with non-unionized engineering.
@msknight
You need to get down off your high horse and be practical.
The world even if its just sweden is a better place if those unions get their way. Nobody needs to defend an arsehole like Musk, because youc an ebe sure he doesnt give a shit about you.
Wherever they are in the world, Tesla only respects the legal minimum, and has finally run into union support and collective wage bargaining as found in the Nordics like "Autopilot" runs straight into lorries with trailers crossing the road ahead at crossroads.
And no, there's no legal obligation but woe betide any company which tries to run roughshod over the unions in the Nordics.
Quote
It's unknown whether Tesla plans to take further action to stop the strikes, or whether it'll cut its losses and bargain with employees – we asked, but didn't hear back.
I fully expect that the petulant man-child aka Musk will take his ball and go home. Like all bullies he hates proper resistance. Look at his boss, Donald "I am the Retribution" Trump who has apparently decided to chicken out of testifying in NYC next week.
Look at Musk's reaction to Ad buyers boycotting Twittler... He loves to get his own way and hates it if someone has the temerity to say 'No'.
Unions want to force Tesla to the table when they have no agreement in place. In other words they want to be the ones making the rules. Why would Musk then even be stupid enough to make an agreement knowing that the unions will use it as a weapon at every eventuality?
"IF Metall workers in Sweden – where Tesla doesn't manufacture vehicles but has a number of repair and service shops – have been on strike since October after what they described as years of Tesla refusing to bargain with the union. IF Metall-represented employees claim Tesla hasn't guaranteed them good wages, a pension or insurance."
The core cause is in the article, perhaps you just skimmed thru it and missed this. Sweden is not the USA.
You brought the UK into it, which is just as irrelevant.
The way labour relations work in Sweden is not the same as in the UK or USA. It’s called the “Swedish Model” because it’s different to other places. And it’s very successful. Pay and conditions are always negotiated collectively per employer in Sweden, and as a result Sweden has very little labour protections in law. Tesla is trying to game this lack of a legal flaw and taking a hostile approach to the longstanding practice because it wants to underpay and overwork its staff. Musk’s “Lords and peasants” comment is probably the most inaccurate summary of a situation he’s given this year, although it’s still December and he really is the gift that keeps giving on the public idiocy front...
So, who gives a shit about what unrelated unions did long ago in a different country - and if you think the unions were what killed the UK car industry, you know not a whole lot about the UK car industry: plants were unionised in the BL days; plants are still unionised today. Unions become a problem for management only when they’re not running their business properly, and Tesla... well, it’s managing to make a small argument in one country balloon into a wider problem in a region. Bravo, Elmo.
It's actually called the "Nordic model" and is one of the reasons Norway, Denmark and Finland have joined.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model
"The Nordic model comprises the economic and social policies as well as typical cultural practices common in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden).[1] This includes a comprehensive welfare state and multi-level collective bargaining[2] based on the economic foundations of social corporatism,[3][4] and a commitment to private ownership within a market-based mixed economy[5]...".
> high, unregulated immigration from low-IQ countries
Oh give it over you festering boil on society. As far as I'm concerned, you manage to lower the IQ of an empty room by just walking in. Your racist cant is not welcomed anywhere where rational people gather to talk.
This is not a consequence of Unions, it's the consequence of so-called globalisation and the search for maximum profit for shareholders which led to transfer jobs to countries where the salaries are the lowest.
Look at Volvo, it still makes many cars in Sweden, where Unions are strong.
>Yeah. Land Rover Defender parts from all over Europe and finally bolted together in Croatia.
Land Rover, as in part of the Jaguar Land Rover group owned by Tata Motors - part of our old friends the Tata Group?
An Indian owned car company now - but they still produce 400,000 cars in the UK annually (2019 figures - ignoring the Covid hit years for now) - down over 150,000 from the peak in 2016. Nissan another 340,000 and Toyota 124,000. Honda also around 100,000 - but they have since shut the plant near Swindon.
And Honda only closed Swindon because of cost pressures (including Brexit, despite their denials that it was not Brexit killing the plant), *not* because of unions. If anything, Honda bent over backwards to try and get their workers in Swindon either reemployed elsewhere or retrained to be able to start a job in a different industry *thanks* to the union.
Yes, the unions in the past were ruinous to the UK automotive industry, but only because the owners of the brands/factories were trying to do things that would have been detrimental to the workers. Wouldn't *you* (not you specifically, Anon) want to have representation that makes sure you get a great deal? And again, yes, sometimes it seems the unions are so stuck in a rut that they don't see the forest for the trees (which then leads to job losses and the like).
There are swings and roundabouts to being either in a union or in an industry represented by a union. Some are good, some are bad. But in the Nordics, unions have been a positive influence because they broadly represent the spirit of Nordic society (looking after one another). Tesla would do well to get over their opposition to unionist movements and negotiate a deal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_the_United_Kingdom#Assembly_plants
There's still a LOT of vehicles being built in the UK, and a lot of vehicles built for "UK" manufacturers (at least ones that the average person on the street would think of as being UK, regardless of what their actual ownership is - e.g. JLR...) so unless your definition of "UK car industry" is so narrow that you're referring specifically to a) cars vs any type of vehicle, b) cars built in the UK, AND c) cars built in the UK by manufacturers under UK ownership, then you're somewhat off the mark in suggesting we don't have much of a "UK car industry" any more...
Poor management killed BL aided by strong unions. Everyone sees the red menace but ignores the extremely poor management team who thought they were still part of the empire, we're British and too big to fail, we don't need to innovate. Compare the Austins of the late 70's with the offerings from VW and tell me that the management team were competent.
Yup, the biggest problem with the British car industry in the 70s and 80s was terrible decision making. British Leyland was a mess of previously separate companies, and there was a lot of politics going on. For example, the US market was loving the MGB but wanted a more powerful version. That would require the Rover V8 engines which were only available in limited numbers. The BL management at the time was dominated by Triumph execs, who in a fit of pique at the MG being a more popular export than their own marque decided to use the V8 engines in the new Triumph Stag. The Stag was another in a long line of Triumph disasters, but even that didn't stop them then squandering the engines on another poor design, the V8 powered version of the dreadful TR7.
I stand corrected on the Stag, although the TR8 did use the Rover engine. It's been a very long while since I was told about some of the machinations at BL by an engineer that worked there. He was a former Rover guy, and said that the Triumph management were in his opinion determined to undermine all the other marques. I've also heard from Stag owners that the car is unreliable even by BL standards, so maybe the Triumph V8 engine was to blame. I do know that MG were desperate for a V8 model, and their stopgap solution was the MGC - a straight six powered MGB with a big bump on the bonnet since the engine was too big to fit properly.
Probably true. My first new car in the UK was a Mk1 VW Golf (an early 1.5 LS with the square chrome bumpers) - Its UK manufactured competitors included Allegros, Maxis, and Marinas. Choosing the Golf was not difficult. I’m obviously a stick-in-the-mud, the current car is a Golf 7.5 - My 4th Golf and 6th VW out of the 12 new cars I have owned.
But then you missed the joys of maintenance of those British cars.
I need a wiper blade for a 82 Allegro
Early 82 or late 82 plate ?
Made in Longbridge or Dagenham ?
Was it made during the strike when they swapped in the wipers from the Morris van ?
Was it made by Dave on a friday ?
BL = British Leyland. Basically a conglomerate of British car companies like MG, Triumph, Austin, Rover and others that were forced into one larger company. Like a lot of companies formed like this in the 70s and 80s, it did not work out as BL is long gone and many of those brands are dead or like MG own by foreign companies.
Causes of the fall of British Leyland - not just unions
1) The Japanese car industry
2) not rationalising the models available under the various companies/brands including competition between brands within the company - Rover, MG, Morris, Austin, Wolesley, Jaguar, Triumph
2a) with multiple competing dealerships
3) Oil crisis
4) 3-day week (caused by worker 'unrest' in another industry)
5) industrial action by unions
6) Other UK-based manufacturers (Ford, Vauxhall) avoiding BL's problems
@AC
What you list there are things that happened to other European countries too.
After the war Britain was the second biggest car manufacturer in the world.
But eventually Germany, France and other got their industry running while the opposite happened in Britain. I would add to your list a very militant lady too.
FWIW
After the war, UK was the second biggest car manufacturing nation and the majority of output was destined for export to earn foreign currency. Cars were also subject to around 45% purchase tax. until 1960s (from 1947 expensive cars had 66% purchase tax)
I also just found that British production capacity in 1962 was one million cars more than was actually built
Germany, France and others did so with strong unions too. Mostly they got their industry running by having competent management, competent politicians and decent products.
Most people working on british cars of the era (and even before, in the 60s) will be familiar with the "Leyland clearance" which was basically plus or minus an inch. Encountered it myself with a landrover where the location of one of the frame outriggers was nearly an inch out of it's usual placement. Yet the fuel tank fit fine. Because it was nearly an inch shorter than usual. Apparently it was normal that sometimes things wouldn't fit, so they'd just walk over to the pile with a yard stick and find one that DID fit. Because everything was just... "close enough".
I'll add a 7th to that list, although maybe implied by the Japanese item at number 1.
Quality.
My father used to be a BL main dealer up until the late 80's when he switched to Ford and Nissan.
I have been in an awful lot of BL cars across the different brands and a lot of them were awful. Awful design (Allegro Vanden Plas looking at you. The Allegro isn't a looker, but the Vanden Plas is one of the ugliest cars ever made), awful bodywork finish and longevity and awful reliability. I've been in a couple that caught fire (Rover 3500 VP and Austin Rover 850), the Metro just fell to pieces, a friends gear stick detatched while driving. The turbo charged Metro would blow the head gasket often, other turbos of the era (Renault 5 for example) weren't great, but usually someone had boosted the turbo pressure before they blew up, not the Metro, that would go pop straight off the production line. I've had the electric seats in an 850 pin me to the dashboard, fortunately in the passenger seat. My dad used to rally, I don't think he finished a rally in the Marina (back suspension) or the Allegro (suspension would bounce the car off the road inevitably). He did have a rally prepared TR7 V8, that broke down constantly and did about 7 miles to the gallon. There was also a Jag XJS that brings back memories, I think my dad considered running that himself for maybe a month before it became apparent that it was always in for repairs.
Speaking of the Japanese, the Triumph Acclaim was a 1980's JV with Honda. It had BL bodywork and Honda drive train. The joke was that the car would litterally rust and fall apart well before the engine or drive train gave up the ghost. And when I say joke, I mean it was true, it would just rust to bits while still running fine.
Speaking as someone who was alive when the UK car industry died - the management was as much to blame as the unions.
Decades of non-investment, refusal to innovate and then hard politics from both sides is what killed the native mass car market. We were making poor cars really badly and trying to sell them at inflated prices with minimal fit, finish and options.
The same thing happened to the motorbike manufacturers - although I'm glad that Triumph was resurrected (I had a Tiger 900cc for a while - very nice bike).
Then the Japanese decided to beat us at our own game and started selling well-designed, well-built cars with a high level of fit and finish and loads of options as standard. The first car I ever had with aircon was a Honda - British cars (in most cases) didn't even have it as an option and, if they did (mostly the executive cars) it was an *expensive* option that required constant maintenance.
You could always (until the 90's anyway) go for an well built expensive German car - but again, the base spec was.. base and everything else was an cost option. During the 90s the MBAs started taking over at BMW/Audi and the quality went down the pan and they came very close to losing their way completely.
So no - it wasn't "the unions" that were solely responsible for killing British industry in general and the car makers specifically - it was decades of minimal investment and innovation, coupled with decades of shoddy employee relations that created the vacuum that lead to militant unions. Who then went too far and ended the already rotting corpse of an industry that had been outcompeted and out innovated by the Japanese (and later the Koreans).
"Decades of non-investment, refusal to innovate and then hard politics from both sides is what killed the native mass car market. We were making poor cars really badly and trying to sell them at inflated prices with minimal fit, finish and options."
This. This, this, this, this, this, and yet another dollop of "This" just for good measure.
It's amazing how much armchair pundits want to only blame "unions!" for the downfall yet completed exonerate the decades of absolutely CRAP management. When you go about blaming modern U.S. businesses for, really, just about anything, remember that U.S. businesspeople imported their attitudes from almost a century of the UK leading worldwide industry. Squeeze every penny out of every possible corner, dismissive [class-attitude] worker relations, sitting on their laurels, profits-over-customer business models.
Completely agree, I was alive for it too, though a little young to actually drive them, on the whole. My parents did have an Allegro and I recall a Metro briefly. They were both crap. Dad ended up with a Ford Sierra that lasted forever. They died because the cars they designed were crap, they built them crappily, and they ran their business and plants crappily.
What I have read is that the union, IF metall, has given Tesla at least 3 options that it finds acceptable:
1) Negotiate a collective agreement between Tesla and the union.
2) Tesla joins an employers association and lets them negotiate with the union on Tesla's behalf.
3) Tesla outsources it's employees to a third-party that has a collective agreement.
Collective agreements set a "floor". Employers can always offer better terms and conditions if they so choose.
Tesla has apparently said no to all three options. The union started this discussion in 2017 and decided to take action in 2023.
In other news Tesla Sweden apparently owes a local vendor more than 4 million SEK. Tesla has refused to pay the invoice which has been sent to a collection agency.
In other news Tesla Sweden apparently owes a local vendor more than 4 million SEK. Tesla has refused to pay the invoice which has been sent to a collection agency.
Tesla will discover that the Swedish legal system prefers the swift and summary way of dealing with dead-beats. The Swedes like their auctions, its a culture thing for the community to go to the bankrupt neighbours place on a sunday and strip it of anything of value, while having coffee and cakes :).
And, to emphasise the vindictiveness and attention to details: When something goes to collection, "Kronofogden" will shamelessly sell everything, even your most pathetic tupperware collection! Just look at it: https://auktion.kronofogden.se/auk/w.ObjectList?inC=KFM&inA=WEB
Ultimatly, IF the demand for thier cars exceed demand then they can exclude sweden from thier distribution until the demand lowers, this would maximize margins If demand would allow it.
If demand is low and they need the swedish market but they don't want the Destructive nature that unions have on innovation and rapid development then doing as much work out of sweden on thier cars as possible might be the ticket, problem is the it's a island, but population wise might not be worth it.
workers united will never be defeated
Given my innate cynicism and too many decades of watching industrial relations in this country including nasty union on union turf wars(*), I'd correct that to: workers united would be a fucking miracle.
(*) As opposed to TERF wars, which are a whole new pile of shit I don't want to go anywhere near.
Bullshit. His entire business career has been one big example of acting like a lord and treating staff like peasants. The trade union movement has its roots in workers organising against bosses in new industrial production who acted like the old aristocracy. He can't stand any challenge to his entitled authority, and constantly needs to pick fights to keep his massive ego inflated. It would do him a lot of good to start thinking of other people as something he needed to always take into consideration, rather than just himself. And I don't mean in his current "I am the brilliant saviour of humanity who is always right" way.
Yeah his statement was beyond cringe and straight into psychopath asshole territory.
Billionaire acts like tyrant and claims to act benevolently.
To bad his expensive education did not include grade school history. That same history of tyranny most Europeans are MORE than familiar with.
Well my mate's Teslas have been about the closest in reliability to my Dad's 1972 Morris Marina** I have seen since about 1980 when we started to get proper cars from Japan. He seems to be following in BL's footsteps in multiple ways...
** To be fair, the Marina was actually quite reliable - never actually being undriveable that I recall, (unlike the Teslas in question). It's just that everything that could drop off, crack, split, tear, leak, or disintegrate from water damage due to being cardboard, did so.
Well my mate's Teslas have been about the closest in reliability to my Dad's 1972 Morris Marina
Our 1966 Morris Minor is pretty reliable. After lockdown 1 my Toyota C-HR had two flat batteries (engine battery and hybrid battery), required 12 hours of charging to even start then had to go to the Toyota garage to have the controller reset because the hybrid system wouldn't come online..
The Morris Minor? Battery still had charge so we turned the engine over. After about 5 seconds, it coughed into life and ran perfectly normally [1].
It gets an annual fettle from a bloke wot does (he's a retired car mechanic and the Morris is modern compared to his collection of cars) and, other than doing the tyres once in a while, needs no other stuff done. My wife uses it 2-3 times a week - it does about 4K miles a year (it's currently on 124K miles - still got the original engine although we've had the crankshaft and head replaced when the old crankshaft broke about 25 years ago - during which some of the valves got manged so we replaced the head as well. )
Musk is an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs want to get things done asap, optimising the process, and be in control of it. They see unions as pointless political entities that will undermine their control and slow things down. Which of course they will.
The solution is for entrepreneurs to do their thing and then step back. Maybe run R&D, leaving industry professionals to be part of the inevitable management/union shit show that happens when you scale up and employ more workers. Inevitable, because of human nature. Management want the most out of the workforce and vice versa.
You can't fix human nature. Some entrepreneurs are quite good at people management - Branson for example. But in the end, there are limits to what you can do when your employee count goes up.
Musk maybe needs to be a serial entrepreneur, because running stuff beyond the start up phase is a different ball game.
I more had the feeling that he's constantly doing new things to make sure he's elsewhere and has everyone distracted when it all falls down because of his public statements, but that makes his stay at X puzzling. Unless there's something he's trying to distract people from that we have as yet not picked up.
You mean getting stoned and making a stupid offer to buy a platform to stroke his ego and then realising it wasn't worth what he offered... but he made an ironclad agreement and has to honour it... so he strikes a deal with 3rd parties and authoritarian regimes to help fund it... to give them access to the data on users who may be critical of their regimes... and to set about destroying a platform that gives global reach and allows activists to mobilise and share in real time, data and information to organise and protest such regimes and fascist leaning figures.
No... aside from that... I can't think of anything else either.
Funny that... Germany is full of those entrepreneurs and surprisingly they don't have a problem with this. Why? Maybe because they understand that their workers are fundamentally important to the process of making stuff, and that without workers, you don't get anything done? And they know being an asshole does not get you plaudits from your workers, and they give you the middle finger instead?
Mr Musk is now far more powerful than any one of the worlds smaller countries. I don't know his total cash flow but again he must be in the same league as many whole countries. One thing for sure he is there because he gets vast amounts of very advanced work done without parliaments, elections and all the other guff of "advanced countries". It's no wonder unions want to do him down!
"I don't know his total cash flow but again he must be in the same league as many whole countries."
He may be on a par with Venezuela. Previously quite well off, still has some significant oil reserves that could keep it well off, but financially, not really doing very well at all and currently looking at stealing about the northern 1/3rd of Guyana for the oil and mineral reserves.
Norway, one of the countries the article is about, and a small country with a population of around 5 million, has a sovereign weath fund (the financial equivalent of the petty cash book) of over $1.2 trillion. In comparison, Elon Musk's net worth peaked at about $200 billion, and has dropped considerably since then. The idea that Musk is more powerful than one of the Nordic countries in question is utterly ill-informed.
Between those who don't understand HOW unions work, and those that desperately simp for ole musky.... this comments section has been very painful to read today.
It's not usually this bad, but the wilfully ignorant have been out in force today. I suspect that as soon as anything muskrat related gets published a rallying cry goes out on shitter for the masses to assemble to defend his honour.
But it is fun seeing them downvoted to oblivion whilst complaining about the downvotes and how they're misunderstood or victimised, or that they're basically saying the same thing as the people they're arguing against (they're not and they can't understand why they're not)
Then seeing those same sad little simps desperately trying to downvote everyone who dares to disagree with their simping... and unhappy that they're simply outnumbered.... so they start slinging what they think are insults like 'left wing' or 'woke' or 'liberal' and all of the variations of things like that... You know... things they think are insults but are actually positive things that make others just better, kinder, more empathetic with the rest of society in general... and they can't understand that because all they know is greed, selfishness, taking and never giving... because that's what they worship, and that's why they're such sad little simps for billionaires.
I think they do, a downvote isn't a expression of not wanting free speach it's a expression of disagreement, Europeans are very sensitive to free speach and want it suppressed cause they can't handle Good ideas in a open honest and sometimes fiery debait, which is why there isn't a single european social media company worth anything
Could be good for the environment too.
I have not heard about other brands of EVs going up in flames, but Teslas appear to have cornered the market in this to the point that some housing associations I know no longer allow any to be parked in underground car parks.
I wonder if anyone has researched just how much of a climate impact is had from a self-immolating Tesla.
hmmm the statistics are crazy,
Only 23 fires were reported in electric vehicles in 2022 making up just 0.004% of Sweden’s fleet of 611,000 EVs.
In contrast, over the same period, some 3,400 fires we reported in 2022 from Sweden’s 4.4 million petrol and diesel cars representing 0.08% of the fossil car fleet.
20 times less likely 0_o
As well as 393 verified fires worldwide, the EV Firesafe database includes 74 incidents that are being investigated and 21 that have not been verified.
A 2020 Tesla internal report (not verified independently) suggested there was one Tesla fire for every 205 million miles (330 million kilometres) travelled. The Tesla report notes National Fire Protection Association data for the United States showed a much higher rate of one fire for every 19 million miles (30.6 million kilometres).
What happens to people who don't subscribe to this “collective agreement” ?
--
There was onetime a manufacturing company that the union had a veto on a new machine being brought onto the floor. Because the machine would take away jobs from workers, who did the job manually. Eventually management got fed-up, shut-down the factory and moved production to Eastern Europe. Two thousand people lost their job overnight.
Normally if there's a dispute that involves a union you read all sorts of copy mentioning 'union bosses' and how much money those union people earn ("its unfair") and so on.Even when its just people trying to organize at a grocery store or a Starbucks or something its Pure Evil menacing the right of workers to be union free. Then it involves Tesla and so Elon Musk and suddenly union people are heroes. The media is even condoning secondary action, something that was outlawed way back in the 80s in the UK.
Make up your minds, folks.
Secondary action is not illegal in the countries where it is happening (why would UK law have any bearing on Swedish law?). And it is not the kind of secondary action that occurred in the UK. In this dispute, the workers at other companies are refusing to handle business specifically for Tesla. They are not refusing to attend work at their employers. All post in Sweden is being delivered, except for specific post from Tesla; all vehicles are being unloaded at Danish docks.. except for vehicles made by Tesla. See a pattern? The workers at other employers are joining in a dispute against Tesla, while continuing to perform the rest of their duties.
This is a big difference to what happened in the UK, where a single union would call all of its members out on strike, even those in workplaces where no dispute existed. They did this for leverage, to make their localised labour dispute into a national political issue, and so force the government into taking a side in the dispute. The major difference in the Nordic countries is that there is a long-standing principle that the government never gets involved in labour disputes, so unions have nothing to gain from blanket action except unpopularity. On the other hand, narrowly-focused secondary action, like this case, gives even small groups of workers a much stronger hand than they’d have alone, but most importantly, it keeps the unions on the right side of public opinion.
I imagine Musk in his own head has awarded himself a title of nobilty. Letters patent... patent lunacy.
If KCIII were to make him Earl of Dogging or somesuch one US constitutional amendment might finally be ratified.
A less aristrocatic and more ignoble creature is hard to imagine.
I have never read that any of Musk's enterprises were notable for a flatter than usual managment structure - probably even more feudal than the average US corporation.
I have no problen with Musk, in his own words, saving the planet so long as that planet is Mars (or Mongol.)
Blimey! I found a hole in my sock this morning and, having read this thread, I believe like everything else it appears to have been a direct result of Musky's manufacturing practices and capitalist attitudes.
What's next? Is my tea going to cool by radiative heat transfer to his cold, cold heart? ... It is! It is! Scientific proof!
Sitting back with a large helping of popcorn.
My money is on the unions winning.
Always amusing when people falsely assume that the Anglo-Saxon-World (i.e. US & to most extents the UK) conditions apply globally.
It'll be interesting also to see what happens in the mid-term at Tesla's plant in Germany.
Yeah. I can’t help thinking Musk insisted on having a factory in Germany for no reason other than a desire to say that Tesla were making “German cars”, and had no idea of how manufacturing is organised in Germany - a country where union representation on company boards is commonplace; a country where, one Thursday afternoon in a week where I’d had to put in two long days to fix an issue, I was told to leave the office immediately because I’d exceeded the working time limit.
Funny how the good employers are the ones that produce the highest quality cars, isn’t it? The simple truth is that you cannot get any kind of high-quality manufacturing without employee buy-in. Treat your line staff like drones, and they will return that contempt by doing the absolute minimum to keep themself employed. This is why Musk is so in love with robotics, but robots are a dead end. Robots don’t find problems, they just repeat what you told them to do, and the key to quality is giving your workers the confidence and authority to find problems with the process and fix them.
Agreed, I think he'll be having another shock in the not too distant future. While there are differences, Germany's employment laws and culture is much closer to the Nordic model than say the UK for example, to speak nothing of the US.
Some of my favourite German rules:
* Full pay (upto 6 weeks per illness) when you're sick
* If you get sick whilst on booked days off, you can reclaim your holiday allowance for the days you were ill.
* The workplace accident insurance also covers you for your journey to and from work (as long as a direct route).
* For the Yanks: Minimum 4 weeks payed holiday per year (plus public holidays), 5 weeks + is typical.
American workers:
No paid time off for anything. Lucky to get one week vacation. But not paid. Maybe two weeks after years of service. Still not paid. Overpriced "insurance" with very high deductible as to make it useless. Long term illness? You're fired. NO pension unless government worker.
And that just for starters.
Americans are, well, boot licking morons.
@ecofeco
No I don't agree with talking about "boot licking morons", that is just silly.
The great majority of Americans are all for affordable healthcare and education and housing for all but they just don't seem to understand it's possible in the world's richest country for reasons I really don't mentally understand.
Claiming stupidity on the individual level is not helpfull.
Kids are not born stupid in any country, but the system might leave them stuck in lack of knowledge,
"The great majority of Americans are all for affordable healthcare"
Most Americans would settle for affordable health insurance but they won't get that until the cost of healthCARE is reigned in, which won't happen until the courts stop awarding millions of dollar for things such as "undue and unjust pain during childbirth" because the attending doctor was concerned administering drugs in that case do to what they were seeing.
"This is why Musk is so in love with robotics, but robots are a dead end."
Elon also thinks of the humanoid form when he hears "robot". We humans find it a useful form for general purpose applications, but industrial robots built to a purpose are far more efficient. One of the trade shows I like to visit is for manufacturing equipment and the variety of robots is amazing to watch. If you need one to arrange things a particular way round, they have that. If you need one to pick up parts and place them neatly in a box, there are those as well. The thing is that they are often in different forms depending on the intended function(s). Nobody seems to be offering a one-size-fits-all robot in the way that Elon seems to be pursuing. A general purpose robot in an industrial setting is next to useless. Tesla is making one type of car all day long on a given production line. There's no need for jack of all trades robot that can be re-programmed in an instant to do a different task.
Elon thinks he can ignore laws because he is special.
When someone who isn't a billionaire does this we call them a psychopath and lock them up.
Apparently, when Elon does this hundreds of fan boys rush to say he's great and everyone should do what he says.
Newsflash for fanboys: Elon doesn't care about you anymore than he cares about his workers' well-being.
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