Tesla has filed a lawsuit against the Swedish government's Transport Agency over a workers' strike that has blocked the U.S. auto maker's requests for license plates for new vehicles, business daily Dagens Industri reported on Monday.
I’m legitimately trying to gain a better understanding of this. From what I’ve read, there’s no obligation under Swedish law for an employer to enter a CBA, but Swedish law permits industrial actions, e.g. strikes and sympathetic strikes, which will likely eventually force a company to accept a CBA (and I get the sense that this has become “the way it’s done” perhaps because the Swedish legislature so lightly regulates labor, leading to the CBA becoming the expectation). So even if acceptance of a CBA is not the written law, it’s basically a de facto law since a company can essentially be forced to accept it. Is that more or less accurate? And it sounds like 90% of employees in Sweden participate in a CBA. Can anyone chime in on what might characterize the remaining 10%?
Yes, that is a correct assumption. And yes, around 90% of all employees are covered by some sort of CBA. But only about 70% are in a union.
I have no statistics to back this up, and this is only my guess. The rest 10% are many smaller companies and startups that have few employees is what I have read some where.
The unions will only start negotiation with a company for a CBA if the company has employees that are in the union and if those employees ask the union to start negotiations. If no one asks the union for it, the union won’t do anything.
Ex if att company pays its employees 20% more and have better benefits than the industrial standard. No union employees will probably ask the union to start negotiations since they already have it better than the CBA states.
Ex if att company pays its employees 20% more and have better benefits than the industrial standard. No union employees will probably ask the union to start negotiations since they already have it better than the CBA states.
this is probably the most common argument against unionization in the us: “you already have it good, don’t let a union come in and screw it up”
Dane here and we have a similar system. This is basically the “nordic model” where the employers and employees work together (through their organizations) every couple of years to write the rules for employment. It’s also generally only during those negotiations that strikes and lockouts can occur, at all other times it’s not permitted if you’re covered by a CBA. The government only steps in if the parties can’t come to an agreement on their own which happens very rarely (in Denmark it happened in the private sector in 1998 and not since, even with inflation and covid making negotiations hard).
Since this stuff is mostly regulated outside the political system politicians rarely want to step in. Companies can forego a CBA but unions can always pressure them to accept one. The solidarity strikes are often the most potent weapon since you can then target the entire value chain of a company as happens with Tesla in Sweden. McDonalds in Denmark is also quite the story https://mattbruenig.com/2021/09/20/when-mcdonalds-came-to-denmark/
As to those not covered by CBAs in Denmark we have “tjenestemænd” where the law directly regulates working conditions and who can’t strike. I’m not sure about the history of that system but my understanding is it’s on its way out as it can otherwise be expensive to pay out pensions to tjenestemænd. Tjenestemænd also can’t strike so it’s a different system altogether
The remaining 10% consist of the Tesla employees that are at the heart of this. They don’t want CBAs because they already get paid better than what the unions can offer and have better conditions, so they have refused to participate in the strikes proposed by the unions.
The unions hence decided to force them into CBAs and got other companies unions to strike to try and force it when they didn’t participate.
Unions in Sweden are just the mafia being the mafia and trying to enforce their protection racket.
Hopefully Tesla just goes and picks up the license plates directly from the transportation department and continues to ignore them.
The remaining 10% consist of the Tesla employees that are at the heart of this. They don’t want CBAs because they already get paid better than what the unions can offer and have better conditions, so they have refused to participate in the strikes proposed by the unions.
They don’t want CBAs because they already get paid better than what the unions can offer and have better conditions, so they have refused to participate in the strikes proposed by the unions.
The unions hence decided to force them into CBAs and got other companies unions to strike to try and force it when they didn’t participate.
Except that CBAs only set the minimum. This isn’t the same as a union contract in the US. Every employee still negotiates their pay on an individual level, so this is all bullshit.
Hopefully Tesla just goes and picks up the license plates directly from the transportation department and continues to ignore them.
That would be illegal, but even if it were to happen, the strike would just spread to Transportstyrelsen itself and no plates would be allowed to be produced in the first place.
Well Tesla has done just that and gone and picked the plates up themselves. the Swedish courts just ruled that they must be allowed to do this.
They don’t want CBAs. You can perform mental acrobatics to justify them as much as you like, but the fact remains that they don’t want them because they are worse than their current arrangements. Forcing them on them is nothing more than a protection rackets.
Well Tesla has done just that and gone and picked the plates up themselves. the Swedish courts just ruled that they must be allowed to do this.
They haven’t picked up anything yet, and the court only granted them a preliminary injunction. They haven’t ruled on the case yet. Also Transportstyrelsen haven’t decided how to respond to the ruling yet. They could very well just decide to pay the fine instead.
This lower court decision was not known when I wrote my comment. And even if it was, it’s an interim decision that Transportstyrelsen still hasn’t acted on, Tesla is still not allowed to pick up their plates at this point in time.
It will be interesting to see how transportstyrelsen eventually responds and what will be decided in the higher courts.
No matter how much you defend them. I’m here to tell u the unions are nothing more than the modern day mafia and this is nothing more than a protection racket.
I love when conservatives incorrectly appropriate terms invented by liberals/progressives like a cargo cult. You should build some superchargers out of coconuts, that’ll definitely get you the approval you so desperately crave.
But to seriously address your point, of course it’s a protection racket, in that the union exists to protect their membership. Just like corporations exist to protect their investors. Just like the mafia existed to protect Italian immigrants who were being discriminated against. The issue with the mafia was never that they banded together to ensure the best possible outcomes for members; it was the use of violent, illegal, and antisocial actions to promote that cause (e.g. beating up rival workers and scabs, selling drugs and robbing stores for income, killing political and economic enemies, etc.)
The point of a union is to use all legal pathways to ensure the best possible outcome for union members. Period. That’s their job. They’re needed because the point of a corporation is to use all legal pathways to ensure the greatest possible returns for shareholders. This goal (of corporations) is often at odds with the needs of workers, and corporations have significant systemic advantages over individual workers - more capital to deploy, better legal representation, more amplification of their message, more ability to influence market wages, etc.
Most of the Tesla technicians working in Sweden belong to IF Metall. Most of those members voted to use the union to negotiate a CBA, and to then strike if those negotiations stall. Unions don’t just get to go in and decide to negotiate on behalf of workers who aren’t union membership. That’s not how any of this works.
Does that mean that every Tesla worker is for this union? Obviously not. Not all Tesla workers in Sweden belong to IF Metall, and the ones that don’t aren’t on strike. And it’s even possible that some IF Metall workers at Tesla aren’t in favor of striking, or that there are technicians working for Tesla that aren’t IF Metall members who don’t want a CBA or a strike. But unfortunately for them, the way representative democratic organizations like unions work is that a single individual or small group can’t override the will of the majority.
And as a side note, it’s telling that here in the US where our unions have largely been beaten and left for dead, all of the cases of individuals “standing up for their rights to not join a union” have been very narrowly made to ensure that the freerider assholes who don’t want to be in a union still benefit from union-negotiated collective bargaining agreements. All of our “right to work” laws make it explicitly illegal to provide lower pay or benefits to non-members not involved in the CBA. So really, it’s just a bunch of cheap assholes who want the benefits without paying the price.
Can anyone chime in on what might characterize the remaining 10%?
For example if you start a small business with your buddies, family or the like, it’s very unlikely that those people are going to demand a CBA from you. Even if you setup your own company as a freelancer then you will count as an employee with no CBA.
They can treat their employees well enough, that collective actions is not needed.
(I’m sure I’ll be brigaded for this) From what I can tell, that seems to be what Tesla is doing in Sweden. The union that’s trying to get a CBA is offering 130% of normal pay for workers to go on strike (even those who are not members of the union), and they are threatening penalties for any union member who does not participate in the strike.
Even so, the stock options that Tesla offers employees are apparently so good that only a handful of Tesla’s workers are striking, with most remaining on the job. I think stock options must not be common in Sweden, so the union doesn’t understand what they are, or how much they are worth. The union claims the workers are underpaid, but the actual workers seem to disagree.
Stock options are as popular in Sweden as in other places in Europe. We do know what stock options are… Sweden has a stock market since 1863.
To avoid CBA you have to satisfy all your employees. Tesla tried a “divide and conquer” strategy towards it’s own employees, playing them against each other … and they got what was coming to them. So no. They didn’t try to satisfy all of their employees
130 mechanics are not “handful” it’s almost all mechanics that work for Tesla
Tesla is known for terrible working conditions and paying below competition in Europe, so no the employees in Sweeden are not getting amazing deals, with or without stock options.
Basically every sentence you wrote is either wrong, a logical error, fallacy, and/or condescending. It’s not brigading if you make an ass out of yourself.
In short: To avoid CBA you need to pay all your employees well, and provide a humane working conditions. Tesla didn’t do that.
I’m legitimately trying to gain a better understanding of this. From what I’ve read, there’s no obligation under Swedish law for an employer to enter a CBA, but Swedish law permits industrial actions, e.g. strikes and sympathetic strikes, which will likely eventually force a company to accept a CBA (and I get the sense that this has become “the way it’s done” perhaps because the Swedish legislature so lightly regulates labor, leading to the CBA becoming the expectation). So even if acceptance of a CBA is not the written law, it’s basically a de facto law since a company can essentially be forced to accept it. Is that more or less accurate? And it sounds like 90% of employees in Sweden participate in a CBA. Can anyone chime in on what might characterize the remaining 10%?
Yes, that is a correct assumption. And yes, around 90% of all employees are covered by some sort of CBA. But only about 70% are in a union.
I have no statistics to back this up, and this is only my guess. The rest 10% are many smaller companies and startups that have few employees is what I have read some where.
The unions will only start negotiation with a company for a CBA if the company has employees that are in the union and if those employees ask the union to start negotiations. If no one asks the union for it, the union won’t do anything.
Ex if att company pays its employees 20% more and have better benefits than the industrial standard. No union employees will probably ask the union to start negotiations since they already have it better than the CBA states.
this is probably the most common argument against unionization in the us: “you already have it good, don’t let a union come in and screw it up”
Dane here and we have a similar system. This is basically the “nordic model” where the employers and employees work together (through their organizations) every couple of years to write the rules for employment. It’s also generally only during those negotiations that strikes and lockouts can occur, at all other times it’s not permitted if you’re covered by a CBA. The government only steps in if the parties can’t come to an agreement on their own which happens very rarely (in Denmark it happened in the private sector in 1998 and not since, even with inflation and covid making negotiations hard).
Since this stuff is mostly regulated outside the political system politicians rarely want to step in. Companies can forego a CBA but unions can always pressure them to accept one. The solidarity strikes are often the most potent weapon since you can then target the entire value chain of a company as happens with Tesla in Sweden. McDonalds in Denmark is also quite the story https://mattbruenig.com/2021/09/20/when-mcdonalds-came-to-denmark/
As to those not covered by CBAs in Denmark we have “tjenestemænd” where the law directly regulates working conditions and who can’t strike. I’m not sure about the history of that system but my understanding is it’s on its way out as it can otherwise be expensive to pay out pensions to tjenestemænd. Tjenestemænd also can’t strike so it’s a different system altogether
I assume Tjenestemænd would be mostly civil servants like police, firefighters, teachers, and the like?
The remaining 10% consist of the Tesla employees that are at the heart of this. They don’t want CBAs because they already get paid better than what the unions can offer and have better conditions, so they have refused to participate in the strikes proposed by the unions.
The unions hence decided to force them into CBAs and got other companies unions to strike to try and force it when they didn’t participate.
Unions in Sweden are just the mafia being the mafia and trying to enforce their protection racket.
Hopefully Tesla just goes and picks up the license plates directly from the transportation department and continues to ignore them.
Except that CBAs only set the minimum. This isn’t the same as a union contract in the US. Every employee still negotiates their pay on an individual level, so this is all bullshit.
That would be illegal, but even if it were to happen, the strike would just spread to Transportstyrelsen itself and no plates would be allowed to be produced in the first place.
Well Tesla has done just that and gone and picked the plates up themselves. the Swedish courts just ruled that they must be allowed to do this.
They don’t want CBAs. You can perform mental acrobatics to justify them as much as you like, but the fact remains that they don’t want them because they are worse than their current arrangements. Forcing them on them is nothing more than a protection rackets.
They haven’t picked up anything yet, and the court only granted them a preliminary injunction. They haven’t ruled on the case yet. Also Transportstyrelsen haven’t decided how to respond to the ruling yet. They could very well just decide to pay the fine instead.
Except they aren’t allowed to do that, they would already be doing it if it was an option.
The Swedish courts say otherwise:
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/Mo0V85/tesla-far-ut-sina-registreringsskyltar
And they are doing that.
This lower court decision was not known when I wrote my comment. And even if it was, it’s an interim decision that Transportstyrelsen still hasn’t acted on, Tesla is still not allowed to pick up their plates at this point in time.
It will be interesting to see how transportstyrelsen eventually responds and what will be decided in the higher courts.
No matter how much you defend him, I’m here to tell you that Elon Musk will not sleep with you.
No matter how much you defend them. I’m here to tell u the unions are nothing more than the modern day mafia and this is nothing more than a protection racket.
I love when conservatives incorrectly appropriate terms invented by liberals/progressives like a cargo cult. You should build some superchargers out of coconuts, that’ll definitely get you the approval you so desperately crave.
But to seriously address your point, of course it’s a protection racket, in that the union exists to protect their membership. Just like corporations exist to protect their investors. Just like the mafia existed to protect Italian immigrants who were being discriminated against. The issue with the mafia was never that they banded together to ensure the best possible outcomes for members; it was the use of violent, illegal, and antisocial actions to promote that cause (e.g. beating up rival workers and scabs, selling drugs and robbing stores for income, killing political and economic enemies, etc.)
The point of a union is to use all legal pathways to ensure the best possible outcome for union members. Period. That’s their job. They’re needed because the point of a corporation is to use all legal pathways to ensure the greatest possible returns for shareholders. This goal (of corporations) is often at odds with the needs of workers, and corporations have significant systemic advantages over individual workers - more capital to deploy, better legal representation, more amplification of their message, more ability to influence market wages, etc.
Most of the Tesla technicians working in Sweden belong to IF Metall. Most of those members voted to use the union to negotiate a CBA, and to then strike if those negotiations stall. Unions don’t just get to go in and decide to negotiate on behalf of workers who aren’t union membership. That’s not how any of this works.
Does that mean that every Tesla worker is for this union? Obviously not. Not all Tesla workers in Sweden belong to IF Metall, and the ones that don’t aren’t on strike. And it’s even possible that some IF Metall workers at Tesla aren’t in favor of striking, or that there are technicians working for Tesla that aren’t IF Metall members who don’t want a CBA or a strike. But unfortunately for them, the way representative democratic organizations like unions work is that a single individual or small group can’t override the will of the majority.
And as a side note, it’s telling that here in the US where our unions have largely been beaten and left for dead, all of the cases of individuals “standing up for their rights to not join a union” have been very narrowly made to ensure that the freerider assholes who don’t want to be in a union still benefit from union-negotiated collective bargaining agreements. All of our “right to work” laws make it explicitly illegal to provide lower pay or benefits to non-members not involved in the CBA. So really, it’s just a bunch of cheap assholes who want the benefits without paying the price.
For example if you start a small business with your buddies, family or the like, it’s very unlikely that those people are going to demand a CBA from you. Even if you setup your own company as a freelancer then you will count as an employee with no CBA.
sounds like it gives more power to the everyday worker and unions so companies can’t just fuck them over
Well, there’s a second option. They can treat their employees well enough, that collective actions is not needed.
(I’m sure I’ll be brigaded for this) From what I can tell, that seems to be what Tesla is doing in Sweden. The union that’s trying to get a CBA is offering 130% of normal pay for workers to go on strike (even those who are not members of the union), and they are threatening penalties for any union member who does not participate in the strike.
Even so, the stock options that Tesla offers employees are apparently so good that only a handful of Tesla’s workers are striking, with most remaining on the job. I think stock options must not be common in Sweden, so the union doesn’t understand what they are, or how much they are worth. The union claims the workers are underpaid, but the actual workers seem to disagree.
Ugh.
Dude.
Basically every sentence you wrote is either wrong, a logical error, fallacy, and/or condescending. It’s not brigading if you make an ass out of yourself.
In short: To avoid CBA you need to pay all your employees well, and provide a humane working conditions. Tesla didn’t do that.
The last thing companies want is government intervention, this is a true free market at work.