johnnemann
@johnnemann

So two big clashes happened recently with Swedish companies and the Swedish unions, and one huge one is ongoing.

In Sweden, it's pretty normal to be in a union, and it's very different from the US. You can join a union just by going into a website and filling out a form. However, you may not be under a contract between your union and your employer, because you need to have a certain percentage of people at the company in the union before they sign what's called a "collective agreement". So without that you get some union benefits like unemployment insurance and legal representation, but not, like, a negotiated salary or benefits package.

So what's happened recently is that Klarna, a Swedish fintech company, had enough of its employees unionize to start the collective bargaining agreement process. And Klarna, being a tech company, was like "we don't see a need for unions because we're such a great employer already, it'll make our workers less flexible, etc etc" like every company ever has said. But the employees planned a walkout, supported by planned sympathy strikes from three other unions, and Klarna came to the table and signed the agreement.

However, Spotify also faced a union thing, said the same things, and has not yet been forced to sign (if you needed another reason to hate Spotify).

And then we come to the exciting thing that's ongoing now in Sweden: Tesla is attempting to unionize (or, rather, sign a collective agreement). And as we all know, Musk hates unions. So right now, there's a bunch of strikes happening against the company - salespeople and mechanics actually working for Tesla, and then in sympathy mechanics who work at unaffiliated garages are refusing to work on Teslas. And now the dockworkers are involved, and no Teslas will be unloaded coming in to Sweden. The electricians are on strike, so no charging stations will be repaired, and no workshops get electrical work done. And THEN, the maintenance workers union are threatening to join as well, so that no repairs or cleaning will be done at Tesla's offices throughout Sweden.

This is really exciting and it feels impossible for the company to continue with this amount of pressure, but if anyone is good at making terrible decisions based on dogshit principles it's Elon Musk, so we shall see.


johnnemann
@johnnemann

So, even after all this, Tesla kept going. They said they were unable to even open negotiations with the Swedish unions because Musk said "we don't do that".

Teslas were blocked from being shipped, so they started delivering them via road.

But now, another union has joined the fight, the Swedish postal workers union. This is a big deal because there's only one way for license plates to reach new Teslas: via the mail.

Musk finally broke his silence on the Swedish strike to comment: "This is insane".

So now ten unions are aligned against Tesla and we will see what happens I guess!


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in reply to @johnnemann's post:

i hope tesla unionizes 100% and i hope they win huge against their bosses and i hope it directly precipitates a complete nervous breakdown for musk that destroys him permanently in the public eye.

I hope the unions get what they want, but I can 100% see Musk just refusing to do business in Sweeden rather than cave to pressure. He is extremely ideologically motivated and clearly doesn't give a shit about the money at this point.

The harbors/transportation sector also refuse to deal with anything Tesla related so they can't deliver any cars either. Its been a while since the unions here in Sweden actually showed their teeth but this is a good one for once (they have been a bit toothless lately sadly).

in reply to @johnnemann's post: