That isn’t what’s happening here, it’s unions striking. Employees can’t just do this randomly, it has to be part of an organised strike which is fairly rare. Once the strikes in place the private employees (not civil servants) who belong to unions will follow recommendations of actions.
It depends on the contract negotiated by the union. In theory, the union can put a floor on pay, with cap and allow individual workers to negotiate higher wages if they are so inclined. The US sports leagues offer the best example of this.
Yup, and one is the principles of a large car company from another country while the other is the social underpinnings of the countries entire labour market going back a century
It isn't just IF Metall vs Tesla in practice. The result of this whole thing will impact Swedish labor standards as a whole by setting a critical precedent for both companies and unions. I'm not part of IF Metall, but also not naive enough to think this power struggle won't affect me or people I care about working in Sweden in the future.
It will affect you either way. It is difficult to tell exactly how but a union win will embolden the unions in Sweden general, and it is not certain that is an all out win. I realize that embolden is not a neutral word, but what is on the other side of the balance scale is investments in new jobs in Sweden vs elsewhere. Perhaps the balance will still be a net benefit to Sweden but we will see. I would have an easier time to understand the strike if it was about material conditions such as salary etc, but now it is an all-out power struggle about the type of agreement.
The fact that it will affect me either way is kind of my point in saying this is not just IF Metall vs Tesla. I consider a union win to be the best outcome here.
And for that reason it is the most likely outcome too. 'When in Rome...' Tesla has a lot to lose here: Norway, Sweden and to a lesser extent Denmark and Finland are early adopters and Tesla has large market share there. If they turn those countries against them it will have repercussions all over Europe. I'm in NL and have already heard people mention this conflict here and how it affects their view of Tesla as a brand and I think that's not unique.
Absolutely not. It will not embolden unions in Sweden at all. They fully expect to win. Contract law is the fundamental issue here.
The only realistic alternative is Tesla leaving Sweden. Prospective owners would have to import their cars from other countries. It's not hard to imagine that situation.
This is a huge deal in whole of Scandinavia. Today Finland unions joined in. The other day both Norway and Danish unions joined in. Before that, many other Swedish unions joined in.
This is Tesla versus the Scandinavian model rather.
What I find interesting is that nobody at Tesla seems to be able to realize that when you go abroad you can't just export your home country's attitude to labor relations and that Tesla as a brand is suffering, not just in Sweden, but in the Nordics as a whole and in the rest of Europe as well. Even if they win they lose, and not just a little bit.
That's what you get when you're surrounded by 'yes' people. It's one of the main reasons that power corrupts: you no longer have anything to calibrate with.
I would say it's somewhere in the middle. You wrote that it's If Metall againt Tesla, but that's simply not the case. Other unions have already joined in so it's both technically incorrect and a bit misleading.
This would be true if there were not repercussions for the wider Swedish model, but since there are repercussions of rolling over it is Sweden vs Tesla
Tesla is a good opponent. Musk is generally despised. Electric vehicles are seen as fancy-pants toys for eco-freaks. So the usual people who come to the defense of big companies don't really feel the need to break a lance for Tesla.
This is specifically the case with the Sweden Democrats. A big motivator for them is a) bashing greens, and b) being a better alternative for the working class than the Social Democrats. Siding with a foreign billionaire over "salt-of-the-earth" workers is not a winning move.
I'm sure there are. To be frank, that matters little. All large employers are part of an employer's union. They don't see things differently. They all need this particular contract law intact.
Vocal or not, no one will not be able to affect this semi-voluntary system unless they control bascially the entire economy. This is unlikely to ever be the case, until maybe some supranational EU agreement changes the rules entirely.
> I'm saying that it's not a strike if you're just refusing service to a customer.
> is you downing tools and stopping working.
These aren't exclusive, it's just they've downed tools and stopped working for the customer the strike is against. People don't join unions for their employer, they join unions for their industry. Therefore a union can strike against an employer while maintaining working for those not breaking collective agreements.
Pretty sure Rand would say that if you join a company on a certain employment basis, you shouldn't then decide it's suddenly not good enough. But I haven't read any of her books, so I won't claim that very strongly!
Hell yeah! Let's get those lazy workers on the lines working harder. Innovation and growth at all costs. Workers are cogs and if they're not behaving correctly they should be fixed or replaced. I, personally, am happy with a 21% illiteracy rate in America - workers don't need to be literate to make my flying cars faster.
Sweden might rank top for happiness and health but that's not going to make my bank numbers get higher for my annual two week holiday.
> Sweden might rank top for happiness and health but that's not going to make my bank numbers get higher for my annual two week holiday.
The US seems to expect service workers to pretend to be happy in the hopes of receiving enough money to get by. Whereas the Nordics seem to take the approach of "let's make sure your service worker is happy" first and foremost.
The Nordic model seems more stable and less stressful for all parties involved.
I've lived and worked in the UK, the Bay Area, and Stockholm. Sweden does not pay as well but the employee/union perks & lifestyle is night and day compared to the other two. I definitely miss Bay Area salaries but I'm getting more holiday, I get paid extra for going on holiday, I get a years paternity leave & IVF bonuses, I get free healthcare (and most employers offer free private healthcare), I get a company car for very cheap, rent/properties are cheap and actually pretty large, the cities are built around nature, poverty is low, crime is low, people are happy...
I prefer the Nordic model so far!
Edit: I forgot the best one - unemployment insurance. If I get laid off I get my salary covered at 80% for 6 - 12 months (depends on the policy). This is through the union. Such a nice relief with all the layoffs happening in tech nowadays.
Unlike the wildly successful US model, where everything is made elsewhere and the majority of the population is one major illness away from bankruptcy. Sorry junior, no tertiary education for you.
Stockholm ranks very high for Unicorns per Capita which most people don't seem to be aware of. Some sources say it's just under the Bay Area. Certainly there are many for a small country. Spotify, Klana, Tink, Northvolt, Kry, Einride, Voi, H2 Green Steel, etc...
The other notable thing is many of these are in the green energy space which Tesla will want to be part of. Northern Sweden has Europes largest deposit of rare minerals required for green batteries which are heavy and awkward to move around, so having access to those in Germany would be huge for Tesla down the line. Also, as mining becomes more targeted by climate crackdowns, Sweden is globally leading at carbon-neutral green mining.
There's loooooads of innovation in the green space in Sweden and avoiding this for a couple hundred technicians pensions is just insane to me.
Which is the case for 99% of companies. It’s only American ones internationally expanding who don’t realise other economies operate differently that get stung with this.
Not sure what the difference in products has to do with how the company is governed. Ford of Europe is a direct subsidiary of Ford Motor Company, and they both have the same CEO and Executive Chairman.
It’s hardly a shock to most in Europe that many American corporations (whether by virtue of a subsidiary or not) attempt to bring their American sensibilities to the European labor market.
They will have to give in or close shop. Simply two options available. Musk is pretty irrational when it comes to backing down so I suspect the latter. I was just about to buy a new Tesla when this kicked off and don’t fancy the risk of having a car I can’t service, so shopped around and discovered other EVs can be just as good with better build quality nowadays! So that’s a nice outcome for me.
The Finnish dock workers just announced that they are also joining the strike. Tesla would lose the whole Nordic market for something that surely is peanuts in the company scale. One could assume that an agreement would make financial sense.
Yes, but there are only 10M people there (and only 25M people in the nordic countries).
To put it in perspective, the total number of Teslas sold over the entire history of Tesla in all of the Nordic countries is less than half of how many Teslas were sold in the US in 2023 alone.
One factor that could be a thing in the next few years is the R&D on EVs, green mining, and rare mineral deposits found in Northern Sweden. Sweden now has the largest despot of materials used in EV batteries in Europe and is leading in green mining to be able to access those minerals while meeting climate targets. These materials are expensive and hard to transport - Tesla could use this as an opportunity to set up some R&D there and get access to the materials logistics to bring them to Germany, etc. Which I'm sure has crossed their minds. But if they fight the unions and storm off they're not going to be winning any bids for that extra stuff.
Countries like Sweden have form on using their natural resources to build vast state funds which are then used to improve conditions yet further, creating a virtuous cycle of opportunity and innovation in the process. Norway did this very successfully with oil money. There's no reason to think Sweden wouldn't go this way with their rare minerals.
While the rest of the world looks on in envy, wondering why it is seemingly so impossible to replicate elsewhere.
which almost always is immature behavior, whereas adults think solution-oriented, which sometimes is called "Realpolitik" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik).
Doesn't get better in this particular case where musk is opposing to officially agree to common worker protection rules, wages, ... he already follows. Just another case of "dumb behavior".
Yes, I'm not talking about money here. Irrational means making bad decisions. The bad decision here is to continue playing with a bad hand against someone who isn't going to fold. Sweden is not going to fold so either Musk folds now to avoid more embarrassment & costs, or keeps going and folds in the future. It'd be more rational to just pull out of Sweden than fight a losing battle, as you said money isn't that much of a factor here.
I would actually like to know if there have been any. I'm quite open to criticising things that he has actually done, and have made criticisms of him plenty of times. But I'm not aware of any journalists that he's kicked off twitter/X. The closest to such a scenario that I'm aware of is him (so far) not allowing Alex Jones back on, but he didn't actually kick him off.
> Twitter has suspended the accounts of several prominent reporters who cover Elon Musk, including Ryan Mac of The New York Times, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, The Intercept’s Micah Lee, and Mashable’s Matt Binder, Aaron Rupar, and Tony Webster.
Thanks for that link. I wasn't aware that he suspended journalists at that time. However, I do note that they were only suspended and not banned. And this is consistent with what he has said on a number of occasions, that people might get 'timeouts' (in this case for doxing) but he's against permanent bans. Just checked two of the accounts (Ryan Mac, @RMac18 and Aaron Rupar, @atrupar) named in the article and they are active today.
I would like to know if there are any journalists he has permanently banned. As used to happen quite often on twitter, pre-Musk acquisition.
Ok, this particular case is interesting and certainly looks concerning.
Checked his handle [1] and yeah, it's still "suspended" over 6 months later. And while it only says "suspended" there, according to this thread [2], the message he originally got was that he had been "permanently suspended", which does imply a ban. And is also somewhat disingenuous because a suspension should imply temporality.
Appreciate you providing the link. Perhaps I've been living in a bit of a bubble because I hadn't heard of this.
