A gentle reminder that the union and Tesla are still fighting in #Sweden.
Translation by Google.
After Tesla’s defeat in the Supreme Court, the company is now taking the issue to the administrative court. It is “sad” that the company is spending millions in legal proceedings rather than providing the same conditions as the rest of the industry, according to the ST union.
Tesla’s legal battle to persuade the Swedish Transport Agency to break the blockade and hand over the license plates seemed over. But after the case went through all the courts and was thrown out by the Supreme Court, the company is now appealing to the Administrative Court in Karlstad instead.
– I’m not surprised, but I’m still a little disappointed. Are these processes going to continue forever?, says Joakim Lindqvist, union lawyer at the ST union.
Since November 2023, ST and Seko have blocked Tesla’s mail in sympathy with IF Metall’s demand for a collective agreement with the company. This had the effect that the license plates that Tesla needs from the Swedish Transport Agency to put new Tesla cars into service got stuck in the system.
But while Tesla and the unions are playing a cat-and-mouse game with alternative addresses that the union then blocks, Tesla is pursuing the issue in the country’s courts.
Now they are demanding that the administrative court in Karlstad force the Swedish Transport Agency to hand over the plates directly to the company.
“How the provision should be practically implemented so that the license plates reach Tesla is, according to Tesla, a question that the Swedish Transport Agency can appropriately take a position on,” Tesla writes in the appeal, according to Dagens Arbete, which was first to report on the new process.
The Swedish Transport Agency does not want to break the blockade So far, the Swedish Transport Agency has not filed a response, but in the district court, the court of appeal, and thus also the Supreme Court, the authority’s position has been that they cannot make exceptions to the procedures for Tesla.
It’s very unusual in Sweden for the unions or the employers to take a staunch ideological stance instead of finding common ground, which is why this conflict really sticks out.
It’s long since expected that the parties would have reached an understanding by now; instead, Tesla keeps trying to circumvent the situation while dragging out a losing process in court .
Both parties lose, which is why it makes little sense.
It’s very unusual in Sweden for the unions or the employers to take a staunch ideological stance instead of finding common ground, which is why this conflict really sticks out.
To be clear, this is caused by Tesla’s blanket refusal to engage.
It’s because eventually they reach a person and it has to take a stance and decide then reply why it is siding on the non human side. In a megacorp, there is no resource like that, the Corp is sentient and decides and any employee that does not produce 100% efficiency in line with policy is terminated from its body immediately, which causes the megacorp to become psychopathic and it starts killing people if they do not bend
A corporation is not a sentient self-governing being…
This is about Muskyboi’s hurt widdle feefees, not about any actual issue. He just can’t admit to be wrong and cannot accept losing.
There absolutely is an issue. The union wants Tesla to join the collective agreement in Sweden like all major companies and Tesla disagrees. There is room for understanding from both sides.
Which middle ground is there between being in a collective agreement or outside of it?
The only hypothetical i would see it being in it, but with “special conditions”, think the UK pre Brexit. But that is not in the interest of everyone else in the collective agreement
There is lots of room for understanding… you give some and take some, that’s how negotiations works.
It is a collective agreement. So it is not negotiated between Tesla and the workers directly. It is negotiated between a representation of the industry employers and a representation of the Unions. So the Employers side across the industry organizes itself internally what its positions are and the workers side does the same. Then their representatives negotiate changes that are valid across the entire industry.
These agreements do only leave small wiggle room for individual companies and their workers, because the collective agreements are by the very design set to define standards for the entire industry.
Think of it like the EU. If a new country wants to join the EU it cannot just make its demands on how to change all the EU law for itself. It has to mostly join the already agreed upon collective rules and then it can work together with the other countries, if it sees changes necessary. But these then dont apply for this country individually but in all of the EU.
Ok, fine, for example; Tesla joins the collective agreement and in return Tesla gets a guarantee for the pay-increase for the next 2 years.
I’m just sitting here wondering if you have any personal experience of union negotiations in Sweden? Because I do.
The major point of disagreement does not seem to revolve around setting the wages for the next two years, but whether to be in the collective agreement or not.
That is why the radical far right neoliberal ideologues at Tesla fight against it so much. Whatever the workers would offer in return, this point means whether Tesla would play by the normal rules and respect organized workers. It is staunchly against their ideology and that is why there is this whole situation. Tesla does not care about whether the wages change for the next two years by 0%, 3% or 5% . They care about whether they get to act like American capitalists, or whether they have to follow the Swedish way in Sweden.
And this issue goes beyond Sweden. Tesla is fiercely fighting unionization in all places. It is part of their core business ideology. In the same way wherever Tesla went in Europe they made a point of violating labor laws, because they deem themselves superior to European laws.
The collective agreements in question are optional to join though, and the actual employees it would cover don’t seem to want it. Otherwise they could join the union and strike themselves
They do Strike. Would you please Stop lying?
The union told Reuters that about 44 of its members - roughly a third of Tesla’s Swedish mechanics - had downed tools at the company, which does not produce vehicles in Sweden but services them locally.
33% is a Lot for a conflict that goes on that Long. Clearly everyone is very happy with their Lord and Savior Musk
Or are you a paid anti-Union-Shill?
So one third opted to get full pay to do nothing and two thirds opted to not strike? Not a lot of support for the union…
That’s not how it works lol
So how does it work?
Your name is funny when you drop stuff like this 😁
It’s a bit of an overreach from the unions. They’re doing a very weird kind of “strike” where they disallow postal workers to serve Tesla as a customer. So the postal workers are still at their job, getting paid, but just not doing a tiny bit of their job.
If they want to strike, they should stop work entirely. If they don’t strike, people should do their job. Otherwise you pretty much give the union mob-like power to deny any service to anyone they don’t like, for free.
Important context here is that the actual employees of Tesla aren’t on strike or fighting to join the union. It’s the union trying a hostile takeover on their own initiative
Counterpoint: I think this is a far better form of protest because it directly targets the party being protested against with a lesser impact on everyone else. It reminds me of a transport protest (I believe it was in Japan?) where the buses were working as normal but not collecting any fares from passengers.
It’s not weird, it’s a solidarity strike, its very normal across the world.
The US made them illegal since they like to overregulate unions.
I have nothing against a solidarity strike but having the power to say “this specific thing you can’t do because we’re on strike for that tiny bit” is a bad power to give someone. Unions and employers are somewhat balanced in that employers need people to work and unions can’t strike forever as it costs money. Make strikes free and you break that.
I imagine this will end with unions losing this power, or a conclusion that they never actually had that power.
Again there are no “free Strikes”, uneducated American or paid BSer
A whole row of courts just ruled they have that power. Europe is different in that courts have very little legislative power if any. This is the law, courts are only there to enforce it.
How do you imagine solidarity strikes anyway? It’s always been “we don’t work with you if you don’t work with us”. That’s the deal. It always was. That’s why the system works. Funnily enough, other employers also don’t want Tesla to fuck around, because the current compromise is a hard fought one for them as well.
Workers run the economy. They have all the power. Funny thing is, even if a court ruled like how you imagine, or if the government changed the rules, it would just trigger a general strike, and Tesla would end up even worse.
The relevant workers are mostly not in power in this case. It’s not like the workers at Tesla are upset enough at their working conditions that they voted to strike. Some minority of the tesla workers are in the union and that union decided they should then have power over all the workers, regardless of what they want.
The union does this from time to time, sometimes driving the company out of business in the process, making all the actually relevant workers lose their job.
Unions are great when they actually care for the people they organise, but the union in sweden will happily sacrifice you and your job to make a symbolic point
Elon Musk won’t fuck you
The Swedish System has so far worked Well for everyone, ensuring decent wealth for everyone.
Musk wants to Break it.
I doubt there’s that much of a plan behind Musk’s actions, and I don’t support musk in general, but there’s no legal requirement to sign a collective agreement and I don’t like unions strongarming companies into a deal that’s supposedly optional.
If the employees want to strike to get one, go for it.
If the union wants to hit largely unrelated companies with strikes, it’s a bit weird. Back in 2019 that was abused enough to get somewhat restricted by law, and it probably should be further restricted.
If unions go “oh you can’t deliver mail to this address specifically because we’re on strike there, and they can’t come and collect their mail either, because we’re on a micro-strike there too… and they can’t get their mail directly from the government because that would invalidate our plan” they’re overreaching.
no legal requirement to sign a collective agreement and I don’t like unions strongarming companies into a deal that’s supposedly optional.
The Swedish courts seem to think that there is also no legal requirement for anyone to do what Musk wants.
True, but irrelevant
I don’t like unions strongarming companies
‘i don’t like it when the people who produce value for the capitalists have a say in their working conditions’
‘i don’t like it when corporations are forced to comply with the rule of law’
‘i don’t like it when neoliberals have to comply with local labour market practises in foreign markets’
‘i don’t like it when other people pull the boot out of my mouth’
Pointless
Most of what you wrote is just wrong.
Go on