unions

"Since the strike began a year ago, other unions have elected to support the Swedish workers. That means the shipping of Tesla cars to Swedish ports has been blocked, the cleaning of Tesla facilities has been halted, postal deliveries for Tesla — including new license plates — to all Tesla offices no longer take place, and connecting new Tesla Supercharger stations to the power grid has been interrupted. Tesla has repeatedly lost legal battles against these solidarity strikes and was recently required to pay SEK6.5m ($607,000) in legal costs to PostNord, the Swedish postal service."

I wish we had that kind of solidarity here in the USA... and that the courts would uphold the right to do so.

Swede here, we have had strong labour laws and union laws for many years. The general reaction among people here when Musk tried anything remotely close to strike breakers were laughter about how stupid it sounds. It still baffles me that something like that is even allowed in the US.

We have many strictly enforced laws that help workers and employees not be abused by their employers. Unions have way more legal power and rights than in the US and usually just the mention of them makes employers bend over.

It is very funny to watch Musk trying to salvage his mess because thats just not how it works here.

Ofcourse our system isnt perfect, there are lot of flaws but its an imaginary utopia compared to whatever the US has.

reading this article makes me wish that i lived in sweden; but only if looked like a swede.

There is some fearmongering in the news about the Tesla debacle. All around me I keep hearing people complaining about the Tesla situation as if unions are a bad thing. I've seen several "debates" from crocked asshats (i.e. "news sites" people genuinely believe have their best interest) bringing up, which is probably where their attitude comes from. Here's two lightbulbs from "Almega":

"Now exposed by LO vs Tesla, todays laws, rules, and regulations risks the will of employers to sign collective agreements and are thus a threat to the Swedish Model."

and

"Tesla has proven that strike rights needs to be reformed and modernized or risk political intervention."

These statements are so fucking backwards and braindead. Like, who's dumb enough to interpret it the way it's intended by the copy? Anyone who has even slightest understanding of the "swedish model", knows that what's happening right now is exactly how it was designed to happen when pompus martians think they alone has greater power than humanity. it's not a threat to the model, it's working by design! if employers don't want to dela with the collective agreement (of the people), they do not belong on the swedish market.

The second statement is equally offensive, so we need political intervention to stop political intervention? Alrighty then. It's just so confusing though, why do we need to reduce the rights of people to benefit business owners? Who do they think run this world, the wealthy elite aka. corporate business owners, or the people who are actually putting in their time, effort, sweat, blood and labour, to literally take care of everything and run this system we live in?

Honestly, if they don't want to get assfucked by the people actually producing their wealth, they shouldn't overstep. It's not rocket science. But I suppose, particularly in the experience of Americans like Musk, the concept of suffering consequences to idiot actions seems foreign, and yet, he seems to be suffering consequence after consequence for his more recent choices, especially after one particular choice starting in 2022.

Regardless, Sweden is likewise becoming less and less like it used to be. Employers on average used to be just another employee (to themselves), but nowadays more and more employers start feeling like they're part of some elite group who are better and more deserving than others, and this shit has been leaking out into our politics, and radicalizing a large segment of our population in ways that might eventually cause some very real damage worse than we saw during the industrialization and up until the 1920ies.

My grandparents and those of their generation were part of the force who started their lives with no rights, no wealth, no means, and they would have been appalled to see how far we have fallen over the last 20 years of political development in this country. One chip at a time. Nearly all the people who lived through the labour revolution are all gone now, and we're regressing back to the standards they fought to create, our parents being the sole generation who grew up during a time of collective wealth and possibilities - and these asshats just keep saying "look at the numbers!" like their continued legacy benefits will somehow be passed along to the next generation while touting "what's mine is mine!".

“Musk can make up his own rules when he reaches Mars…

The award for Burn of the Week goes to Esther Lynch, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation.