Lawsuit is about the state telling postnord a mail delivery company, to not deliver licence plates in some weitd sympathy action.
Tesla won the suit and the licence plates have to be delivered.
Tesla sued Transportstyrelsen, not the postal service, the state is not telling Postnord not to deliver, its the union. They won an interim injunction likely arguing that their business would be hurt short term. The other side has not been heard yet and there's been no judgement.
> (translated) They approve the interim request. They say that the Swedish Transport Agency must give consent for Tesla to pick up the license plates from the manufacturer of license plates.
they will not be delivered. Tesla was allowed to pick them up.
"This confiscation of license plates constitutes a discriminatory attack without any support in law directed at Tesla," the American electric car giant wrote in documents submitted to the Norrköping district court on Monday seen by the Dagens industri newspaper.
From the European Public Service Union The right to strike in [..] Sweden:
Blockades and boycotts are widely used by trade unions in sympathy strikes or secondary action. Pursuant to the Co-determination Act, any sympathy strike undertaken in support of lawful primary collective action is also considered lawful.
Dockworkers and postal workers in both Sweden and Norway are refusing service to Tesla because Tesla has refused to discuss collective bargaining for five years.
while this comment is true, not sure what it has to do with the article.
from my understanding tesla is actually suing the state because there’s a law saying license plates can only be delivered via post. and the postal workers refuse to deliver anything to tesla (which seems a bit crazy considering there are laws about using the postal services).
but maybe i misunderstood something, so someone can correct me if i’m wrong.
> and the postal workers refuse to deliver anything to tesla (which seems a bit crazy considering there are laws about using the postal services).
It's not crazy when you understand the Swedish model: labour laws are minimal, setting just a very basic framework which is then taken to employers + employees negotiations to set the other terms of employment for an industry, in that it's a pretty free labour market. The counterpoint is that it's required that employers and employees collaborate to set the minimum arrangements for employment.
Tesla is refusing to abide by this model, in the Swedish model sympathy strikes are legal since that's one way that employees from other industries can support other workers in their struggles, the employees of PostNord decided to take sympathy action against Tesla for what they consider an attack to the whole model of employment and labour in the nation.
What is crazy is a company trying to subjugate a whole nation's system of employment for their own benefit, for that Tesla is being collectively punished by workers in other industries for trying to undermine the labour market as a whole.
Lots of companies work without collective agreements in Sweden though. Under law it's completely free if you want to do so or not. You could as well say that the unions are threatening the Swedish model due to taking this to such extreme levels. Especially as it doesn't seem most employees at Tesla want the unions involved.
The way unions work in scandinavia is that they are decentralized but supportive of each other.
IE as long as the workers don't form an local chapter everything is fine the problem if that when such a chapter forms and the company ignores it every other union chapter is allowed to refuse to deliver work in support of an company that choose to refuse/fight unionization.
So for there to be an conflict there have to be an meaningful chapter formed within tesla's employee base that tesla refuses to acknowledge.
Now again remember that this system is core to the "flexsecurity" systems employed by all of the nordic countries which is generally based on fair negotiations between equal parties(union and company) if Tesla manage to break that model they force the bureaucracy and state to take over and set highly rules without any concerns for local details they way it typically happens in France which is going to hit their profitability far harder then allowing unionization.
I work for a US company and I can tell that US management doesn't give a rat's ass on local customs until it bites them. You can raise and escalate and whatnot, they will still push the locals to implement the illegal/unacceptable stuff if not immediately then boiling the frog - anything goes until some agency or legal suit says whoa stop.
They are engaging lawyers and engaging with some of Sweden's most popular and powerful NGO's that's not doing nothing that's actively throwing money into a fight that's both hard to win and where the worst outcome might actually be for Tesla to "win".
Again the "laizes faire" no labor protections of America just don't exist in Europe the question is weather you negotiate with an equal partner made up from your own employee's or have the state bureaucracy micromanage local details.
So much "Network effects for me, but not for thee" vibes in this thread.
Lets be clear. The VC streak on this forum would viciously exploit any opportunity to wrest every cent out of any even ambiguously quasi-legal network-effect-if-you-look-hard-enough.
I personally get great amusement in seeing the shoe on the other foot for once. Rock on, Nordic fellows!
They do while conditions are ok, it seems like conditions are not ok for these workers hence they pushing for a CBA.
And while lots of companies work without a CBA here in Sweden, 90% of employees are covered by CBAs, so the vast majority are covered by one and Tesla fighting this by bringing scabs (a huge, huge no-no in here) is quite stupid. If they thought a CBA would be bad for business then strikes are even worse, it's their choice now to sign one or not with all the costs associated on not having one.
Most employees don't seem to be in support of the unions at this point though? It's a bit hard to tell as there are no official numbers, but from what I've seen it seems like ~90% or so of employees at Tesla remain at work. And there is a high demand for their services, so they could easily go to other companies for work if conditions are bad.
Not all workers have joined the union and wouldn't get paid by the union to strike. But unions use sympathy strikes against companies that might retaliate against their workers if they strike, Tesla has already made threats. So going by how many of the workers at Tesla are striking or not is not a good measurement.
The union is offering free memberships and 130% of normal pay. Tesla employees still don’t want to strike [1]. This is why the unions are using these extreme tactics.
Think of it this way instead, the people working there have their own rights to refuse to do so. They the people aren't "Postnord" the company, they are individuals who are free to act on their own, they aren't slaves to their company.
Yet you think tying people's hands and forcing them into furthering the interests of a foreign business venture's goals at the expense of the locality is okay?
Ask yourself, why is that okay? Why is it more wrong for a locality to refuse to cooperate with an uncooperative outsider than for an uncooperative outsider to act in a highly disruptive manner to the sensibilities of a foreign locale in the first place?
What would you do if it was you in their position?
> Yet you think tying people's hands and forcing them into furthering the interests of a foreign business venture's goals at the expense of the locality is okay?
i did not write that.
my point was that as long as there are laws enacted by the state that mandate using a specific intermediary and then that intermediary refuses service to a 3rd party, that means that the law needs changing as that intermediary now has unintended power over both the 3rd party and the state. double so when it comes to something as mundane as postal services.
Striking is one thing, but targeting an individual company is another. They are not striking, they are selectively denying a critical service to force submission.
It is not hard to imagine scenarios where this is weaponized with horrifying outcomes.
"It is not hard to imagine scenarios where this is weaponized with horrifying outcomes."
Well, it is for me to imagine - could you expand on "horrifying"? The Mirriam W definitions don't seem to make sense when used in your particular context.
What I don't get is: a strike is a protest in which workers refuse to work but also pay by renouncing their salary for the days they didn't work. If post employees selectively decide to not deliver to a specific client or address, what cost are they sustaining? Is their salary impacted?
Nordic unions underwrite the cost of strike action and pay workers any lost wages that result.
There's a statement by IF Metals (the central metalworking union whose ~130 odd members are being refused a collective agreement by Tesla) that they'll support their workers through this. I would image that postal and dockworkers see similar support from their unions (although they are working on every item save those that go to/fro Tesla and are not affected to the same degree).
They don't just teleport into a stack in the parking lot of the post office on their own. A pickup would involve employees. Who are members of the union.
But they aren't. Also unions can't push these sympathy strikes too far, by doing targeted denial of government services they are really making it easy for the current right wing government in Sweden to add regulations to prevent unions from denying government services via sympathy strikes in the future. There are already such laws for healthcare etc.
They aren't because the situation doesn't require it yet? If the rules/regulations regarding delivery of plates changes union action will change to address that. If the government does something to curb union power (in a non life and death situation) they'll likely lose the next election.
> If the government does something to curb union power (in a non life and death situation) they'll likely lose the next election.
No they wont, if they do something like: "Sympathy strikes is not a valid reason to refuse to deliver mail" nobody who currently votes right will think that is bad. Post workers can then still strike for better conditions for themselves, but they can't shut down the postal system for companies they don't like.
Mail is necessary for many government functions, it isn't some optional thing that you can work around.
Edit: Seems like the courts agrees that this is a necessary function so they have to give them to Tesla via alternate means:
If they do something they would have to change the law as the Swedish system does not use Ministerial governance for individual cases like this.
So far only Tesla has been heard in court, Judge ordered temporary relief as Tesla argued that their business would be hurt short term, it's not a final decision. Workers at the factory are also part of a union, so they may refuse to hand any plates out.
As I understand it: The law is that the government agency must make new license plates “available” to Tesla. They tried to argue in court that it was sufficient for them to put license plates in the mail. But the court sided with Tesla, at least in the interim. So it’s definitely not open-and-shut case for the unions.
"Norrköping district court said the agency must find a way to get the plates to Tesla within seven days or pay a fine of 1 million Swedish crowns (~$96,000)."
But there are obviously also other laws in Sweden. For (an obvious) example, the police union can’t decline to investigate crimes against Tesla owners.
The Scandinavian countries are generally quite similar in these matters. In Denmark, uniformed police can't strike. It's part of the way they're employed, in return, they're almost impossible to fire except for cases of gross violation of their duty. I'm almost certain Sweden is the same, but I'd love for a Swede to chime in. It's called Tjenestemænd in Danish.
No, you got it quite right I think. The government agency in question has a deal with Postnord (owned mainly by the Swedish state) to utilise them for all mail services. License plates has to be sent by mail. Postnord employees refuses to do so to Tesla. I believe they've also said they'd refuse to hand them out to Tesla should they come asking for them. In effect, not legal way for Tesla to sell cars in Sweden at this point.
At least not directly, if they sell via a dealership/importer who employs unionized labor they have no problem it's only direct from Tesla sales that's impacted but then again a big part of Tesla's model is of cause that they don't use franchised dealerships as middlemen.
I had wondered whether "sympathy strikes" would have some effect here about a month ago[1]. Looks like it did. Though I wouldn't have guessed this pretty genius angle of blocking the only contractual way to get number plates.
The Swedish Transport Agency says they are only able to ship license plates using PostNord according to regulation, so I'm not sure how exactly Tesla thought they were going to win this lawsuit.
Tesla is trying any means necessary since they know that Swedish labour laws are strong: if they do not have a union agreement, workers are allowed to strike (indefinitely). This vacuum we are now in is probably very costly for Tesla so I at this point I think it is an ideological/personal battle..
Are they on strike though? Are they refusing to come in to work and not being paid?
From the blurb it sounds like they're choosing to not deliver mail to one particular person/company .. which sounds absurd.. I assume postal workers can't on their own decide to not deliver mail to people/companies they don't like as long as it's framed as a protest
I think they probably have the power to not cross a picket line, or even a full blown sympathy strike if they want. In this case, the union who wants Tesla to accept the sectoral contract is striking, so the postal union is refusing to cross the picket line by doing business with Tesla.
That doesn't make sense. It says they're refusing to allow Tesla to pick up the license plates as well. And in any case, is a picket line a legally protected entity now?
Stealing or withholding property is not a legitimate form of striking. If you don't want to deliver something, fine, but you can't stop someone from picking it up themselves
They are not stealing or withholding the property - they are refusing to deliver it. They are not stopping someone from picking it up, postnord is. It would be weird for any carrier to allow outsiders to enter their premises.
Just going by what's been reported, so let me clarify I'm totally ignorant of the actual facts of Swedish law. But it appears that Tesla can't pick the plates up due to a law on the books stating that plates must be sent via mail.
I'm using the word "picket line" informally to describe a strike / labor action, which I would guess is a legally protected and regulated thing in Sweden, as indeed in the US.
Good, I’m rooting for the people. Tesla (and others) are blatantly ignoring human decency and social contracts in the pursuit of their founder’s greed. This must stop. I’m glad Sweden has strong enough labour unions to battle this at scale and head on, unlike most other countries where it’s too easy for corporations to exploit workers with little to be repercussions other than the occasional drop in the bucket settlement and massive profits.
Costly in terms of eventually being forced to choose between allowing unionization and leaving the nordic market entirely.
It's something that just about every other big anti-union American company have had to deal with and it's in the past always led to the American company basically surrendering and allowed unionization usually without any major loss of profit/revenue, apart from the money wasted fighting the strong and very popular Scandinavian trade unions.
Yup, not aware of any US company that would have exited nordics because of unions. Nordics are politically very integrated societies and large scale actors are all perceived to ”play on the same side” including unions etc. So Tesla is not just taking on the unions, they are challenging the entire social contract by proxy.
Which is a number that makes it worse... it means they're only popular in at most 4 countries, and have stiff competition (or in general unappealing to buyers) everywhere else.
If they were selling like hotcakes more equally around the world, a place with only 10% of US sales would not be in their top 5.
5th largest country by revenue. By the "population" or "territory" logic, Russia, India and China should be the most important markets for Tesla (they are not).
Elon dont control Tesla the way he does X and have been consistently overruled by his the tesla board of directors so this will merely be another case of Elon loosing face.
If he does that, he will have to do the same with norway, and probably Denmark too.
Also, Tesla will have to open-source his hardware, because it will have to respect warranties, and without transport/local Tesla shops, the only alternative will be conventional car shop, which right now cannot really serve Teslas, at least in France.
> Also, Tesla will have to open-source his hardware, because it will have to respect warranties, and without transport/local Tesla shops, the only alternative will be conventional car shop, which right now cannot really serve Teslas, at least in France.
If force majeure is a valid reason to not receive mail, how is it not a valid reason to ignore warranties? Sauce for the goose and gander and all that.
Sorry, the situation is complex and I should have been more clear. As long as Tesla tries to operate normally in Sweden despite the strike, it probably won't be an issue (might go to court but it will win). If Tesla leave Sweden however, and the strike stops, Tesla might have to open source its hardware for local mechanics.
Yes, sorry i wasn't clear, but consumer protection laws spawns across all EU (i think it's more than that, even Switzerland is in that agreement), so if Tesla do not respect Swedish warranties, Tesla would be at risk in the whole EU.
And Eu is not the US. Some young people might like and follow Musk and his venture a lot, but most people just do not care about him, and when it comes to consumer laws, EU do not joke around. If you have to trust EU to agree on one thing, it's consumer protection. More than market integrity, for sure (hence what is allowed to happen in Ireland: if you do not import consumer grade product or food, the irish sea border basically isn't enforced). So unless Tesla is far more popular accross EU than the Uk, Tesla will have to bend.
EU sucks ass for consumer protection. I bought an overengineered EU designed electric plug adapter in Paris. It wouldn’t work without applying 10kg of force to insert my charger, which it broke doing so.
Store wouldn’t offer a refund only replacement. Only got a refund after I made the clerk test the replacement which also had the same issue.
Same happened with floss that was the thickness of shoelace. Tried to return but Monoprix wouldn’t take it.
In the US, stores take back anything and if they don’t it’s a credit card chargeback away (which I would have done for the electric plug if they didn’t refund me.)
If you didn't involve the authorities to exercise your rights, it sounds more like anecdotal experiences with those particular stores than the entire EU "sucking ass".
This could be more expensive for Sweden if the US gov decides to retaliate (current or next one) or companies watching this and considering entering their market or not.
I mean, this is hardly the first time this has happened; US and other foreign companies have incurred the wrath of the unions in the Nordics before. Why would the US _government_ retaliate against the Swedish _government_ for a dispute between the Swedish unions and a company? What form would this retaliation take? Bear in mind that, for practical purposes, even if for some reason it wanted to (and again, why would it?) the US couldn't really impose trade sanctions on Sweden without starting a trade war with the Common Market as a whole.
As for other companies entering the market, like, this is a thing companies know about the market before going in. This isn't something new.
>Why would the US _government_ retaliate against the Swedish _government_ for a dispute between the Swedish unions and a company?
If you want to go down a fun rabbit hole, look into conspiracy theories about how many things Tesla's (and Amazon's and Apple's and Microsoft's and-) stock price is propping up.
US officials have done so lots of times. Go to any official political meeting between countries and US businesses are participating together with state officials. Like in US China meetings.
Xi Jinping just met with Tim Cook, Elon Musk, etc.
Clearly performative IMO. The likely outcome is that the 100-odd employees Tesla have in Sweden are transferred to some other organization (with a union agreement) and Tesla proper just does not do business directly in Sweden.
First, this will not be decided by the tingsrätt, second, the context is wider than this single issue. The “performative” is why doesn’t Tesla just sign a union agreement, that is performative.
> The “performative” is why doesn’t Tesla just sign a union agreement
Because very few (none?) employees working for Tesla are actually on strike. There are a lot of postal employees, dockworkers, etc on strike, but not many from Tesla.
It appears that the IF Metall wants Tesla to sign a collective agreement, but neither Tesla nor most (all?) of Tesla's employees want that. As far as I can ascertain, the union's only grievance against Tesla is that they do not have a collective bargaining agreement (not pay, not conditions).
IF Metall has gotten so little traction that they are offering even non-member Tesla employees 130% of normal pay to go on strike, and also publicly talking about sanctions against member employees who continue to show up to work.
> they are offering even non-member Tesla employees 130% of normal pay to go on strike
That's what all striking members get. The extra 30% is meant to make up for benefits lost during the strike (e.g. retirement fund contributions and vacation day accrual).
The "special" thing they've done is to waive the waiting period that normally applies to new members, so that workers who do agree with the strike can join without to much financial risk.
> talking about sanctions against member employees who continue to show up to work
The sanction is expulsion from the union. Strikebreaking weakens the strike and the union, so that makes perfect sense.
On the "what is the legal basis for..." I think Tesla is beginning a process to have their hinds (and stock price) protected. A businessman will not just raise his hands up in the air in despair and say "ok I will not proceed". No, he/Tesla is suing as they have every right to and if local/top Swedish court says "oops can't do anything" then they can easily escalate to a higher court (EU) will solve it for them. Meanwhile a higher court can slap Sweden with a beautiful fine i.e. "after 1/1/2025 you will be paying €1m per week until you resolve this.
There are many solutions to this problem, and Swedish post office being a sympathetic dick is not (imho) the right way.
It's not the post office, it's its employees. Being a dick must be culture-dependent as I don't think many Swedes will consider someone being a dick for protecting their nation's social contract.
Sounds like an extremely optimistic timeline for this suit to have gone through the Swedish administrative court, the Swedish administrative court of appeal, the Swedish Supreme Administrative Court, the EU legal system and have the EU legal system impose a penalty payment in 400 days.
If Tesla has to do this, I'm guessing their cars are not going to have license plates for quite some time.
You can take things to the EU courts only in specific cases. You have to find out if it's an applicable human rights issue (it isn't). You can try to get the European Commission interested (good luck with that). Etc. Even if an EU court examined the case and made a decision, Sweden wouldn't necessarily implement the judgement.
>After the supreme court of Sweden you can take things to the EU court.
The EU doesn't have an appellate court; unless there's a question of interpretation of EU law (and that's for the court to decide, not parties to the case) there's no basis for making a referral.
Rules? Collective agreements are entirely voluntary, by law.
What is happening is that the union is using connected companies to force Tesla to sign a collective agreement.
Employees are not prohibited from joining the union themselves, they are protected by law and Tesla can not stop them nor fire them for it.
From what I've read, the employees are quite happy as it is, and a collective agreement would actually make thing worse as it puts some restrictions on the relation between employer/employee.
Also not that Sweden is not US, there are a bunch of laws that protects workers, no matter if they are in a union or not.
> Employees are not prohibited from joining the union themselves, they are protected by law and Tesla can not stop them nor fire them for it.
Joining an union does not equate to having a CBA.
> From what I've read, the employees are quite happy as it is, and a collective agreement would actually make thing worse as it puts some restrictions on the relation between employer/employee.
What restrictions? Collective bargaining agreements set the minimum bar of the employment relationship, if Tesla already has better terms there's no reason to not sign one. They aren't forbidden to provide anything that is better than the agreement, they are only forbidden to go lower than the agreement.
>and a collective agreement would actually make thing worse as it puts some restrictions on the relation between employer/employee.
The collective agreement puts 0 restrictions, it's essentially just a form of safeguard to protect employees from abuse. They can still have higher salaries, bonuses, longer vacations etc.
If the employees are not interested, the employer is not interested, yet they are forced to do something they do not want (and which is voluntary, again by law) then it's not being "stubborn".
The union is doing this because they have members working for Tesla which has refused to sign a collective agreement for 5 years. Not all workers there have to want it, not even a majority.
I have zero insight into how Tesla workers are treated here in Sweden, but it’s important to note that Sweden doesn’t even have a minimum wage law (it has been directly opposing such rules on an EU-level as well) because this should be negotiated between workers (unions) and employers. If Tesla continues to operate in Sweden without a collective agreement this model will break down.
People are tired of Tesla articles so they more often flag them. Flags bring articles down. These articles do often lead to flames so it's not without merit.
It hasn't been bad so far, similar regulations have been around since 1938 and updated in 74; Sweden punches way above its size in economic output, the country's labour market was built on this foundation and it's worked pretty damn well.
I think Sweden will be absolutely fine if Tesla packs up and leaves, it's not like the market disappears because they left, there's just more space for competitors to take over Tesla's marketshare.
- Loss of jobs, I don't know how many. (But the workers would prob. be quite bitter, they earned more with Tesla shops than standard shops)
According to IF Metall, Tesla employees earn less than the average in the "Motorbranschavtalet" -- the collective agreement they should have.
- May be bad for Swedish investments, since a union deal would now be mandatory.
Nine out of ten Swedes already have jobs covered by union collective agreements. Most of the ones who are not under an agreement work in smaller companies. It is almost unheard of for a company the size of Tesla to refuse. This has been the situation for decades and we have plenty of investments, so this Tesla clownshow changes nothing.
- Less electric cars, less good for the environment.
There are plenty of other brands who would very much like to take the spot of Tesla's 5th largest market in the world and Sweden's #1 selling car (Tesla Model Y).
- € ~100M/year in tax lost from sales.
Again, plenty of other more respectable brands out there that we can buy instead. Tesla is free to keep digging their own grave, Sweden will be doing just fine.
You don't think Tesla owners would seek reimbursement if they cannot service their cars anymore? The government would likely get involved to avoid Tesla car e-waste, either to force car returns and repayment or to allow 3rd party mechanics to work on their cars.
> or to allow 3rd party mechanics to work on their cars.
EU law state you can use whatever shop you want to service you car and it will still be under warranty. I have never once in my life used the dealer for repairs or service unless it was warranty/recall.
It is odd that Tesla went to Sweden only to make such a fuss over local customs. On the other hand what's going on does not show Sweden in a particularly positive light, either IMHO.
At this point everyone loses but it doesn't seem likely that unions will back down.
You don't own the plates and transfer them between cars in Sweden, they are sold with the licence plates, and they will be on the car until it gets scrapped.
The only exception is for "personal plates" which are customised plates that work as an alias to the car's registered plate (the one attached to the car's VIN), those can be moved to a new car when its VIN is registered to a normal registration plate.
Not in the US - plates stay with the owner (or get returned to the local DMV) when a car is sold.
Sounds like Sweden is the opposite - plates move with the car. Which sort of makes more sense to me.
Except most of the cars I've owned have come from out-of-state, so I'd need new plates anyways (plates are issued at the state level, not national in the US).
Seems very likely the strike action will win out, otherwise there's no effective route to strike action from postal workers. Whether they aren't allowed to strike or Postnord is allowed to bring in non-union workers, both would neutralise any strike effectiveness, and given Sweden's strong labour laws it seems unlikely that would be the case.
Another way of looking at it is that Postnord is not refusing as a policy to deliver mail, and that's probably what the legal obligation is around. It's just that their employees are striking so mail isn't currently being delivered. The same happens in the UK, Royal Mail are obligated to deliver to every address, but that doesn't stop there being strikes.
> and given Sweden's strong labour laws it seems unlikely that would be the case
Sweden doesn't have strong labour laws, Sweden just doesn't regulate union power that much. Unions are extremely powerful entities with no regulations so you have to limit it a bit, just like you have to limit the power of private corporations.
If a private corporation could block your access to essential government services then that would be a big problem, the same applies to unions. The government is supposed to be impartial in this case, a union shouldn't be allowed to block essential government services.
> Unions are extremely powerful entities with no regulations so you have to limit it a bit
Why?
> just like you have to limit the power of private corporations.
Not the same thing. Unions act in the interest of their members and even other workers non-members. Corporations act in the interest of their shareholders, against workers (lower salary => profit) and ordinary citizens (polution, monopoly, prices, lower quality => all profit).
Or maybe you are not interested in all that?
> If a private corporation could block your access to essential government services then that would be a big problem
Like how my internet service provider could (if they wanted to) block my access to government sites? Yes. True. Big problem. But they can. Right now, they can.
> the same applies to unions
But they only block it for a company, a specific company. Why should companies be treated like natural persons?
> The government is supposed to be impartial in this case
Wrong. So wrong I'm shocked anyone could say this. Are you paid to troll?
Did you ever hear of a concept called "DEMOCRACY"?
Goverments should act in the interest of their citizens (who voted!), not be impartial to citizens vs. corporations. More than that they should be impartial and act for the good of ALL their citizens, not doing favors to Tesla customers who didn't receive their toy before Christmas.
It depends on whats actually in the lawsuit. The regulations may say that about the mail in general, but Tesla might just argue the government MUST supply a non Postnord method of distribution if Postnord doesn't have to do it.
Also, Postnord as an organization is different than a trade union in postnord, etc.
The law is not a "the writing says this so its always this". Saying "postal law vs right to strikes" is a false dilemma. It might just mean "the government must allow an alternate distribution method for basic services if postnord has no obligation to deliver mail."
Good point. Delivery of mail and packages is critical infrastructure which the government should ensure. Therefore I would argue strikes within that field should be limited. I am certain doctors, police and military have limitations when it comes to strikes.
I like your interpretation as a work around. Postal workers, please go ahead and strike, but then the government/postnord have to provide alternative means to deliver mail and packages.
It's force majeure. The liberalisation of the postal service in the early 2000s gave workers the right to strike. When it was a monopoly, the workers didn't have the right to strike.
The suit isn't even targeting Postnord, but targeting the Swedish Transport Agency instead. So Tesla's lawyers aren't even trying.
If the Transport Agency is directed to get the plates to Tesla in some other way, whatever party then needs to follow up on that (unionized Transport Agency personnel?) may also decide to strike, so it's questionable if this strategy is a good one.
Well, I mean, it's obviously a bad strategy to antagonize organized labor in a country with rule of law that observes its international obligations under ILO conventions, but, you know, given the circumstances.
I think Tesla's workers have issues with the law stating that all license plates must be delivered through Postnord. Tesla has tried to pick them up themselves, but since that is not allowed, and the strike is, it's basically state sanctioned theft.
If Postnord doesn't want to deliver, that's fine- but there should be a way to take possession of property.
It seems complicated because there are multiple unions involved in the strike. If I've understood correctly, the big union (IF Metall) and Tesla have clashed over wage bargaining, but now a supporting strike involves also the employees working on the number plates.
This situation seems to involve the union/unions responsible for mail delivery, who refuse to deliver packages from Tesla, and by law all plates must be sent via mail.
So the suit relates to the state enforced monopoly on license delivery? That I suppose makes more sense, but I can also see the argument that the license is an official document and hence must be delivered by official mail.
Something vaguely similar is playing out in Texas. Paper plates are now illegal, and not without good reason (widely forged), but in the context of other laws passed at the same time it seems aimed at tesla. Tesla has no dealerships, it has been said dealerships don't work well with EVs because the lack of maintenance which sustains a dealership. In Texas you are required to have a dealership to sell cars. Briefly Tesla was going to transport the vehicles in TX to the new Mexico border and back before delivering them to buyers. Some accomodations were made to prevent that, but now the way to get plates in the absence of paper ones from the government is... Dealerships are allowed to keep plates on trade ins to put on new cars as temporary plates.
From what I understand, actual tesla employees/contractors in Sweden are not interested in forming a union (they like the American shares model, I suppose), it's all the other unions forcing Tesla to have its employees form one, because how the minimum wage/collective bargaining system works in the nordics.
I understand that the other unions see this as the thin end of the wedge, if they allow Tesla to not form one, then others might follow and the scandanavian socio-capitalist system might fall. But I don't if we should blame Swedish Tesla employees wanting to profit from stonks.
Not overly knowledgeable on Swedish law, but the idea that a public sector union can decide to block public services (in this case postal delivery of license plates) for a single company as a sympathy strike seems pretty nuts to me.
Pretty sure Sweden would lose in European court at least (of course it would probably take a long time to percolate there).
PostNord is a private business owned by Sweden and Denmark. Unless there are specific laws to the contrary, its employees have the same right to strike as any other private sector employees.
(More generally, postal services in the EU tend to be structured as businesses these days, because they are in direct competition with various courier and package delivery services.)
Also, while the employees may be on strike, managers who rank high enough are not represented. If a company has particularly important obligations it needs to honor, it can always tell the managers to handle them personally.
Refusing to distribute mail to a specific recipient does not sound like a 'strike' in the sense of labour dispute to me. In France (often used a reference when it comes to striking...) that wouldn't be a legal strike, but obviously every jurisdiction is different.
In any case, this also probably breaches EU law related to universal postal service, which states that mail must be delivered to every address 5 days a week.
This is what sympathy strikes are, if you're a unionized commercial bakery who delivers to a unionized restaurant that's currently striking you don't go and strike against your own boss. That's silly. You refuse to cross the picket line and deliver goods and services to the business who's striking so they have a harder time operating.
That's like the entire point. They're so effective lots of places ban them which like... take that for what it's worth.
They're so effective lots of places ban them which like... take that for what it's worth.
In this case, they are violating consensuality. The Tesla workers don't want the collective agreement. The sympathy strikers are outsiders to the Tesla employee pool who are imposing the collective agreement on them.
Given this incident, I can understand why these are banned. It seems to have more to do with a political power play than it does worker's rights.
Well it is an ideological battle by a US company acting in an work environment very much unlike what the US has. I do hope the unions manage to keep this going for a year or two.
Nothing. Just like nothing stops the ones that do want a collection agreement as they work for Tesla and have join the union. There's no requirement for a majority wanting it or not.
It's not a question of any majority. If you don't want to work for Elon then... just don't. There are many other employers. He can't force you to work for $2/hour regardless of whether or not there is any collective bargaining agreement when you could get more than that across the street.
They are employees, members of a union, so the union has the right to demand a collective agreement. Tesla has the right to not sign it, but we have the right to strike enshrined in our constitution and sympathy strikes are legal.
* Is there any place for government to have labor laws at all? Because that argument applies to everything from pay, nondiscrimination, and safety.
* Do you not see unions as a market force? Government generally does more to hinder unions than support them and the laws on the books in most countries are there so naive owners who didn't read their history don't do go and get themselves dragged out of their office by an angry mob.
"EU countries are obliged to guarantee a permanent, affordable, universal postal service everywhere within their territory, i.e. they have to guarantee as a minimum the following:
- a service (collection from access points and delivery) on 5 working days a week (with exceptions);
- the collection, sorting, transport and delivery of postal items weighing up to 10 kg;
- services for registered and insured items." [1]
That being said, obviously the specific number of days is not important here.
Personal postage and large commercial shipments seem unrelated to me. Moreso if the former is via a government delivery service and the latter is via a private company.
To you perhaps, but not to universal postal service laws...
""The universal service obligation (USO) is the core of the Postal Services Directive (97/67/EC, amended by Directives 2002/39/EC and 2008/6/EC). This is the requirement that letters and parcels should be delivered to each home or business premises, on 5 days each week, throughout each EU country (with exemptions)."
Tesla has a right to postal service in the same way as everyone else.
"Med force majeure avses vanligen krig, upplopp, brand, naturkatastrofer (som översvämning, orkan, jordbävning), explosioner, strejk, nya lagar som förbjuder fullföljandet av avtalet, och liknande."
I'll assume you read Swedish since you seem to be an expert at the issue. If not, you can plug these into a translator yourself.
For the benefit of everyone else reading this discussion who doesn't speak Swedish... here's what I got from a good (paid) translation service:
"Force majeure typically refers to war, riots, fire, natural disasters (such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes), explosions, strikes, new laws prohibiting the fulfillment of the contract, and similar events."
The thing is though, Tesla isn't suing because their license plates aren't being delivered. They are suing because it was* literally impossible for them to access an essential government service.
(* was, because Tesla has won a preliminary decision forcing the state to allow Tesla to arange an alternative delivery method - probably Tesla sending someone around to the factory to pick up the plates)
In my opinion Force Majeure would only be a valid defence if it was the number plate factory workers who went on strike, but that's not what happened. The number plates are there, ready to go, and the state refused to allow Tesla to access them.
Force Majeure is not a blanket blanket right to do whatever you want. It only defends you in cases where you had no reasonable alternative available due to the strike.
I'm reminded of a time when flooding closed a railway line that I'd bought tickets for... the railway company didn't argue force majeure and cancel everyone's booking. They hired a dozen busses. You have an obligation to find a reasonable solution if the service you'd normally provide isn't possible.
In my case, the train service was 100% aware that they had a low bridge over a river that floods whenever there is heavy rain and therefore they couldn't argue that it was an unforeseen event. They would have been liable, not only for the cost of the train ticket, but also for any other damages/etc suffered by someone who was suddenly unable to get where they needed to go (booking a flight or regular bus wasn't possible, those don't have enough spare capacity for an entire train full of people). In this case, there is a perfectly reasonable and zero cost alternative to having license plates delivered by their usual method, and they can't refuse to use that alternative.
Making unions a "Force majeure" basically gives them the ability to smite as if they were gods.
European states have recently developed this annoying habit of "protecting" the rights of citizens, but then leaving loopholes that render the protections null and void. By recently, I mean since the early 20th century. The Weimar Republic is the poster child of that.
Workers at Tesla ARE citizens. The ones who voted against the collective bargaining agreement are the ones being forced against their will, using tactics reminiscent of strike-breakers from the 1900s.
Also, the reference has more to do with European laws being crafted with such exceptions, not whether they apply to natural persons or corporations.
> Also, while the employees may be on strike, managers who rank high enough are not represented. If a company has particularly important obligations it needs to honor, it can always tell the managers to handle them personally.
You have to get very high in the hierarchy before you find a manager that the unions will not represent. This is one of the major problems with the Nordic model I would say.
> This is one of the major problems with the Nordic model I would say.
I'd say it's a key factor to why it can sustain at all.
Compare to tech startups and big tech where I imagine the majority of those who would be able to drive a union are already intertwined enough in leadership that they feel prevented from organizing due to conflict of interest.
I'm not 'very high' at all (EU based, countries/rules differ). Just by title "Manager", I am not allowed by contract to join a Union.
The Unions would represent me, but I voluntarily signed away that particular right.
I do, though, thoroughly support the sympathy strikes: fuck you, tesla.
PostNord a publicly owned company, but it's an ordinary company by its legal status. The latter is what matters for the legal rights of its employees. Because PostNord is in direct competition with privately owned businesses, it should operate under the same rules as its competitors. It could be seen as an unfair an possibly illegal advantage if its employees were not allowed to strike.
That is not the sense of the word "private" used by jltsiren:
>>> its employees have the same right to strike as any other private sector employees.
A business owned by the state is part of the public sector, not the private sector. This isn't a question of whether shares of its stock are traded on a public exchange. Companies with publicly-listed stock are still private companies in this sense.
Because the right to strike is written in the constitution. Postnord isn't really in the wrong here, but instead it's the Swedish DMV that has a questionable inflexibility of using something else than Postnord. The state is not supposed to partake, intentionally or not, in this "game of chess" between employers and unions.
This is just how labor unions roll in the Nordic countries. McDonalds learned this in Denmark [1]. The sooner Tesla realizes they need to negotiate labor contracts through the unions to operate in Sweden, the more money they can make.
The two situations have an obvious difference. It's hard for McDonalds to sell Big Macs in a country without McDonalds restaurants in it. It's not hard for a car company to move production to a different country; that happens all the time.
So pulling out entirely is a much more realistic option for a car company than a restaurant, and as a result the car company has more leverage and both sides know it. And they can pretty much hold out indefinitely because in the meantime they can just make the cars somewhere else, the same as they would forever if they left.
It's not obvious what the unions have to hold over them when "stop making things in that country" is a completely viable alternative for the company which might have been nothing more than a coin flip even before this.
Tesla doesn't make anything in Sweden. Their workforce is mostly mechanics working at car service centers. What the unions can do is make it very hard for Tesla to operate in Sweden. They cannot hire other companies to perform something for them, no electricians to repair charging stations, no cleaning services, cannot source any parts for cars there, etc. They can of course hire people directly to do these things and likely pay a premium to be able to attract people and get the things they need from other countries and use their own drivers to get that to Sweden.
Sympathy strikes might spread to the other Nordic countries and maybe even Germany, where they are already fighting IG Metall. Then the federation of Nordic transport unions have proclaimed their support for IF Metall, so Tesla might be unable to get anything shipped in these countries.
Or they could just sign the agreement that sets basic minimum requirements which supposedly they already exceed.
> Their workforce is mostly mechanics working at car service centers.
So why don't they stop having those and let independent shops do it? Repairs used to be a major profit center for traditional dealerships but electric cars are supposed to cut that way back, right?
> They cannot hire other companies to perform something for them, no electricians to repair charging stations, no cleaning services, cannot source any parts for cars there, etc.
Why does this bear such a strong resemblance to organized crime?
Can you imagine if corporations could do this? You get into a disagreement with Microsoft and can't do business with any company that uses Windows anymore?
I kind of hope they find a way around it just to fight back against the unreasonableness of it.
> Or they could just sign the agreement that sets basic minimum requirements which supposedly they already exceed.
"If once you have paid him the Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane."
It's obvious that the reason both sides care about this is the precedent it sets rather than any specific details of what they're negotiating over today.
Tesla could do that. Nothing stops them from hiring someone else to provide this service, someone that has a collective agreement in place. This is the most likely outcome here as the other options are withdrawing from Sweden or signing the agreement.
American companies also has a pretty strong resemblance to organized crime.
What do you believe is so unreasonable in the collective agreement? Supposedly Tesla already exceeds the minimum bar it sets.
More than 90% of workers in Sweden have a collective agreement. This isn't the first time that an American company ran into the Swedish system, they've set the precedent multiple times already, this isn't going to be any different.
If a company is legally required to use PostNord and PostNord can legally refuse to deliver mail, it effectively gives PostNord the power to control any company that wants to continue receiving mail. Regardless of whether they are using that power for good or evil here, I don't think it's a power they should have.
Why not? They're a private company. Isn't that usually what Americans are telling people, that corporations are free to serve who they please?
But, more importantly, PostNord isn't doing anything - it's a unionised group of workers refusing to deliver Tesla products. That's how strikes work, and Musk's go-to course of action is to immediately proceed to legal action rather than negotiating and meeting the union's requirements.
Not sure you know what democracy is... Democracy is not just voting for your MP, it includes unions, strikes and collective agreement
If Tesla agreed (like 99,9999% of companies) with the democratically designed collective agreement, there would be no targeted strike. Strikes are one of the main democratic bargaining tool employees and unions have... including on key point of businesses.
Lots of people work together and vote in their local unions, that then is taken into account when the the terms of a collective agreement is negotiated. That seems like the definition of democracy.
Maybe being able to pick any other company to make the plates? For god sake, it is just a plate. A simple piece of metal with some letters on it to make everyone happy with traceability.
Government contracts need to fulfill very specific rules to prevent conflicts of interest. This one company one that bid and is now responsible for that. If you want it any other way, the law needs to be changed and that is again a democratic process.
You realise, of course, that if another company was able to deliver the plates, the same issue would still be occuring thanks to Swedish unions being in solidarity?
I'm not following, no voting districts are being changed here? This lawsuit is about license plates that have a contractually decided upon producer and distributor.
It screams corruption to me, this definitely sounds like one political group has infiltrated the governmental services and has gotten enough power to begin publicly target people/groups that they oppose.
Many different, independent groups voluntarily decided to support other workers in their fight for fair working conditions against an international megacorp, which is supported by their law. That is to me the literal opposite definition of corruption.
Seems like one anti-Tesla (or EV in general, we can't tell from the article) group is leveraging their network of existing Union pacts and loopholes in the law to withhold license plates from waiting customers.
Are the "independent groups" you're talking about the very connected Unions?
Good. Let them make a fool of themselves in court. Tesla wont be happy till every country treats it's employees like disposable garbage, just like in the US.
Ask that to an Amazon warehouse or a 3rd world factory worker.
Quit and do what? Starve? Become homeless? Destroy the little of what is left of your family's stability? Lose access to treatment of your health condition(s)? Die?
Perhaps if there was some way to survive in this world without relying on a greater force to put a roof over your head and bread on your table, then anyone could quit without being compelled to stay with the lesser suffering.
The hubris is just off the scale. How about you simply follow the law. How hard can it be, if the Chinese can manufacture cars in Sweden then so can Americans.
Tesla is not breaking the law. This is a labor action, and considering Europe's general tenor on labor relations, this lawsuit is going to be a hilarious mistake.
They are breaking the law. They have (repeatedly) threatened strikers that they would take away their options which is how they managed to match compensation to begin with so this is very much a legal issue as well.
That's why so many sympathy strikes broke out. What Tesla execs need to realize is that the world isn't North America and that different countries have different relationships between labor and management. If they don't want that they should move their manufacturing out of the EU and live with the tariffs.
Also mentioned is holidays and insurance. It would be nice to find the original Swedish article.
The funny thing is that they may well win this suit and it will only backfire because it should have never come this far. So the workers will pick up even more sympathy. It's affecting their supply lines as well now.
Wait, I'm super confused by this. If they really are breaking the law why isn't the government shutting them down instead of the unions striking? Isn't that the job of the government, to make sure every company follows the law?
In my country, if you don't follow the law, the government institutions don't even let you open up shop, the unions are only there to negociate yearly wage increases, but following the law is a must and a given from the start. If you're a company and don't follow the law you get inspections, lawsuits and fines from the state institutions.
So how is Tesla even operation in Sweden without following the law in the first place? It feels like there's apiece of context missing here.
> I don't get this. If they really are breaking the law why isn't the government shutting them down instead of the unions playing hardball? Isn't that the job of the government?
That's the tricky bit about worker/employer relationships: it would still require a worker to bring a complaint and that worker will then surely be fired by Tesla because they're pretty good at retaliation. That would still make it worse for Tesla but the worker than also has an issue. You'd have to be pretty principled to put your family through a thing like that. But it may well come to it if this keeps going on, Tesla doesn't really realize yet who has the power in this engagement. But they're about to find out.
> In my country, if you don't follow the law, the government institutions don't even let you open up shop, the unions are only there to negociate yearly wage increases, but follwing the law is a given.
In theory Sweden is no different. But they're not going to step in to this until the unions and Tesla have had their options exhausted and so far nobody got fired (as far as I know). The moment Tesla fires someone instead of just threatening to harm them financially the gloves will come off for sure.
As it is Tesla may not realize it yet but they are already losing in the court of public opinion and this stuff is headline news all over Europe, I've seen two articles related to this in the Dutch press in the last week alone and the sentiment is 'you can't bully Swedish workers and expect to get away with it'. Time will tell if that is true and what it will do to Tesla brand perception in Europe.
>that worker will then surely be fired by Tesla because they're pretty good at retaliation.
Fired how? I though you can't fire people just like that in Sweden.
>In theory Sweden is no different. But they're not going to step in to this until the unions and Tesla have had their options exhausted
This still doesn't make sense. The law is the law, and breaking it is just as bad with or without union discussion, no?
Like if the law says you need to give your employees X, Y, Z and you haven't , the that's breaking the saw and the state should immediately intervine.
>Time will tell if that is true and what it will do to Tesla brand perception in Europe.
I doubt it. VW reduced hundreds/thousands of collective years off our lifespan and their cars are still flying off she show floors so I doubt Europeans are gonna stop buying Teslas because of union disagreements in Sweden.
Of course you can fire someone. You then can be challenged, you have to show cause and what actions you took to build your case and there is a process to deal with that. And in the end if you got it wrong as the employer you have to pay up. But it's definitely possible to fire someone.
Not like in the US though, without any controls or oversight. Sweden is in that sense probably one of the better countries to be an employee in.
> This still doesn't make sense. The law is the law, and breaking it is just as bad with or without union discussion, no?
Yes. But the problem with these allegations is that you need to prove them and that isn't all that easy.
> Like if the law says you need to give your employees X, Y, Z and you haven't , the that's breaking the saw and the state should immediately intervine.
I agree with you, but in practice that's not how I have found the world to work. For the state to intervene someone has to make a formal complaint first. Otherwise the authorities will not make a move.
Well according to the thread Tesla has threatened workers which is illegal but unless there is actual evidence of Tesla threatening there isn't much that can be done. This obviously isn't done yet so we'll see what happens but Tesla most likely will lose this battle and with so many people knowing about it, it could have a tremendous effect in other countries as well which is great!
I don't think the law works like that in any country. The law isn't a omnipresent Santa Claus. It's a slow bureaucracy, the unions can force the issue before the workers die of old age.
I'll wait for the original source. An anonymous comment on reddit with no source, does not a valid claim make.
All I can find is (translated) claims that Tesla said they may remove the stock option program going forward and layoffs. [0] Which is a far cry from "holidays, bonuses, stock and insurance" or "stealing $7000"
> There have also been reports that employees have felt threatened by the company if they go on strike and it has been stated that various benefits could be withdrawn.
> - We have members who confirm this. Tesla executives have threatened layoffs. They have also threatened to withdraw the option program that Tesla has, where you get shares for a certain number of years," says IF Metall's contract secretary Veli-Pekka Säikkälä.
> But that's a lot of smoke already, those reps would likely not say that if it wasn't something they could back up.
Agreed, but the reps would also clearly make the other claims as well, if they were valid claims that they could back up. The fact they didn't makes me think it's someone being overly dramatic with no actual knowledge. Or to put it another way, I don't think it's "a lot of smoke", I think it's a campfire that's being claimed as a forest fire.
Tesla has done exactly that same thing before so it's not as farfetched as it may seem, they may have simply not realized that doing that same thing in Europe is going to have a completely different effect than what happened the previous time in America.
It is tremendous to watch a power hungry, emotionally unstable industrialist run head long into an entire nation state labor movement. Learn to be a partner and not a bully and entire cohorts won't come at you knives out. But he cannot [1], so oh well.
What do you mean I can't just overpower them like I've done to anyone else who has gotten in my way historically?
Oh, no doubt. But this isn't a cause, it's a (minor) symptom at best and Tesla just threw a bunch of oil on the fire. This isn't going to end well if they keep bringing American strong arm tactics to the EU.
Why should workers care about such an inefficiency? Without worker solidarity, increased efficiency only enables their bosses to extract more value from their surplus labor.
We all, to some extent, do selfish things that on average make everyone worse off. You might call it greed. I'm just surprised to see people publicly approving of it.
But why is this so-called "greed" less acceptable than the "greed" of owners/investors, who want everything be as efficient as possible for their own benefit? Strong organized labor is how we accomplish "inefficiencies" like paid leave, regular breaks, safety standards, etc.
That's the problem, neither side can cave. If the unions cave it will destroy the image of the Swedish model. If Tesla caves it will open the doors for unions around the world to oppose them.
Either way this is a very interesting battle.
As a Swede of course I hope that Tesla caves.
One thing I cannot understand is people who are against worker's rights. Do they not understand that workers make up the majority of all people?
Because with the Russian subs just off the cost of Gotland things might get complicated.
Also, Finland is already complaining that Russia is weaponising immigrants, so much so that they've closed 7 out of 8 border posts they have with Russia (if I got the numbers right), and seeing how the problem of immigrants is a very delicate one for Sweden (and for many other Western countries generally speaking) the Swedish people holding the monopoly of violence might think twice when it comes to this trade unions issue.
> Because with the Russian subs just off the cost of Gotland things might get complicated.
What are you darkly hinting at here? Russia's not going to attack Sweden because Tesla can't get license plates, and NATO's not going to pick Musk over Sweden.
Are you suggesting that Tesla in some way controls the Russian military? I mean, as conspiracy theories go it has the benefit of being original, I suppose.
>Most probably the Swedes will cave in, after kindly being reminded that the >Russians are located just across the Baltic lake from them.
>Interesting to think what will Musk give to the DC people in exchange.
This is incredibly uninformed. Sweden is to important for NATO to care about helping Musk.
But if you want "informed" opinion, I've just gone through this series of studies: "Military Strategy in the 21st Century - The Challenge for NATO" [1], where on page no. 415 there's an essay titled "Military Strategy in Denmark" by a guy called Petter Viggo Jakobsen, Associate Professor at the Institute for Strategy at the Royal Defence College, while on page no. 433 there's another study titled "Norway's Military Strategy after the Cold War: Between Demise and Revival", by a guy named Tormod Heier, lieutenant colonel in the Norwegian Army and Professor in Political Science at the Norwgeian Defence University College. Both of those studies underline how both Norway's and Denmark's strategy deeply rely on the good-will of the United States.
Granted, Sweden is not Norway nor Denmark, but it's not De Gaulle's France either, so I suspect, based on my informed readings, that their military and defence strategy is closer to today's strategy of Norway and Denmark than to the military strategy espoused back in the 1960s by a country such as France (which could back then to say no to the Americans).
This made a lot of sense before the Ukraine war.
Russia doesn't have even 10k men to spare to start another "little victorious war" and won't for many years from now.
Let alone the simple facts that Russia doesn't even have a land border with Sweden and that its Baltic Fleet boasts a total of 1 (one) landing ship capable of reaching Swedish shores, and some 10 landing boats.
If Russia attacked Finland, Sweden and Norway at the same time it wouldn't be pleasant but Sweden would be last and least to suffer, and Russia just doesn't have anything at its disposal to commit to that at the moment.
There is no sense in assuming that Tesla is more important for Nato than a Swedish participation in Nato. And it is also wrong to equate striking workers to the swedish state. This is on par with authoritarian states not understanding that people have their own will in a dempcracy.
Geopolitical jokes are fun only if they are cleverly silly and not just uninformed.
It’s open secret Sweden has had secret security guarantees from US for decades (probably part of agreement that Sweden will not develop their own nuclear strike capability).
This is not something US would back out of on a whimsy.
And beyond that, the US would risk its relationship with at least the Baltics and Nordics as well, and possibly EU at large. You don’t fire off political ultimatums for a minor trade dispute if you’re not already prepared to sever relationships.
It’s not that Sweden is important in itself (though I’d like to think it is, as a swede), but this is a little bit like suggesting placing a Russian army base in South Dakota. South Dakotans being pissed would barely register compared to the reactions from the US beyond that.
I am not familiar with Swedish law but I doubt it is legal to refuse to distribute mail whether at service provider level or at employee level.
At employee level it would be for Postnord to take action but at service provider level (Postnord) then maybe (?) they have a point that the state/regulator should intervene.
Now, if on the other hand what is happening is perfectly legal then perhaps the famed Swedish model has gone too far...
Are you telling me that refusing to distribute mail is legal in Sweden?
In most, if not all EU countries that would not be on several levels as per my previous comment.
So please at least try to write something substantive...
Edit:
In fact it looks like this is indeed a breach of at least EU law:
"The universal service obligation (USO) is the core of the Postal Services Directive (97/67/EC, amended by Directives 2002/39/EC and 2008/6/EC). This is the requirement that letters and parcels should be delivered to each home or business premises, on 5 days each week, throughout each EU country (with exemptions)."
PostNord is prevented from fulfilling this obligation by the lawful strike carried out by workers. The right to strike would be practically meaningless if employers could just sidestep it by replacing strikers with non-unionized workers, so the laws have been constructed to prevent this.
Do you really believe that a couple of sentences summarize accurately and completely three different EU directives? Have you checked them all to be sure that industrial action isn't covered by an exception? I doubt it.
"Norrköping district court said the agency must find a way to get the plates to Tesla within seven days or pay a fine of 1 million Swedish crowns (~$96,000)."
On a related note, I think you have to consider very carefully whether or not you can manufacture in Sweden. For some companies like Teenage Engineering, Elektron, etc.,it can make a lot of sense as your labor cost is such a small fraction of the total value of the product. But if you are in some kind of competitive market where the labor cost has the potential to erase your margins (and therefore return on the project investment) then I don't think it makes sense in this globalized economy to base in Sweden.
Where do electric vehicles fall on this spectrum? I don't know TBH. I would suspect the Model S and Model X it doesn't matter really ... but say for batteries or the Model 3 ... maybe Sweden is a bad choice. The Chinese are very smart about how they base their manufacturing. Tesla should be smarter too. You can't just get around 50 years of labor interests.
And paying workers a lot is not enough ... labor interests want more than just high pay ... there's lots of other restrictions and controls on what you can do. You have to let them control how labor works in your plants. You can't just innovate on process however you like if you are at large scale. That's how Europe works. Everything is slow and deliberate with a pace that runs over decades or sometimes generations. You can't just fire/hire/automate/reconfigure on the fly as you evolve processes. Go to China or Texas if you need that.
That has nothing to do with whether or not quality vehicles can be produced in Sweden, and whether or not the European attitude towards labor is unsustainable.
But if you are in some kind of competitive market where the labor cost has the potential to erase your margins (and therefore return on the project investment) then I don't think it makes sense in this globalized economy to base in Sweden.
Where do electric vehicles fall on this spectrum? I don't know TBH. I would suspect the Model S and Model X it doesn't matter really ... but say for batteries or the Model 3 ... maybe Sweden is a bad choice.
This is a heavily subsidized project situated by geopolitical concerns ... not a practical calculus based on economics.
Even so, even after so much government coddling, it has an uphill battle for raw materials and labor flexibility.
I wish it well as its one of the few Western projects that can rival the gigafactories of China. Its a very bad outcome for the democracies of the world if China remains the only hardware supplier for our automated and electric world.
You say decades, but we don’t know whether it works over decades. For all I know, France is famous for strikes and we’ve lost all manufacturing. Almost all of Europe lost that, and it’s not like we’re good at startups either, we make some (heavily public-funded) and not even appear near the top #100 startups.
I don’t even remember meeting a single factory worker for the last ten years. Even ports: All of Marseille went on hard-core strikes, now it’s all done in Rotterdam. France is famous for the Saint Congés Payés in 1936, well, if we didn’t dance that much, maybe the Germans wouldn’t have invaded us like a walk in a park.
We can’t say that works over decades when all industries have fled (and I say fled, like one flees a socialist country, when factory managers were subdued into a cave and beaten up until they signed personnel agreements in the 1990).
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/Mo0V85/tesla-far-ut-sin...