The labor dispute over Tesla’s refusal to sign a collective wage agreement in Sweden has escalated into a dramatic labor battle.
Unions representing multiple industries announced this week that they would join the strike in solidarity with IF Metall, the Tesla mechanics’ trade union.
The standoff started in late October with a walkout led by IF Metall.
In Sweden, which doesn’t have minimum wage legislation for workers, about 90% of employees are covered by collective agreements involving unions and employers.
IF Metall describes the agreements as “the backbone of the Swedish model” and said it’s been trying to negotiate one with Tesla for the last five years.
The union said Tesla wages are below the industry average in Sweden, and it wants to secure better pensions and insurance guarantees.
Tesla’s refusal to sign a collective wage agreement
I’m sorry, what?
Arrogance, ignorance and hubris.
It’s a typical story at this point. American company comes to Europe, doesn’t do its research, doesn’t know how these things work over here, management in the US refuses to adapt, few years down the line they fuck off with their tail between their legs.
Staggeringly incompetent.
The story of McDonalds in Denmark is a fun example of this if anyone wants to read. [1]
McDonalds decided not to follow the union agreement and thus set up its own pay levels and work rules instead. This was a departure, not just from what Danish companies did, but even from what other similar foreign companies did. For example, Burger King, which is identical to McDonalds in all relevant respects, decided to follow the union agreement when it came to Denmark a few years earlier.
In late 1988 and early 1989, the unions decided enough was enough and called sympathy strikes in adjacent industries in order to cripple McDonalds operations. Sixteen different sector unions participated in the sympathy strikes.
Dockworkers refused to unload containers that had McDonalds equipment in them. Printers refused to supply printed materials to the stores, such as menus and cups. Construction workers refused to build McDonalds stores and even stopped construction on a store that was already in progress but not yet complete. The typographers union refused to place McDonalds advertisements in publications, which eliminated the company’s print advertisement presence. Truckers refused to deliver food and beer to McDonalds. Food and beverage workers that worked at facilities that prepared food for the stores refused to work on McDonalds products.
Once the sympathy strikes got going, McDonalds folded pretty quickly and decided to start following the hotel and restaurant agreement in 1989.
This is why McDonalds workers in Denmark are paid $22 per hour.
[1] https://mattbruenig.com/2021/09/20/when-mcdonalds-came-to-denmark/
Just for the record: McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, KFC and Starbucks all have collective agreements in Denmark.
Once the sympathy strikes got going, McDonalds folded pretty quickly and decided to start following the hotel and restaurant agreement in 1989.
As fucking usual, the companies could have done this all along. They’re just going to give the least, while charging the most.
And even still, that $22 is vastly beneath the actual value of the labor provided.
…Beer?
Yeah, in countries that never had prohibition, they take a different view of alcohol. Mainly one that isn’t restrictive.
Tinfoil hat time: they do know. They are attempting to normalize the U.S. model in Europe to drive down labor costs.
I fully believe this. Tesla has absolutely abysmal labor practices.
Everything musk touches. Why else does SpaceX have eight times the injury rate of other rocket companies?
Reality check: others have tried. Others have failed.
Yeah, Europeans aren’t as stupid as Americans in this regard.
…and this is why conservatives in the UK pushed for Brexit
Britain has been living in our shadow ever since they lost the war.
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Europe is treated as a colony of the US or, better said, the colonizer has become the colonized. And there’s some sort of justice to it.
Well it’s not exactly the native Americans ruling America
you’re being down voted but I think this might spark a good discussion. You expressed it in a provocative way but I also believe that the EU is subservient to the US for many things
Had that happen when working for Symantec in Argentina. They wouldn’t do cost of living adjustments to account for the 30% inflation so the government forced a union on us. All they asked for was to give us the same salary, accommodating for inflation–in the end, this comes to the same dollar amount per employee. As best I can tell, the business bros couldn’t understand inflation and exchange rates and they decided to simply lay off several hundred people and close their offices in the county entirely. Little did they know that you can’t do that in Argentina and pretty much every single person sued, myself included, and won two year’s salary, minus lawyer fees. If they had simply kept paying the same number of dollars to everyone, they’d have saved tens of millions of dollars.
And kept their business operations running
Apparently they opened a new set of offices in Poland specifically because there are weak worker protections. My lawyer said he wouldn’t want to be an employer in Argentina because it’s so strict.
So why work there in the first place? Why bother with a strike? Quit and work some place with better conditions.
Or you know, use your collective power to strike, following the model your country has based its economic rights around. Why should the workers give up their economic power to the company?
Tesla could also just follow the economic agreement that is considered fair in the area for that labor, the bare minimum contract. So odd that youre not complaining about them having poor conditions and breaking the nation’s norms.
It’s almost like both parties, Tesla and the unions, are now working in their best financial interests. Lets see which on e succeeds.
Someone will be desperate enough to work there. Now McDonald’s has a competitive advantage and other places will have to follow suit and then it‘s worse everywhere. It‘s amazing that there are places out there where regular people can actually influence anything.
Thanks for answering my question. This makes sense.
haha
Pass the popcorn.
Morally correct!
Vikings don’t fuck around lol
Labor has a modicum of self respect in Sweden, it’s nice to see an example being set by a group other than the very most blatantly abused, such as our nurses and automotive in the states.
so they dont sell in sweden then? is it a huge market?
Well, if they don’t play by Swedish rules they aren’t going to be allowed at the table. And the Swedish unions are the ones enforcing that.
It’s not insignificant. It’s Tesla’s 5th biggest in Europe and Tesla’s were making up 60% of new car sales in Sweden.
Problem for Tesla is even if they pull out of the market all the cars they already sold will need servicing. So the mechanics union will strike and demand a collective bargaining agreement, then what choice does Tesla have?
Sweden isn’t a huge market. The EU is the biggest market of (relatively) affluent customers in the world.
Tesla are simply under the misapprehension that negotiating a collective wage agreement is a choice in the EU, rather than just how things are done over here.
something very funny about dockworkers being the holdup here. we need to go back to sea power as might
Are you suggesting that America use its Navy to enforce, by force, a resolution of the labor dispute in favor of Tesla?
This isn’t the 1700s, you know.
Well this wouldn’t be the first time America went to war to protect the interests of a company, specifically over a labor dispute.
I don’t think that is what they are saying…
Funny, I still don’t know what they’re trying to say though.
They’re saying that dock workers in the modern world don’t hold nearly as much power as they did before the rise of personal automobiles and saying (I’m guessing in jest) that we should go back to that time point.
Oh they hold enough to stop a business in a country dead on it’s tracks.
Replacing all deliveries by truck or plane would only work as a stopgap, and bleed all profit margins to hell.
Ah, but that’s actually not true. Thanks to containerisation and globalisation, dock workers actually hold more power than ever.
The vast vast majority of global trade is done by sea. It’s only the last few miles which are done by truck.
Not that it matters anyway. Usually the same or allied unions.
Funny, I still don’t know what they’re trying to say though.
To what end?
