Comment by lillecarl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lillecarl | Hacker News Reader

If anyone has watched "Billions", it seems like Elon Musk is having a typical Billions moment. He's always gotten what he wants with his incredible wealth and thinks anything can be bought out.

But since all this the Union(s) are doing across Sweden and Norway they just have 4 options:

1. Pull out of Sweden

2. Sign the agreement

3. Use non-unionised workers from another country (which could join the union at any time)

4. Hire their workers through a unionised subcontractor.

Musk might be above the US, but he isn't above Sweden, especially not something so core to our values.

Im Swedish, and part of a union. However I've never worked for a Unionised company as it's quite uncommon within the tech sector. And since its a labourers market we're very well taken care of either way. I'm also born and raised in a ICE manufacturing city and know that unions are doing gods work for "replaceable people". A lot of "standard skillsets" within manufacturing are easily replaceable, but that doesn't mean salary should be a race to the bottom. They still provide value by doing their job, and that is what the unions protect.

> Im Swedish, and part of a union. However I've never worked for a Unionised company

I'm Finnish and if Swedish system is anything like ours, there is such thing as unionized/nonunionized company in Sweden. There are only companies that sign the sectorally bargained labor agreement and those who don't. Small companies with few workers don't have to sign anything, they just need to adhere to minimums in sectoral agreement to avoid any conflict.

US has very peculiar system where companies/workplaces must unionize individually to have workers representation. There can be one union per workplace if I understand it correctly.

> But since all this the Union(s) are doing across Sweden and Norway they just have 4 options:

This is a needlessly zero-sum interpretation. It ignores other externalities (e.g. Swedish consumers finding other ways to get their Teslas serviced, the Swedish government stepping in), and ignores the obvious fact that the Union and employer might come to a compromise agreement.

People tend to look at union actions as warfare, but Clausewitz is right here too: strikes are the continuation of salary negotiations by other means. The goal isn't (and can't be) "victory" in some kind of abstract idea, with good guys and bad guys. At the end of the day the two sides will decide on a pay/benefit/market structure that they both are happy with, because if that's not possible there's no reason for negotiating to begin with.

Tesla will be capitulating or leaving. There are no plans for negotiations because Tesla doesn't accept unions.

Immovable objects and irresistible forces. I predict Tesla will accept the unions because the knock-on effect through the rest of Europe is something they can't afford.

The tech sector will also start to have unions.

Just look at Klarna.

I'm dev and the company I work for has union contracts.

This has the nice bonus of me getting 5 days extra an year because we work 40h but we should not so we get AFK time.

>"He's always gotten what he wants"

[citation needed]

He even had to go to court to get Twitter!

Don’t you remember when Musk very publicly won his court case to not overpay by tens of billions for Twitter in 2022?

He paid exactly the amount he proposed.

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