Tesla sues Swedish state agency over number plate blockage

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.

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.

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?

It is not hard to imagine scenarios where this is weaponized with horrifying outcomes.

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.

Can you point to a concrete law stating this?

This is an entirely Swedish conflict. Neighboring countries have their own systems.

Last I heard, Tesla is the biggest auto brand in Norway!

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.

It seems to be gaining regional momentum [1].

[1] https://www.transportarbetaren.se/brett-stod-i-tesla-konflik...

How? If they leave how can a fine be levied against them? EU?

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.

Xi Jinping just met with Tim Cook, Elon Musk, etc.

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/domstol-teslas-registreri...

I mean it could be bad for Swedish investments, so kind of bad?

How are laws enforced internationally?

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.

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.

- services for registered and insured items." [1]

That being said, obviously the specific number of days is not important here.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/postal-se...

""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.

>>> 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.

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.

How does a private company get the benefits of being legally required? That seems like a benefit that only a public company should have.

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.

But that's a lot of smoke already, those reps would likely not say that if it wasn't something they could back up.