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Comment by yreg | Hacker News Reader

From what I understand only a small portion of Tesla workers are on strike. It's mostly union members working at other companies and institutions who are striking. E.g. the postal office workers refused to deliver Tesla's mail which is baffling to me.

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I get that proper unions are pretty baffling from a US perspective, where people don't mind having thousands peeing in bottles at work at Amazon as long as they get the spoon they ordered the next day.

Us Scandinavians on the other hand find it pretty baffling that someone would just roll over to a megalomaniac who clearly states he would like to destroy what makes our countries great, our unions and working conditions.

I'm a European working in a country with strong labour laws.

But I wouldn't want a specific union to have a monopoly over my entire country and in case I don't want them to they shouldn't meddle with my work.

And to be honest I believe that the state postal workers should have absolutely no say on whether someone gets their mail delivered.

> state postal workers

Actually they are no longer state postal workers. PostNord is owned by the Swedish and Danish states but it is not a part of the state as post offices used to be, it's no longer the Royal Mail.

I don't understand the difference.

When a company is 100% state-owned and state-run then it is a public institution. The special thing here is that Sweden and Denmark share it.

It's not state-run though, it's a normal private company, just one where the governments own all the shares.

They are still profit driven, like most state-owned companies in Scandinavia.

And if there is public protest about delivery prices increasing the government won't order the board to stop it and pretend to forget profitability?

Most likely not. The Scandinavian countries are capitalist democracies not dictatorships. Of course if it gets out of hand then the state will take action but anything beyond what any owner of a company could do would invite challenges in the courts.

What governments have done here is to deregulate the postal services to a fairly large degree so that there is genuine competition at least for parcels. I can send parcels using three different services here in Norway: Posten (the former royal mail, now a state owned company), Helthjem a company owned by a bi online trading site and media company (a bit like eBay), and the now infamous Swedish-Danish PostNord.

If one of them puts up the prices the others will just get more business.

The liberalisation of postal services is also required by an EU directive.

> The Scandinavian countries are capitalist democracies not dictatorships.

Appointing a new CEO of a state-owned company and telling him what to do is hardly a 'dictatorship'. Maybe if it was a public broadcaster and the government made editorial decisions.

My country also has a national Post Office which is a joint stock company and the state 'only' owns all of the shares. It is still definitely a public institution.

LOL. But you're excused.

In Denmark the government just took away all subsidies to the PostNord company. Prices will double next year, and some areas will not be served at all. Mind you there is no alternative for common mail, only for parcel delivery.

I mean, you’re wrong because the only way to implement what you’re suggesting is policing unions.

The whole point of the union system is to be a separate pillar of power to the state to keep it in check.

>you’re wrong because the only way to implement what you’re suggesting

I'm not suggesting anything.

I think you do not understand the basic fact that the people peeing in bottles are not working there against their will. As bad as it may be or sound, people choose to voluntarily work there.

But sure, go fight your fight with the megalomaniac...

People don't really choose to work, we work because we need to afford food and get health care and rent housing etc. If you live in a town where the job you can get is at Amazon then you don't really "voluntarily" work there, and considering it's pretty simple stuff that hires anyone this is probably the case.

You are always free to pack up your things and move to another place with better conditions.

I would say it is worse for people in Chicago that work in the big slaughterhouses and even though they can pursue other opportunities, they still choose to work there.

Using the "small town, no options" narrative doesn't really hold water.

> You are always free to pack up your things

It's literally not "free" to move. If it were, many people would've done it a long time ago. Beside the financial cost, there are also very real social costs like losing friends and family - basically your whole support network, as well as putting all of that burden on a potential spouse and maybe kids too.

My point is if you're working a job it isn't as easy as "find another one". These things are tough personal emotional topics. No-one wants to work at a job where they have to pee in a bottle, yet people work there.

> You are always free to pack up your things and move to another place with better conditions.

Using all your extensive savings from a job that in many parts of the US, pays up to 20% less than the livable wage?

There haven't been slaughterhouses in Chicago for over 50 years.

> People don't really choose to work, we work because we need to afford food and get health care and rent housing

Almost everyone on HN can live to standards that would have been between comfortable and luxurious a hundred years ago, possibly even in a developed country. (The median world wage--assuming a 40-hour work week with 2 weeks off, which is not the median working schedule--is $5/day [1].)

This doesn't undermine the struggle. Just that there is, to varying degrees (but increasingly so among anyone in tech), a choice being made.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-househo...

Which is why I find it somewhat sickening when people argue that those who have to pee in bottles to meet KPIs for low wages are able to just go and find other work. People are out of touch on HN.

I'm lucky, I can go find other work and live without working for a while.

Someone on the poverty line working a warehouse job for health insurance to cover their diabetes in America is not able to "just move to a new place" like a sibling comment stated. The real goal should be to raise the bottom line up so even the poorest have a decent standard of living which is how the Nordic countries behave.

For the most part, nobody is working anywhere against their will. Does that mean unions are pointless?

Yes. I dislike the idea of unions with all my heart. I don't understand why a competent person needs to be a member of a union.

It's a bargaining power thing. A group of individuals (like a company) has more bargaining power than an single individual. You can balance this out by eg. forming a second group of individuals who also collectively have more bargaining power (a union).

Now don't try to tell me that bargaining power isn't a thing. With more bargaining power you can often get better deals!

Note that Unions work very differently across different parts of the world. So your local union might be very different from ones that I've experienced.

> Note that Unions work very differently across different parts of the world. So your local union might be very different from ones that I've experienced.

You are right on this one. My experience with unions is that they want people to have a job even if that job is more efficiently done by a machine or to get salary increases even if the company is doing poorly because of outside market factors (like not enough sales due to poor economy and so on).

And while the goal might be ideal, the reality is quite different.

Capitalism is voluntary. Get bread, or get dead...

I looked it up when the story broke out, and as far as I could find, it's private shipping companies (FedEx and the like) that are refusing to deliver stuff, not the national public post office. They still get regular mail delivered just fine.

It was PostNord, the state owned post office:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...

Thanks for the correction. I checked back in early November before the 20th, which is when PostNord joined.

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