This is no longer true. A higher court overturned that decision and the license plates are again blocked from reaching Tesla.
But even then the court wasn't forcing them to deliver mail, just allowing that mail to be picked up. And now that's blocked?
I just don't understand how one entity can have this much power, in this case they essentially are the government they could demand whatever the hell they wanted. Your choice is to leave the country or agree to the demands of the postal service.
People hate tesla and Musk right now so they'll by and large support this, but eventually the post office will realize how much power they weild and use it for some other gain.
And how is this not similar to the post office choosing not to deliver tax documents, forcing an entity to eventually become delinquent? The government agency responsible for sending license plates only uses the government owned mail provider (makes sense) but that provider can pick and choose who it delivers mail to?
It's fairly constrained. They have leverage because the law gives Postnord a monopoly on delivering license plates.
If they abuse that narrow power, it's trivial to take it away without triggering any broader impacts. The fact that this is outside the political Overton window should say something about Tesla's public support.
Is that a law or an exclusive contract between the government and PostNord, given after bidding and a tender process as they call it in Europe and Asian countries?
I think it's a contract, and contracts have exclusions in cases of forces majeures like strikes. Since the Transport Agency is required by law to provide plates for properly registered cars, I would think they would be required to let Tesla pick them up, or use a different carrier for Tesla plates.
Tesla can't call force majeure on a contract it isn't party to. If the Swedish government wanted to break the strike, it can--trivially. There is simply zero political will to do so.
Yet Scandinavian workers seem to be able to join in on disputes they aren't party to.
Yes, there is a difference between association and contract. (As well as not doing something versus forcing someone to.)
> If the Swedish government wanted to break the strike, it can--trivially. There is simply zero political will to do so.
That won't be breaking the strike if plates are allowed to be picked up. If the government does not want to follow Swedish law and their duties, then the courts should force it to do so.
I don’t know Swedish law. But this certainly isn’t the case in America.
My Visa card has a clause that the bank isn't liable if it stops working due to industrial action.
What contract is Tesla party to that they would invoke this on? OP suggested Transport Agency invoking force majeure, which makes sense.
> has a clause that the bank isn't liable if it stops working due to industrial action
Who is suggesting liability for Tesla?
There's also nothing in the law that states that plates have to be mailed and cannot be picked up, that's a operational decision by the Transport Agency. It's required by law to provide plates so it will be interesting to see how this turns out.
There is an exclusive contract between the Swedish state and the postal company. There is also a contract that forbids the plate manufacturer from sending plates by any other means than post.
Transportstyrelsen does not agree that the current strike counts as a force majeure. This is (essentially) what the court case is about. Lower court agreed with you and allowed them to pick up plates themselves but the appeal court repelled that decision earlier today.
That's interesting, I wonder what their reasoning is, I thought strikes were included in the definition of force majeure in the law.
> There is an exclusive contract between the Swedish state and the postal company. There is also a contract that forbids the plate manufacturer from sending plates by any other means than post.
Isn't there a law that states the transport agency must provide lawfully registered plates? Usually laws trump contracts.
I think it’s obvious that Tesla will be allowed to get their plates sooner or later, and Transportstyrelsen does not seem to be of the view that they shouldn’t be. They are more concerned about the practicality and legality of letting them pick up the plates from the factory.
In Sweden the unions own the government. Nordic countries can not be compared to modern republics such as the USA. There is little separation of powers.
Well, yes. Although the world is a lot more complicated than left vs right, the socialist parties have generally been the largest parties in Nordic countries, and the "conservative" parties do not rock the boat too much when they're in power. Because the voters wouldn't accept that.
> compared to the USA
It's a matter of taste and of values, but directly comparing these very different societies doesn't work well.
The unions "own" the government in the extent that they where tightly connected to the Socialist Democratic party that ruled Sweden for decades and are responsible for much of today's legislation. If you were a member of a union, they would on your behalf sign you up as a member of the Socialist Democratic party, until 1991.
So the unions are intertwined with the government in Nordic countries to an extent that is very unfamiliar to peopler from some other countries.
Another example is the government church in all the nordic countries, which is not much talked about, but indeed strange to people from other backgrounds.
So in other words the unions don't own the government so much as they own the voters (or is it the other way around)? I'd call a decision that voters agree on democracy.
> The unions "own" the government in the extent that they where tightly connected to the Socialist Democratic party that ruled Sweden for decades and are responsible for much of today's legislation. If you were a member of a union, they would on your behalf sign you up as a member of the Socialist Democratic party, until 1991.
Another explanation could be that both sides of the political spectrum agrees and thinks that the power re: labor decisions such as this _should_ lie with the unions, regardless of left/right lean. Even the "right" parties in Sweden are pro unions.
> Another example is the government church in all the nordic countries, which is not much talked about, but indeed strange to people from other backgrounds.
Huh? This hasn't been the case on paper since the year 2000 in Sweden, but in practice far longer than that. The church might still be called "Church of Sweden", but it has nothing to do with the government.
Yes, that's a good way to put it. Although memberships are rapidly decreasing in later years. The reasons for that can be saved for another discussion.
> Another explanation could be that both sides of the political spectrum agrees and thinks that the power re: labor decisions such as this _should_ lie with the unions, regardless of left/right lean. Even the "right" parties in Sweden are pro unions.
There really isn't any "both sides" of the political spectrum in Nordic countries when it comes to labour. The way the "right wing" parties can get elected at all is to say "We promise we're not going to do things differently than the left wing, but we'll give you a $100 more per year in tax deductions".
> Huh? This hasn't been the case on paper since the year 2000 in Sweden, but in practice far longer than that. The church might still be called "Church of Sweden", but it has nothing to do with the government.
It is still the case in Finland, Norway and Denmark. These countries have a government church, that performs government functions, and levies taxes to the church from your salary. You still have to fill in a form if you want to exit the government church. The year 2000 is not so far away, compared to when other nations separated church and state.
And AFAIK the former state church of Sweden (along with neighbouring countries) is still controlled by secular political parties, whose candidates are elected by church members. The largest church party by a huge margin being the Socialist Democrat party.
That's exactly my point. I think we're in general agreement about the state of things, but perhaps not in the reasons behind it. I see a rational consensus and belief in a system. I don't believe that these parties pretend something simply to gain votes, and then, after gaining power, do nothing to further this alleged political agenda.
> It is still the case in Finland, Norway and Denmark. These countries have a government church, that performs government functions, and levies taxes to the church from your salary. You still have to fill in a form if you want to exit the government church.
The church tax still exists in Sweden, and is opt-out in a similar way as you describe for the other Nordic countries. The tax is used for things like church weddings, burial costs, etc. I agree that this is a little strange, but the fact of the matter is that this system (at least in Sweden) doesn't apply only to the Church of Sweden. If you are a member of another religious communities, the fee can instead go to this entity. (In Swedish: https://www.skatteverket.se/privat/skatter/arbeteochinkomst/...)
> The year 2000 is not so far away, compared to when other nations separated church and state.
Be that as it may, the time span wasn't really part of the initial discussion. And people living day-to-day up here knows that the church has little to no say in anything in society. It has been like that for a long time. I think if anything people coming from elsewhere might be surprised how secular Swedish people/Scandinavians are. I don't think anyone that moved here (or even grows up here) would ever think about the fact that there was a "state church" not even 25 years ago.
The interests of the people and the interests of the union don't overlap much.
The government isn't doing this, workers are.
Wouldn't it be more problematic if the government stepped in and forced the hand against their workers, and in favour of a private company like Tesla?
Typically the entity that compels employees to to their job (or be fired) is their employer. That is, in fact, the defining relationship between employees and employers.
The latter is more easily able to be used for extortion.
Similar to cops deciding not to police a region populated by a certain tribe. Or, in the same vein, over policing a certain region/tribe.
You should have gone with firefighters.
Cops famously never act in solidarity with other workers. In fact, they actively work against workers' rights.
Cops "over policing", or more accurately, "targeting", most certainly violates certain fundamental rights. A mailman not delivering packages to some company offices does not.
I would classify use of infrastructure as a right. Like if a toll booth operator refused to take money from certain people.
Also, in this case, it sounds like the workers are also not allowing anyone else to deliver the packages, so it is not just "a mailman not delivering packages to some company offices".
We aren't talking about people here. Corporations don't have that kind of consideration in most of Europe.
Call it a "boycott". It's perfectly legal and obviously not comparable to cops targeting people in the slightest.
If PostNord was a private, shareholder owned company, sure those shareholders may value revenue over social cohesion.
Only if you subscribe to the most naive grade-school model of democracy. A government isn't actually the will of the people made manifest; it's an organization made up of people, processes, and constraints. Just like a corporation isn't actually the will of the shareholders made manifest.
> The motivations of the "structured entity" is defined by the nebulous collective will of the population.
Once again, this is an absurdly naive view of how governments function. There is a voting mechanism in place which usually does a sort of OK job of keeping the government's behavior in line with the population's preferences, but this breaks down all the time and even in equilibrium doesn't work very well.
I suggest reading Bueno de Mesquita's _The Logic of Political Survival_ if you're interested in developing a realistic model for how government behavior emerges.
Why would the government purposely try to restrict their rights, to appeal to a foreign company?
When you zoom out and look at the actors involved, this isn't all that strange. This is a strike - if the citizens of a country don't want to do business with a certain entity isn't that how the government, ideally, should work? Citizens should be able to demand whatever the hell they wanted; otherwise who does the government work for?
So please consider that other models are possible that are cooperative not antagonistic.
It's absolutely bizarre to claim that self-determining nation has too much power against a foreign corporation.
That's how all business works.
Private workers for a private company exercising their union protected rights.
I thought Americans loved private companies? But apparently not when it’s a postal service and it affects a treasure like Tesla?
For example as a mail worker should I be able to opt out from delivering mail to politicians whose political statements I find deplorable?
If the plates were to be delivered not to Tesla, but to an individual, then they wouldn't be allowed not to deliver them?
The key thing is that for a strike to be declared it has to be called for by the union, it would be unprecedented to call a strike for political action against a party.
And is there a precedent for what's happening now?
What is not clear here? Sweden has very few strikes, but this is a textbook example of one. The postal worker's union have called for their members to refuse to carry out a specific work. This is well within their rights to do. The union calls for this as part of a collective action for their fellow workers.
The company delivering the parcels could call for their employer's union to lock out the workers on strike. But why would they want to escalate the conflict? They too prefer their collective bargaining agreements respected. And they are clearly not in violation of any of their contracts as this is a legal strike.
There are plenty of gray areas within worker's rights, but this is as simple as it could be.
I mean, call it whatever you want, but it is a selective strike and a government agency shouldn’t have the right to do that. You either don’t deliver _any_ mail, or you deliver it all.
Btw I can totally empathize with the reason of the autoworkers strike, yet not agree with this.
What does that mean?
It defines the concept pretty well, which is somewhat valuable, but has few citations, which is unfortunate.
Unchecked power is bad. Doesn’t matter if it’s a government, a company or a union.
I don’t know if you thought there was a contradiction there, but I don’t see it.
It’s also not an arbitrary choice. It’s a business that’s clearly in dispute with another union, that this union has decided to intervene on behalf of. It’s not like they’re striking against a company that was just minding its own business.
Perhaps there can be labor relations boards and anti-discrimination regulation and such to prevent abuse of selective striking, but this is obviously a situation where everyone is a player and knows what game they’re playing.
However, it appears the striking mail workers are being paid, even though they are not delivering mail to Tesla.
That in turn gives them a lot of power, because they can keep this strike going for as long as they like with no cost to themselves.
It’s collective action and should be praised in an age where opaque corporations and oligarchs run everything.
If Starbucks workers go to work all day and serve every customer but Bob, that's not a strike or walkout. Those terms have real definitions.
That doesn't mean it isn't a union activity.
Is your sole problem with the fact that people are calling something a strike, and you personally don't think they should, according to your possibly single-country-centric view of the term, or is there a substantive objection?
Ironically, I think this would be illegal in Sweden but might be legal in the US under Title VII exemptions.
I'm not sure how the path matters much. It contains language along the lines of "I will faithfully execute, to the best of my ability, the office of...."
I'm imagining having religious qualms about certain behaviors would fall under "best of my abilities"
What's next, the mass transit drivers refusing to stop near Tesla's offices? Court workers refusing to accept Tesla's lawsuits? Firemen refusing to put out fire on Tesla's properties?
Prevented, though, is harder. Prohibitions aren't always effective prevention.
Not everyone has state postal services like in the US
The thing is that government services must be provided to everyone or (if enough people are on strike) not at all.
In a way the Swedish model has found an equilibrium between company powers and workers right that has been very productive.
Until an ignorant American enters the market and think he knows better than everyone else
If all sympathy strikes were to be total walkouts then it would result in a general strike and that doesn’t target any specific party and thus doesn’t put pressure on them
In my opinion, screw the Musk boy. There are other EV manufacturers.
Sweden has few strikes. In fact, hardly any. Worker's rights are generally by contract rather than by law. When the unions move in unison like this, they come prepared and expect to win.
It is an existential issue for them, in a literal sense. Should they lose, laws will be rewritten and trade agreements will have to be renegotiated.
And just to add, the postal service in question is private and works like a private company, though the states of Sweden and Denmark fully owns it. Employees are not state employees.
A "private company" that is fully owned by the government is private company in name only; hence my calling it a pseudo-government agency. Especially for a legally-privileged function that is serving postal mail.
This is what unionization is, protects the worker regardless of your employer.
That's what Tesla's employees are doing.
The point of a sympathetic strike is so that a small country's workforce can stand up to the likes of Tesla. Tesla can always withdraw from the Nordic market if they don't like the rules (which never changed). They don't want to do that because there is something there worth negotiating for.
These workers are friends, wives, husbands, relatives…
It’s more than justified.
A strike - whether because of your circumstances or another's - is you downing tools and stopping working.
This hasn't been what a strike has meant in Scandinavia for a century.
I'm American. I broadly think unions are ineffective and corrupt. But it's ridiculous to claim this strike is unprecedented. Even the pattern of an American company being flummoxed by it is deeply precedented.
If you want to do business in the Nordic countries, you respect the collective-bargaining process. That doesn't capitulation. It doesn't even mean you must enter into one. But you can't blow it off, and at that so dismissively.
And if you want to do business in many other countries, you have to pay bribes -- or campaign contributions or hire someone's incompetent nephew or hire people with the right "discriminated against" skin colour. That's not legal, either.
What I tried to say is, postal workers are increasing pressure on a company which is treating their workers unfairly, and these workers are connected to the postal workers in a way.
So, what postal workers are doing is justified.
I'm saying I don't think that refusing individual service to a customer is a good idea. It seems highly prone to groupthink and as it comes at zero cost to the striking party, prone to misuse as well. Actual striking is moderately balanced because it's limited and comes at a cost to both parties.
It seems simpler to just not work for the company. My understanding is they aren't treating their employees unfairly; they just aren't entering into the union merry-go-round. Their current employees all agreed to employment under the current situation, and now seem to be changing their minds once they've secured employment. But I could be wrong on that last part - perhaps this was promised and that was withdrawn.
In most cases, there is an alternative service provider. In this case there isn't, but there is also zero public will to change that due to the facts and circumstances of the dispute. Were those different, Postnord would be risking its monopoly on license-plate delivery.
So, who are we to judge? It’s their country and their laws. I just stated that, their laws and the way of action they took resonates with me. That’s all.
> is you downing tools and stopping working.
These aren't exclusive, it's just they've downed tools and stopped working for the customer the strike is against. People don't join unions for their employer, they join unions for their industry. Therefore a union can strike against an employer while maintaining working for those not breaking collective agreements.
Tesla, welcome to a free country where the state doesn't interfere. Truly a Rand-ian paradise. ;-)
Perhaps you are thinking of a general strike? This is a solidarity strike.
You're defining a sympathetic strike.
I don't have a view on whether this is justified. What I'll contest is that it was unforeseeable. It was obvious a refusal to negotiate would infuriate--it's happened dozens of times, almost always with American companies, and it's close to an element of national and regional pride at this point. It wasn't a certainty, but there was a definite risk of it escalating across Sweden. And from there it was and is a virtual certainty that it would spread across Scandinavia, and from there will across the Nordic countries and eventually Northern Europe.
This is a stupid molehill to die on for Tesla. They should bite the bullet and devolve Swedish operations to a local franchise who can enter into a collective-bargaing agreement .
Companies in the Nordics aren't alone either, they have employers' organizations where a whole sector of employers band together to bargain with the unions. These discussions then produce collective agreements that bind the whole sector for a given timespan.
It might sound alien to some, but it has guaranteed stable work conditions and a dedicated workforce for a century already.
> It's not a step to be taken lightly.
Well, there's no balancing downside to doing it this way. Workers still get paid. So they can do this pretty lightly, assuming their employers allow them to just discriminate against certain customers.
With the dockworkers example there is a massive downside: you mess up all industries doing any export or import. You really need a large buy-in before doing something that can mess up all unrelated industries, and thus potentially employment. In a small country no union operates in a vacuum, you'd quickly lose all goodwill.
Edit: I think I answered off your point, which was about the specific company. Yes I don't think there's any big downside now, but if Tesla was playing by the book they would have the industry behind them. They are just choosing a more difficult way.
The unions, including the employer unions (NB!), have during the past century kept the country's lawmakers mostly out of regulating workforce agreements, including things like minimum pay, workplace insurance, and large parts of the pension system. These things are regulated by sector, and the regulations are re-bargained on a set schedule by these parties alone.
You can't stay out of these agreements for too long once you reach a certain size. The unions are trusted to handle this by their own. That is mostly done by sweetening the deal until it is accepted, usually by signing away the fundamental right to strike. It is not obvious if such fundamental rights really are bound to contract, especially not with the European Court, but it has resulted in a society where strikes are almost unheard of. Calling a strike without the backing of a union is pretty ineffective anyway, and the unions have their self interest in strong companies that can compete internationally and provide new jobs for the workforce.
The only times strikes are called are when some company will not present a counterparty to a contract negotiation, which is what this situation is. That happens once every decade and when it happens the unions all move in unison with several decades of money saved up, to show their might in order to make the affair as swift as possible. It's something that is often rehearsed often and seldom practiced.
Solidarity strikes are expected as a show of force. Things will escalate from there. While the part about an offer you can't refuse clearly has some similarities with mafia operations, the boundaries are clearly defined by law. There are lawyers specializing in this their entire careers.
Comparing this with the Chinese system misses the point by a mile.
If this is what elmu wants, so be it. The people of the country will continue deciding how to run their country without this particular arrogant rich narcissist.
Sweden is not the USA.
I don't think you understand how a private company works. You can't say it is a private company owned by the state - if that is the case, it is a public government agency, no matter how you want it not to be. So in short, a government agency chooses if it wants to work or not...
It's not something one can have an opinion on. It is a fact, and an important one for the people working there. Being a government worker comes with certain rights and responsibilities, neither of which is the case here.
But even if it had been a government agency, government workers have the fundamental human right to strike too. There are a few exceptions, and then there are special laws for times of war, but none that are applicable now.
I dunno much about Europe but if it's a private company, then rules and services are obviously different.
Lots of companies have access to the mail boxes. I know of at least three companies that deliver to my mailbox + one that delivers marketing materials to it.
Particularly, as you note, in the case of a pseudo-government agency like Postnord.
The only tricky bit, IMO, is the requirement that the plates must be delivered by Postnord. If it is a bit of law, it seems a little unfair that there should be a legal requirement to do business with Postnord.
I thought there’d been a story recently about some alternative arrangement where the plates were instead delivered to a dealership or something, and the people could pick them up… I wonder if that changed.
Its owned by the State. Two of them even. One of them can call for a board meeting and fire the CEO (who does not have any right to force his employees). But it is not owned by the government.
Please continue the discussion,i just wanted it out.
Of course, it is an easy mistake for those of us in the US to make; we tend to use “government” more generally. I guess because we used the name “states” for our province-sized administrative unit thingies.
Also it's one thing to refuse pickup, but PostNord employees are picking up the plates from the factory and then storing them at PostNord. The plates are definitely not the property of PostNord, they are either the property of the state Transport Agency, Tesla or the car owners. Accepting the package and then holding someone else's property seems a bit strange, especially given that these are not even Tesla's striking employees. I wonder how strong property laws are in Sweden.
Government workers deciding not to provide services to specific entities or people they are in dispute with is a bridge that I can only assume should have some pretty serious consequences.
If a "customer" walks into a store and starts mistreating workers, it's totally reasonable for them to tell the customer to buzz off, and for their employer to support them. What kind of terrible boss or society would force workers to service their abuser?
If elmu wants to throw his money around to exploit and abuse workers, he can do it somewhere else. Few others seem to be having this issue, so it seems the root cause is him and his behavior. Whether or not he fixes himself, Sweden did and will do fine without this 1 rich narcissist with oppositional defiant disorder.
Might be useful for some cabins way out in the wilderness or on an island. But maybe not even then, my grandparents cabin has fiber
https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2023/10/12/maersk-signs...
Can't speak about spacex not sure if any Swedish companies do business with them.
Because: normal people just obey the laws of the countries where they do business.
Musk will end up self destructing over something like this sooner or later, the guy has no sense of when to back down and just keeps on taking on parties with power until he loses and when he loses it will be at a level that he won't be able to recover from. You pick your battles with care, and this is one that was utterly unnecessary. After all the damage the Tesla brand has suffered on account of his Twitter antics (I refuse to call it 'X') he really doesn't need more, especially not in a market that was so far a substantial plank in Tesla's strategy and a country with massive early adoption.
Don't worry, the courts aren't on strike against Tesla.
Then the unions have to figure out their next steps.
Get your popcorn
There are few courier companies large enough to take their service, even in a scenario where the contract for license plate delivery can be breached (which it isn't, as this is force majeure by definition), but there are even fewer banks. And they're all unionized.
Not much need for popcorn. Refusing to negotiate is clearly not a winning strategy. And it's not supposed to be.
No substantial bad factory conditions or request for higher pay, "just agree to collective bargaining agreements, that's all."
I was a welder back in NY in 1997, and joined a company and I was told by the Union's lackey that joining the union was voluntary. At the end of my three months, the thug came looking for dues. He clarified, "it's voluntary, you can take another job." Since then, the taste of a mobster mentality has steered me away from unions for the rest of my life. They once served a purpose, but my opinion is they have become less important and do not really do what they advertise.
The Swedish Trade Unions are dropping due to the ratio of native workers vs. immigrant workers, so it is a matter of time before the homogeneity of the population goes down, and trade unions with it. They're partially isolated from the EU, but too dependent to not suffer the coming collapse of the EU economies. Musk could just say FU to them too. With over 125,000 global employees, and a lot of countries subsidizing EVs to hide their real costs, the 170 Swedish laborers would quickly be out of a lot of work, and Sweden can buy other EVs and deal with them. The Tesla is most popular in Sweden, then Norway, and finally Denmark. The people who have already bought them would know who was responsible for them not being able to get their Tesla's fixed - not Elon, but their own government and unions. See how many other businesses get cold feet doing business in Scandinavia from this.
Maybe we'll see graveyards of Teslas in Scandinavia like we do of EVs due to failed startups in China. No win for anyone.
Now there's a hot take in light of the largest worker gains in decades, entirely because of unions, just in the last couple years.