Doesn’t matter. Even when you’re fully owned by a government, unionization allows you to do this.
This is what unionization is, protects the worker regardless of your employer.
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 But I could be wrong on that last part - perhaps this was promised and that was withdrawn.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.