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Comment by tuwtuwtuwtuw | Hacker News Reader

According to Tesla, the agreement which employees have in Sweden is already better than the minimum bar set by union, so Teslas issues appears to more out of principle than out of actual issues with the agreement itself. Or Tesla is lying and the agreement with employees is not actually better.

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Swede here. That is what every company that doesn't want to play according to the Swedish model says. I worked at one of those companies and yes, pay and benefits were better, up until I reached a certain age where the "collective deal" would have been better for me. Was this tiny detail communicated clearly to me? Of course not, I heard it from a colleague who was older and had been at other companies. Was it a lie that "we have a better deal"? I wouldn't say so. Am I still at that company? No.

I’ve heard some form of this from every company fighting unions. If that’s really the case, wouldn’t it be beneficial to the finances of the company overall if the union is requesting less benefits?

Unions set the lower bar but if you want to be competitive you still offer higher rates. I guess Musk could sign this and give everyone a pay cut!

It depends on the contract negotiated by the union. In theory, the union can put a floor on pay, with cap and allow individual workers to negotiate higher wages if they are so inclined. The US sports leagues offer the best example of this.

Labor contracts cover a variety of issues, Tesla is cherry-picking their comparison IMO.

They have it better now, until they don't...

Who knows which change in the wind would make Musk change his opinion and make conditions worse (see "I'm a free speech absolutist (until I'm not, and I shut up every voice opposing me)".

With a collective agreement, he can throw as many tantrums he wants and the workers will be protected.

Does Tesla have a binding agreement with the workers on how to handle layoffs when business is bad?

Do they need to? That's what laws are for, in the case of Sweden it's the Employment Protection Act.

The union can negotiate a better deal but it's not wild west at-will employment like in the US.

This is about mass layoffs, not terminating individual employees for "personal reasons".

I am not an expert, but I think the union claims that this is one thing that is now worse for the Spotify employees who are laid off?

Meaning, sure, there is a degree of basic legal protection, but during layoffs, having a collective bargaining agreement will give you better conditions than that?

This law also covers layoffs, even to the point where it dictates in what order employees can be laid off. In general the IF Metall collective agreements don't have any additional worker protections for the case of mass layoffs or individual terminations, they usually only cover temporary lay offs.

I haven't seen what they are actually asking for in the case of Tesla Sweden. In Germany the discussion is mostly related to wages, safety/accidents and shift planning.

This is a massive simplification to the point of being misleading. Those laws are largely superseded by contract law, which is exactly why collective agreements are made, and the order in which layoffs are made are usually among the first to be negotiated. There are lawyers that base their entire careers on such matters.

Both parties act out of principles. The conflict is about power dynamics, first and foremost.

Yup, and one is the principles of a large car company from another country while the other is the social underpinnings of the countries entire labour market going back a century

That is exaggregated. This is IF Metall vs Tesla, not Sweden vs Tesla.

It isn't just IF Metall vs Tesla in practice. The result of this whole thing will impact Swedish labor standards as a whole by setting a critical precedent for both companies and unions. I'm not part of IF Metall, but also not naive enough to think this power struggle won't affect me or people I care about working in Sweden in the future.

It will affect you either way. It is difficult to tell exactly how but a union win will embolden the unions in Sweden general, and it is not certain that is an all out win. I realize that embolden is not a neutral word, but what is on the other side of the balance scale is investments in new jobs in Sweden vs elsewhere. Perhaps the balance will still be a net benefit to Sweden but we will see. I would have an easier time to understand the strike if it was about material conditions such as salary etc, but now it is an all-out power struggle about the type of agreement.

The fact that it will affect me either way is kind of my point in saying this is not just IF Metall vs Tesla. I consider a union win to be the best outcome here.

And for that reason it is the most likely outcome too. 'When in Rome...' Tesla has a lot to lose here: Norway, Sweden and to a lesser extent Denmark and Finland are early adopters and Tesla has large market share there. If they turn those countries against them it will have repercussions all over Europe. I'm in NL and have already heard people mention this conflict here and how it affects their view of Tesla as a brand and I think that's not unique.

Pick your battles and all that.

Absolutely not. It will not embolden unions in Sweden at all. They fully expect to win. Contract law is the fundamental issue here.

The only realistic alternative is Tesla leaving Sweden. Prospective owners would have to import their cars from other countries. It's not hard to imagine that situation.

I'm not a member of if metall (member of a lame yellow union) but I'm a Swede and it's us against Elon. I stand with the metallers in solidarity!

That's completely fine. I think many do. But it is not as black and white as some state it

I would say it's somewhere in the middle. You wrote that it's If Metall againt Tesla, but that's simply not the case. Other unions have already joined in so it's both technically incorrect and a bit misleading.

This would be true if there were not repercussions for the wider Swedish model, but since there are repercussions of rolling over it is Sweden vs Tesla

You can be certain that there are plenty of Swedes that see it differently, they are just less vocal

Perhaps? But everyone I've spoken to have been pretty vocal about it, although more along the lines of "Musk is a tool"

Tesla is a good opponent. Musk is generally despised. Electric vehicles are seen as fancy-pants toys for eco-freaks. So the usual people who come to the defense of big companies don't really feel the need to break a lance for Tesla.

This is specifically the case with the Sweden Democrats. A big motivator for them is a) bashing greens, and b) being a better alternative for the working class than the Social Democrats. Siding with a foreign billionaire over "salt-of-the-earth" workers is not a winning move.

I'm sure there are. To be frank, that matters little. All large employers are part of an employer's union. They don't see things differently. They all need this particular contract law intact.

Vocal or not, no one will not be able to affect this semi-voluntary system unless they control bascially the entire economy. This is unlikely to ever be the case, until maybe some supranational EU agreement changes the rules entirely.

If that were so, I think we wouldn't see other unions jumping to IF Metall's aid so readily

Swede here. You are absolutely mistaken.

This is a huge deal in whole of Scandinavia. Today Finland unions joined in. The other day both Norway and Danish unions joined in. Before that, many other Swedish unions joined in.

This is Tesla versus the Scandinavian model rather.

What I find interesting is that nobody at Tesla seems to be able to realize that when you go abroad you can't just export your home country's attitude to labor relations and that Tesla as a brand is suffering, not just in Sweden, but in the Nordics as a whole and in the rest of Europe as well. Even if they win they lose, and not just a little bit.

I’m sure plenty of folks at Tesla have come to this realization. I’m also sure they are smart enough to keep it themselves.

That's what you get when you're surrounded by 'yes' people. It's one of the main reasons that power corrupts: you no longer have anything to calibrate with.

One issue with the work environment is that the workers get a 1 hour max time to find bugs. If they take longer than that they get a mark against them and may cause them to lose their job. This rewards workers who cheat and just send away the cars within the time constraint.

This is an example of something they want to fix.

Somehow I'd bet a large amount of money that Tesla is lying, considering that's what Elon is best at.

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