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Comment by eddtries | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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