The Tesla labour conflict

[luzula]

I don't know if you're following the Tesla labour conflict in Sweden, but I'm enjoying it. Tesla is facing union action for refusing to sign a collective agreement (apparently they have never signed an agreement with a union ever). The thing is, in Sweden the whole system is built on collective agreements with unions and all the big companies have them. God knows the large Swedish unions and the system of collective agreements have their many faults: failing to demand high enough wage raises, failing to recruit among migrant workers, failing to follow up whether the collective agreement is in fact being kept in industries with lots of migrant workers, damping down the willingness to fight among their own members so as not to rock the boat with employers. Etc etc.

But this fight with Tesla, that is exactly what they are equipped to fight.
Main union organizing Tesla workers: Come at us! Our strike funds can take 500 years of this.
Electrician union: Sorry, we're no longer servicing your charging stations.
Transport union: Sorry, we're no longer delivering your cars or spare parts. Also not your mail, which means you can't get your registration plates because they're only allowed to be delivered that way.
Transport unions of Norway, Denmark, and Finland: Sorry, we're no longer delivering your stuff to Sweden.
Luz: *eats popcorn and waits for Elon Musk to lose*

Comments

[sanguinity]

I have been following, and I have been enjoying this immensely.

From what I've seen about how these fights have gone with other anti-union corporations trying to set up shop in highly-unionized European countries, every one of the corporations has ultimately either folded or left town, and I'm curious to see which it is that Musk chooses to do.

[luzula]

Glad you're enjoying it!

(It just occurred to me that there is in fact a possible loophole which Musk might be able to employ, because Sweden's laws concerning industrial action were changed a few years ago for the worse. *shakes fist at government* God, I hope that doesn't happen. But if it does, it will totally be partly the fault of the big unions, because they agreed to that law and have themselves used it to try to crush a smaller and more radical rival union.)

[sanguinity]

Well, let's all hope that Musk hasn't suddenly started listening to his lawyers. He has, after all, been profoundly stupid about US securities and labor law...

[luzula]

The loophole strategy whereby he could get a watered-down collective agreement along with labour peace would still require him to sign collective agreements with not only one but two unions, so perhaps it wouldn't be very attractive to him. It seems to be the principle of the thing ("refuse to negotiate with terrorists unions!") which motivates him as much as his financial profits.

In which ways has he been stupid about US labour law?

[sanguinity]

The case I remember most vividly was back when he was doing massive layoffs. One of his employees was attempting to discover via tweeting Musk whether he had been fired (since he had been unable to discover it via HR -- which, as near as anyone could tell, had also been fired), and Musk ended up firing him via tweet with a lot of invective about how he had asked around and heard he was lazy, didn't get work done, etc...

Only to have to walk it back the next day because the guy was 1) disabled, had accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the language in the tweet was effectively firing him BECAUSE of his accommodation, and 2) the guy was the developer of some IP twitter had bought, and his employment in perpetuity was part of that purchase deal, and thus couldn't be fired without legal repercussions.

Of course, if Musk had had a decent termination process, he wouldn't have found himself in that situation.

[luzula]

Oh wow. Well, that's charming.

[vatine]

A few decades go, Toys'R'Us weer in the same position (with a "post-holiday mass layoff" as a triggering event). They eventually signed on the dotted line, after a few months of "No store cleaning, no deliveries, ...".

[sanguinity]

A business only operates with the labor of a fuckton of people, some employees and many not. And if all of those people withhold their labor... Well, eventually what you have is a building, and not much more.