Sweden’s Tesla Blockade Is Spreading
www.wired.co.uk
Starting Friday, dockworkers in all Swedish ports will refuse to offload Teslas, cleaning crews will no longer clean showrooms, and mechanics won’t fix charging points as the labor dispute rages on.
    • astraeus@programming.dev
      58·
      1 year ago

      This isn’t even aggressive, they’re literally showing they won’t work for the company if the company isn’t willing to work for them. All the unions in the US have to play politics with the government and corporations in order to keep things flowing smoothly, one false move and the corporations have the upper hand. With that kind of advantage, it’s the corporations who are aggressive here.

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
        54·
        1 year ago

        I’ll never understand how the railroad workers union was only allowed to strike on a specific day for a specific time and then were forced to go back to work. Apparently they are labeled “critical” for the nation and then can’t strike??

        Like, uh, that’s literally the point of the strike. Highlighting how critical they are and that you should give them the meager asks they wanted. If some low-wage earners can shut down the entire country because they are upset about earning peanuts - well then maybe it shows they shouldn’t be earning peanuts.

        • DrunkenPirate@feddit.de
          28·
          1 year ago

          Just watched on tv a documentary about strikes a hundred years ago in the US. Facing the Rockefellers, Carnegies and alike. Police was shooting them down. That’s the US. Railroaders are on strike just today in Germany.

          • drcobaltjedi@programming.dev
            18·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, theres shit like the battle of blair mountain that everyone should look into.

            Hey, my fellow 'Muricans, we actually took up arms here for our right to have a living wage

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
      16·
      1 year ago

      There is a push for American unions to set their next contract expiration dates to 1 May 2028, specifically to enable a general strike.

      • Dominic@beehaw.org
        2·
        1 year ago

        Important to note that this is a workaround. Solidarity strikes (which normally include general strikes) are illegal, but there’s no law that prevents every union from happening to strike on their own behalf at the same time.

    • Dominic@beehaw.org
      9·
      1 year ago

      American unions are kneecapped by the government. The 1947 Taft-Hartley Act made solidarity strikes (and several other forms of labor protest) illegal. It also opened the door for states to enact “right-to-work” laws.

      This law is still standing in part because US courts have been anti-labor for their entire existence, aside from a brief period during FDR’s administration.

  • Pete Hahnloser@beehaw.org
    27·
    1 year ago

    The delicious irony here is that U.S. corporations want the government out of regulating worker rights and company obligations, and having actually encountered that, Tesla said, “no, we don’t like how that turned out, either.”

  • HairHeel@programming.devEnglish
    22·
    1 year ago

    Three days later, on November 20, the Seko union, which represents postal workers, will stop delivering letters, spare parts, and pallets to all of Tesla’s addresses in Sweden.

    It seems troubling that there aren’t regulations in place requiring postal workers to deliver mail indiscriminately.

    What if the postal union decided not to deliver mail-in ballots they thought might support a policy they disagreed with, for example?

    • Chahk@beehaw.org
      26·
      1 year ago

      Can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic, but the postal thing has already happened during the USA 2020 election.

      • TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.orgM
        2·
        1 year ago

        Hi, can you clarify what you mean or provide a source? I’m not away of any widespread examples of this but it could be that I’m misunderstanding or misremembering.

        • Chahk@beehaw.org
          10·
          1 year ago

          Louis DeJoy, the U.S. Postmaster General who was installed by Trump in May 2020, spent the months prior to the November elections undermining voting by mail and sabotaging the Postal Service. There were multiple lawsuits about it.

        • abhibeckert@beehaw.org
          3·
          1 year ago

          The Trump government shut down automated mail sorting machines, cut overtime for workers (so if they weren’t keeping up with the workload, they’d just stop delivering mail instead of working a longer shift), replaced a bunch of air mail delivery routes with road ones, added delays to re-delivery attempts when a letter couldn’t be delivered and removed mail collection boxes.

          Supposedly all of this would “improve the efficiency” of the postal service. Yeah right.

    • magnetosphere@kbin.social
      52·
      1 year ago

      Sweden doesn’t have laws that set working conditions, such as a minimum wage. Instead these rules are dictated by collective agreements, a type of contract that defines the benefits employees are entitled to, such as wages and working hours. For five years, industrial workers’ union IF Metall, which represents Tesla mechanics, has been trying to persuade the company to sign a collective agreement. When Tesla refused, the mechanics decided to strike at the end of October. Then they asked fellow Swedish unions to join them.

      • 1984@lemmy.today
        10·
        1 year ago

        This is actually a pretty nice system. It works like a protection for all workers, that their salaries are set by the union and it can’t be changed by the company.

        Of course Tesla doesn’t like that, and of course capitalism in general hates that, because how are you going to replace then with cheaper workers? Or fire them when they feel like it (this is also regulated by the unions).

        Capitalism is at its core about exploiting humans, and specially humans that are weak and not able to compete in the capitalism class system. It’s company profits over humanity.

      • Stillhart@lemm.ee
        10·
        1 year ago

        Weird how reading the article will sometimes give more information than just reading the headline, isn’t it?

        • magnetosphere@kbin.social
          7·
          1 year ago

          I was thinking the same thing.

          I resisted the urge to make a comment about it because honestly, sometimes I’ve been guilty of it, too. Also, some articles are so full of useless, unnecessary bullshit I can’t really blame people for not wanting to read them. So I just copied, pasted, and shut up. :)