Sweden’s Tesla blockade is spreading — Starting Friday, dockworkers in all Swedish ports will refuse to offload Teslas, cleaning crews will no longer clean showrooms, and mechanics won’t fix chargi...

www.wired.co.uk Sweden’s Tesla Blockade Is Spreading

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.

Sweden’s Tesla blockade is spreading — Starting Friday, dockworkers in all Swedish ports will refuse to offload Teslas, cleaning crews will no longer clean showrooms, and mechanics won’t fix chargi...::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.

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The kind of class solidarity I can only dream of as a yank
There are three battles wise men know not to fight:

A land war in Asia

The Finns in winter

Swedish Unions
- For context: Finns won war against entire USSR.
  
  The Finnish still had to cede territory to the USSR but in protecting their country they did wipe the floor with the Soviets.
  
  Nope. They lost, but inflicted heavy casualties
- Napoleon learned the hard way
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. “Tesla is trying to gain competitive advantages by giving the workers worse wages and conditions than they would have with a collective agreement,” said Seko’s union president, Gabriella Lavecchia, in a statement. “It is of course completely unacceptable.”

Interesting that it is legal to withhold mail. In many countries that would be a crime.
- There are many ways to legally do this. They may just adhere to regulations more strictly. Where before they would bend the rules to help out.
  
  They might just schedule Tesla's mail for the end of the day and be extra "careful" that day. Oops, there wasn't enough time to deliver their mail! Maybe after a few days of a customer's mail building up, there's a rule saying the customer has to come in and get it themselves. Following all the rules exactly will fuck up any system because they are rarely created with overall productivity in mind.
  
  "This parcel is kinda sus and looks like bomb parts. Regulations says to fill form A123 and wait for ministry that no longer exists fill form B456. Whatever, regulation says so."
- Probably pretty hard to punish your entire work force. Next they could start boycotting you for punishing them. Or maybe their tariff contract may also cover this as legal strike action.
- I wonder if the difference is in refusing to deliver, but allowing pickup
  
  But who will pick up, if nobody want to work at tesla?
- They don't withhold, they just don't deliver.
  
  Maybe Tesla even can send their employee to pick up letters and stuff. Right, nobody want to work at Tesla. Well, tough luck.
  
  Sorry but what's the difference between intentionally not delivering and withholding? Semantics?
- I think if you don't open the mail and only withhold it from being delivered, so not destroying it, it's morally fine. That doesn't say anything about laws though ^^
As a Dane I’m bloody embarrassed if Danish unionised workers are unloading the cars there. They should bloody strike with their Nordic brothers and sisters.
- How does Tesla treat their workers and wages in Denmark? Are they bellow par?
  
  I don’t live in Denmark so I don’t know. But I don’t think Tesla has signed a deal with any union, globally, so it’s probably the same there. I’d personally love to see the Space Baby brought to heel. Growing up with unions as a natural fabric of society, and indeed with unions on the boards of most business in Denmark, it’s never appeared as an adversarial thing to me until I moved to an Anglo-Saxon country.
- Norwegian dock workers are joining the swedes at least. Even though Tesla in Norway is unionized
Worker solidarity is lovely to see. Good luck Sweden!
- Thank you! We will strangle them out!
Proud to be a member of the Swedish metalworkers union!
- Black metal or death metal workers? 🤘🤘
  
  We are music agnostic, need to keep our eyes on the ball and not descend into the madness that is metal genre debates.
  
  Obviously not dead metal workers, they have the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work
- Nice
- Like Ironworkers, steelworkers or tinbenders? They are all separate unions here in the US though all three are AFL-CIO.
  
  If anyone is wondering, Ironworkers are erectors, steelworkers work in foundries and steel mills and tinbenders are sheet metal guys. Roughly.
  
  We are quite diverse and do not conform to the old guilds, we are the union of the industry union and the metal union since 2006.
  
  Everything from miners, pastics, medical equipment, industrial chemistry, glassmakers, autobody, forgeworkers to locksmiths and metal shops.
Will someone please give me the cliffs notes on how Tesla has pissed off the Swedes?
- It didn't sign a deal with the unions and tried to strongarm its way through it
  
  I see, so another case of Americans thinking their rules apply everywhere.
  
  And now they suffer the consequences, serves them right.
  
  That seems unwise.
  
  Ah the toys are us way
- Reading the article, it seems they do not have basic minimum wages set federally and collective agreements are the basis in all workplaces.
  
  I have to wonder if Tesla will just find other ways to get the product into the country instead. Unconfirmed local reports say that the cars are being unloaded in Danish ports then driven into Sweden.
  
  Toys are Us refused to sign a collective agreement in the mid 90s but was convinced to sign after similar strike actions.
  
  So it seems Sweden might still have a strong union environment and will be able to affect public sentiment about Tesla in the long term as they even mention people refusing services from Tesla based taxis.
  
  The original trigger is that Tesla refused to negotiate with the union members for 5 years (IF Metall is the union, for industry workers), they haven't recognized the unionization at all.
Would love to see this happen in the US. Would be a total shitshow but very entertaining to watch.
- Not legal, unfortunately.
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft–Hartley_Act
  
  The Taft–Hartley Act amended the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), adding new restrictions on union actions and designating new union-specific unfair labor practices. Among the practices prohibited by the Taft–Hartley act are jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing, closed shops, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns.
  
  That is disappointing, but not surprising.
- Isn't unionizing a crime in some states or somesuch?
  
  In some ways I'm surprised by the confusing name of right to work states which turns out to be really easy to fire states.
  
  No
- Short time shit show, long term benefit for everyone.
- Things only happen when they are made happen. Also nothing begins big. there are probably at least small pockets of resistance everywhere, even if its just small groups of people or singular persons.
Please everyone get on board with this. Do not support greedy corporations!

Tesla, Amazon, Starbucks, are all trying to stop there workers from unionizing and giving them better life. You have other options, don’t give them money. This is because in todays world we vote with our money to make change happen.
- their*
  
  And yes, there are very few things most people aren't able to get elsewhere from another company. It's only a bit inconvenient at first, when you have to spend some time finding better alternatives but once you've done that it's just as easy as before and you feel good about your choices.
- I just try to act like these firms dont exist. I wont even open amazons website, but even if i did and couldn't find something anywhere else, i would just consider that item to not be available for purchase anywhere. I also refuse to receive anything that I can see is related to companies like these even for free, if its reasonable to do so and even then reluctantly. Nestle is fucking annoying about this since they actively try to hide their name under other brands they have control over.
  
  Unfortunately most of the platforms you use, likely this one too, are hosted on AWS :/
  
  The big money maker of Amazon.
  
  It's impossible to get away from, which really sucks.
This is what happens when capitalism tries to fight with democracy. If government fucks over citizens, then citizens ignore government, but if government represents and helps citizens, citizens will do "Tesla, fuck you!".

EDIT: or when unions work.
- funny choice of an image because that guy and his product got completely fucked by capitalism. that's why he's so pissed off here.
  
  How exactly did Linux get fucked by capitalism?
  
  This image is of Linus torvalds giving nvidia the middle finger because they are absolutely terrible to work with, money aside.
Waiting for the "damn commies" comments.
- If The Swedes are commies then just call me Comradesson!
  
  an American who collaborates with our office in Sweden.
  
  Kamratsson in Swedish.
  
  Fun fact: In Sweden it is common use the phrase "Work comrade" (arbetskamrat) to refer to your colleagues.
- Dude what the actual fuck are you saying, almost the entirety of lemmys user base is extremely left and pro communism and socialism. In fact, certain parts are so communist, they got defederated. And you'll see what people call "tankies" everywhere. Lemmy is the epitome of leftist thinking and ideals. What a silly comment to make, here, of all places. It would make sense on twitter
  
  Edit: this comment would be legit on Facebook too
  
  I woudn't call simping for Putin or certain chinese capitalist as communism.
  
  In fact, certain parts are so communist, they got defederated.
  
  That's kinda sad, as is an overwhelming majority leaning to one side alone. Now you're making me wish there were some "damn commies" comments, i dislike echo chambers.
  
  Don't forget to breathe.
  
  Why do you think it's so radically left wing/communist here? IDK if you've ever seen GAB, but it feels like that for liberals.
Good
Please let it spread
Good
Teslas in Sweden are probably going to have a lot of flat tires in the near future.
- Just the ones in the warehouses. Unions don't get mad at the public. They get mad at shitty, oppressive, conservative employers.
  
  The article does mention refusing Tesla based taxi service. Not sure how they are structured there but I do see individuals that own Tesla's possibly being affected as a result.
  
  conservative employers.
  
  Depending on location and time, conservative might mean literal communists.
- It's Sweden, not France
- Oh, you mean a mass movement of anarcho-communist activism would slash the tires of private cars?
  
  No.
  
  It's even wilder. This is just normal people having a union.
  
  I don't think they were suggesting slashed tires, just that lentil bean sales are about to go up.
  
  But yeah, targeting people who bought cars before the labor issue was widely known wouldn't be productive.
I find it fascinating that they have no legislation about workers rights. I am curious if any Swedes could inform me how the "conservative" style movements are doing in Sweden.
- Well, I guess I have two thoughts on that. For one, what you're probably thinking of is seen as basically qanon freaks. The other is that of course there's a political right, and of course there is a social conservative current.
  
  The right has traditionally been a coalition of liberals and conservatives, but the Christian conservatives are actually Christian. (They command a certain degree of respect, even though I don't agree)
  
  As for the social conservatives, they're to a large degree absorbed by either the traditional social democrats (or "total autocrats" as I like to call them) or the nazis.
  
  The WHAT?
  
  Yes. The left was so busy suppressing racism (real) that they made it basically impossible to have adult conversation about the problems inherent in eliminating low-education jobs and, at the same time, accepting a lot of illiterate refugees. And as the reality of taking from the middle class boomers (who strongly identify as working class) to fund the result, the nazis were there, and they're scary huge now.
  
  Idk, there's a lot to unpack and explain here, and I'm sure others have other angles, so I'll leave it at that.
- Sweden has plenty of legislation about workers rights, this conflict has more to do with employee benefits and the unions right to represent their members.
- We have legislation about worker safety and basic fundamental worker rights, but we don't have a minimum wage and some other stuff legislated because that's left to collective agreements with the unions

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