There was a lot of crowing by the anti-union crowd just a day ago with the interim decision. Regardless of how this works out in the end, I think this whole episode has made clear if it wasn’t already that the majority of EV buyers and enthusiasts, being upper income people, are remarkably anti-union.
It is truly baffling how people consider the actions of a bunch of rich people (i.e. management at a company) to be justified in anything they do. You will hear the line “They have an obligation to their stockholders”, or just “It’s their money, they can do what they want with it,” in pretty much any scenario where a business does something negative for society or the world at large.
But the second a bunch of workers exercise the absolutely most basic right there is in a free market, that of not working, they are excoriated by these same people. Some of the attitudes in the last thread were as though these workers were withholding medicine for orphans, not just choosing to not work for a company openly hostile to them. Again, Tesla has chosen to do business a certain way, and the workers are choosing to respond. You can debate the legality of both sides however much you want, but it is ridiculous how people put moral judgements out there as if Tesla is owed the labor of Swedish workers.
As nick Hanauer points out, the US is largely infected with a decades strong lingering religious like ideology called market fundamentalism. It’s an entirely false notion that “market” is like a physics or chemistry equation and anything done to disturb it or influence it will reduce efficiency or disturb the “natural” balance. They of course never want to acknowledge all the scales tilting the favor to the corporations.
There are no laws of nature in economics. Just like there are no laws of nature in basketball. People make the rules, and agree to them.There are no laws of chemistry, biology, or physics, that children cannot work in factories. And yet with evidence we find the ROI for society is higher for us all when children are not working in factories, and so deem it so.
Amusingly, if you follow the history, the US was a remarkably strong regulator against ‘natural’ market forces for a very, very long time. The Sherman Antitrust Act in particular has had some of the most impactful results of any such legislation globally for workers and consumers.
It was only after the red scare that everything just… fell apart. Suddenly worker and consumer rights became associated with communism, and communism was bad. It’s been decade after decade of regressive policy after regressive policy since then.
It was largely in the 70s when the ideology came online and then implemented, or rather not enforced, under Reagan, and it just stayed that way. It’s not like the host of laws were revoked, the interpretations changed and a new anti empirical “consumer” test was adopted.
You have to understand that TSLA shareholders a very vocal part of this community. If you look at the post history of the anti-union commentators, there is almost always some connection to other Tesla shareholding communities.
These people aren’t anti-union because they have deeply held ideological beliefs regarding socioeconomics; they are people with a clear and direct motivation to support Tesla’s profit margin by supporting whatever position is most convenient at the time. There is no separating their belief system from that of the business itself.
Its roughly the same on the other side. Its usually an anti-corporation, anti-1%, anti-Tesla or Musk in this case cheering for the Union.
Even the post you responded to; there is a lot of things being said that are just projections of that person’s understanding of what a Union is and what is being faught for.
I dont think anyone can argue against good outcomes for the workers; and so far, I’m not convinced that is the driving motivation of the this particular Union. If instead, their motivations are to perserve the strength of the Union so that the leadership holds on to power and influence, then thats not a good outcome for the worker.
I’m Tesla shareholder and I would fully support Tesla signing CBA. Less profit is better than no profit if they decide to leave Sweden. It is already more costly to implement workarounds for all the blockades than to sign CBA for 130 people. Shareholders certainly should prefer Tesla to make most profit possible and currently that would be by signing CBA.
I think this whole episode has made clear if it wasn’t already that the majority of EV buyers and enthusiasts, being upper income people, are remarkably anti-union.
I mean that’s the case with Sweden too. Tesla is the most popular EV - by far - in Sweden, so clearly its consumers don’t care about unions either and hence the “boot wearers” term.
I’m against this policy because the entire concept of sympathy strikes is bullshit. If you go on strike, you don’t work. That’s what a strike is.
Basically everywhere in the world except Sweden, it’s super illegal to keep working but just screw over a single company when you work for some other company like a postal service.
Imagine if Postnord’s union workers decided that they didn’t like something about the biggest hospital company in Sweden, and “sympathy striked” to prevent their medicine from being delivered. Would you be OK with that?
Imagine if Postnord’s union workers decided that they didn’t like something about the biggest hospital company in Sweden, and “sympathy striked” to prevent their medicine from being delivered. Would you be OK with that?
That doesn’t make sense. For it to be a sympathy strike, the workers at the hospital would have to be striking first. If the workers at the hospital are on strike, then the hospital has bigger issues than PostNord.
That’s my point. What if a minority of the workers at the hospital were striking. Say, the x-ray technicians. Would you be OK with PostNord not delivering essential materials to the hospital because the x-ray techs are striking?
In most of the world there is a law that striking cannot remove life critical care, and it is standard for hospital strikes to keep a skeleton crew for critical patient care while refusing to do any elective or non urgent care and all admin duties.
So no, not delivering medicine to a hospital would not be OK.
Not delivering other items would.
And it would only become a factor in sympathy strikes if the hospital was already on strike…
Well to be fair, I mentioned orphans and medicine, but only so much to say that people getting high end cars is not something that I think labor has any moral obligation to provide by comparison. And as I explained probably in too much length in my reply to them, even in healthcare labor there are limits to what labor can reasonably be asked, and beyond which not working is equally acceptable, because none of that industry even approaches a free market mechanism anywhere from any angle.
In essentially no country is there really a free market of hospitals. They are pretty much always built at the discretion of what we might term “benevolent” government sponsored cartels, to ensure that there isn’t overlap, because nowhere can support the expense of multiple competing hospitals, much like utilities even when they are private. So the part of “free market” where workers can shop around their labor doesn’t exist in most of healthcare, if they bargain it will always be against a de facto sole provider of the service in any area. So what you have is a one way street in labor disputes. Management can do essentially anything hostile to labor so long as it doesn’t go so far as bringing the public in and then the government. This means they can pay ridiculously bad wages, they can even force workers to provide terrible service, and the laborers have no recourse beyond striking in many places.
Which brings us full circle to where we started, because the public in sane countries like Sweden has long ago realized that striking is really not a good thing in critical industries. It is the sort of thing you want to avoid at all costs, so it is essential that companies in such critical industries do not try to play chicken with labor over things, instead they have a very reasonable system companies and labor work together practically by default.
Am I in sympathy with striking nurses, or other healthcare providers, even if them striking means patients suffer? Yes, entirely, because I know that these people care deeply about patients, it is invariably always difficult way too low paid work, and I have never seen an instance where they took any action like this except when the situation was forced by the actions of the company.
The hilarious part of this is that of all the striking unions, the postal service is the one that they’ve decided to complain the most about - if I were them, I’d be worrying about companies like Hydro Extrusions, who are the only supplier in Europe for the parts they supply to Giga Berlin, and have announced they’re going to stop production for Tesla this Friday.
It seems we’re swiftly moving from “fuck around” to the “find out” phase.
There was a lot of crowing by the anti-union crowd just a day ago with the interim decision. Regardless of how this works out in the end, I think this whole episode has made clear if it wasn’t already that the majority of EV buyers and enthusiasts, being upper income people, are remarkably anti-union.
It is truly baffling how people consider the actions of a bunch of rich people (i.e. management at a company) to be justified in anything they do. You will hear the line “They have an obligation to their stockholders”, or just “It’s their money, they can do what they want with it,” in pretty much any scenario where a business does something negative for society or the world at large.
But the second a bunch of workers exercise the absolutely most basic right there is in a free market, that of not working, they are excoriated by these same people. Some of the attitudes in the last thread were as though these workers were withholding medicine for orphans, not just choosing to not work for a company openly hostile to them. Again, Tesla has chosen to do business a certain way, and the workers are choosing to respond. You can debate the legality of both sides however much you want, but it is ridiculous how people put moral judgements out there as if Tesla is owed the labor of Swedish workers.
As nick Hanauer points out, the US is largely infected with a decades strong lingering religious like ideology called market fundamentalism. It’s an entirely false notion that “market” is like a physics or chemistry equation and anything done to disturb it or influence it will reduce efficiency or disturb the “natural” balance. They of course never want to acknowledge all the scales tilting the favor to the corporations.
There are no laws of nature in economics. Just like there are no laws of nature in basketball. People make the rules, and agree to them.There are no laws of chemistry, biology, or physics, that children cannot work in factories. And yet with evidence we find the ROI for society is higher for us all when children are not working in factories, and so deem it so.
Amusingly, if you follow the history, the US was a remarkably strong regulator against ‘natural’ market forces for a very, very long time. The Sherman Antitrust Act in particular has had some of the most impactful results of any such legislation globally for workers and consumers.
It was only after the red scare that everything just… fell apart. Suddenly worker and consumer rights became associated with communism, and communism was bad. It’s been decade after decade of regressive policy after regressive policy since then.
It was largely in the 70s when the ideology came online and then implemented, or rather not enforced, under Reagan, and it just stayed that way. It’s not like the host of laws were revoked, the interpretations changed and a new anti empirical “consumer” test was adopted.
You have to understand that TSLA shareholders a very vocal part of this community. If you look at the post history of the anti-union commentators, there is almost always some connection to other Tesla shareholding communities.
These people aren’t anti-union because they have deeply held ideological beliefs regarding socioeconomics; they are people with a clear and direct motivation to support Tesla’s profit margin by supporting whatever position is most convenient at the time. There is no separating their belief system from that of the business itself.
Its roughly the same on the other side. Its usually an anti-corporation, anti-1%, anti-Tesla or Musk in this case cheering for the Union.
Even the post you responded to; there is a lot of things being said that are just projections of that person’s understanding of what a Union is and what is being faught for.
I dont think anyone can argue against good outcomes for the workers; and so far, I’m not convinced that is the driving motivation of the this particular Union. If instead, their motivations are to perserve the strength of the Union so that the leadership holds on to power and influence, then thats not a good outcome for the worker.
It’s the same die hard koolty members every time
I’m Tesla shareholder and I would fully support Tesla signing CBA. Less profit is better than no profit if they decide to leave Sweden. It is already more costly to implement workarounds for all the blockades than to sign CBA for 130 people. Shareholders certainly should prefer Tesla to make most profit possible and currently that would be by signing CBA.
American EV buyers.
I mean that’s the case with Sweden too. Tesla is the most popular EV - by far - in Sweden, so clearly its consumers don’t care about unions either and hence the “boot wearers” term.
I’m against this policy because the entire concept of sympathy strikes is bullshit. If you go on strike, you don’t work. That’s what a strike is.
Basically everywhere in the world except Sweden, it’s super illegal to keep working but just screw over a single company when you work for some other company like a postal service.
Imagine if Postnord’s union workers decided that they didn’t like something about the biggest hospital company in Sweden, and “sympathy striked” to prevent their medicine from being delivered. Would you be OK with that?
That doesn’t make sense. For it to be a sympathy strike, the workers at the hospital would have to be striking first. If the workers at the hospital are on strike, then the hospital has bigger issues than PostNord.
That’s my point. What if a minority of the workers at the hospital were striking. Say, the x-ray technicians. Would you be OK with PostNord not delivering essential materials to the hospital because the x-ray techs are striking?
In most of the world there is a law that striking cannot remove life critical care, and it is standard for hospital strikes to keep a skeleton crew for critical patient care while refusing to do any elective or non urgent care and all admin duties.
So no, not delivering medicine to a hospital would not be OK.
Not delivering other items would.
And it would only become a factor in sympathy strikes if the hospital was already on strike…
Isn’t medication delivered by other means than the post office? Also a bit of a bad straw man you are setting up there…
“I don’t like sympathy strikes… Won’t someone please think of the hospitals in this very unlikely but emotionally appealing scenario…”
Is basically what you did. It’s straight from the fox news propaganda playbook
Well to be fair, I mentioned orphans and medicine, but only so much to say that people getting high end cars is not something that I think labor has any moral obligation to provide by comparison. And as I explained probably in too much length in my reply to them, even in healthcare labor there are limits to what labor can reasonably be asked, and beyond which not working is equally acceptable, because none of that industry even approaches a free market mechanism anywhere from any angle.
In essentially no country is there really a free market of hospitals. They are pretty much always built at the discretion of what we might term “benevolent” government sponsored cartels, to ensure that there isn’t overlap, because nowhere can support the expense of multiple competing hospitals, much like utilities even when they are private. So the part of “free market” where workers can shop around their labor doesn’t exist in most of healthcare, if they bargain it will always be against a de facto sole provider of the service in any area. So what you have is a one way street in labor disputes. Management can do essentially anything hostile to labor so long as it doesn’t go so far as bringing the public in and then the government. This means they can pay ridiculously bad wages, they can even force workers to provide terrible service, and the laborers have no recourse beyond striking in many places.
Which brings us full circle to where we started, because the public in sane countries like Sweden has long ago realized that striking is really not a good thing in critical industries. It is the sort of thing you want to avoid at all costs, so it is essential that companies in such critical industries do not try to play chicken with labor over things, instead they have a very reasonable system companies and labor work together practically by default.
Am I in sympathy with striking nurses, or other healthcare providers, even if them striking means patients suffer? Yes, entirely, because I know that these people care deeply about patients, it is invariably always difficult way too low paid work, and I have never seen an instance where they took any action like this except when the situation was forced by the actions of the company.
The hilarious part of this is that of all the striking unions, the postal service is the one that they’ve decided to complain the most about - if I were them, I’d be worrying about companies like Hydro Extrusions, who are the only supplier in Europe for the parts they supply to Giga Berlin, and have announced they’re going to stop production for Tesla this Friday.
It seems we’re swiftly moving from “fuck around” to the “find out” phase.