Tesla is not breaking the law. This is a labor action, and considering Europe's general tenor on labor relations, this lawsuit is going to be a hilarious mistake.
They are breaking the law. They have (repeatedly) threatened strikers that they would take away their options which is how they managed to match compensation to begin with so this is very much a legal issue as well.
That's why so many sympathy strikes broke out. What Tesla execs need to realize is that the world isn't North America and that different countries have different relationships between labor and management. If they don't want that they should move their manufacturing out of the EU and live with the tariffs.
Also mentioned is holidays and insurance. It would be nice to find the original Swedish article.
The funny thing is that they may well win this suit and it will only backfire because it should have never come this far. So the workers will pick up even more sympathy. It's affecting their supply lines as well now.
Wait, I'm super confused by this. If they really are breaking the law why isn't the government shutting them down instead of the unions striking? Isn't that the job of the government, to make sure every company follows the law?
In my country, if you don't follow the law, the government institutions don't even let you open up shop, the unions are only there to negociate yearly wage increases, but following the law is a must and a given from the start. If you're a company and don't follow the law you get inspections, lawsuits and fines from the state institutions.
So how is Tesla even operation in Sweden without following the law in the first place? It feels like there's apiece of context missing here.
> I don't get this. If they really are breaking the law why isn't the government shutting them down instead of the unions playing hardball? Isn't that the job of the government?
That's the tricky bit about worker/employer relationships: it would still require a worker to bring a complaint and that worker will then surely be fired by Tesla because they're pretty good at retaliation. That would still make it worse for Tesla but the worker than also has an issue. You'd have to be pretty principled to put your family through a thing like that. But it may well come to it if this keeps going on, Tesla doesn't really realize yet who has the power in this engagement. But they're about to find out.
> In my country, if you don't follow the law, the government institutions don't even let you open up shop, the unions are only there to negociate yearly wage increases, but follwing the law is a given.
In theory Sweden is no different. But they're not going to step in to this until the unions and Tesla have had their options exhausted and so far nobody got fired (as far as I know). The moment Tesla fires someone instead of just threatening to harm them financially the gloves will come off for sure.
As it is Tesla may not realize it yet but they are already losing in the court of public opinion and this stuff is headline news all over Europe, I've seen two articles related to this in the Dutch press in the last week alone and the sentiment is 'you can't bully Swedish workers and expect to get away with it'. Time will tell if that is true and what it will do to Tesla brand perception in Europe.
>that worker will then surely be fired by Tesla because they're pretty good at retaliation.
Fired how? I though you can't fire people just like that in Sweden.
>In theory Sweden is no different. But they're not going to step in to this until the unions and Tesla have had their options exhausted
This still doesn't make sense. The law is the law, and breaking it is just as bad with or without union discussion, no?
Like if the law says you need to give your employees X, Y, Z and you haven't , the that's breaking the saw and the state should immediately intervine.
>Time will tell if that is true and what it will do to Tesla brand perception in Europe.
I doubt it. VW reduced hundreds/thousands of collective years off our lifespan and their cars are still flying off she show floors so I doubt Europeans are gonna stop buying Teslas because of union disagreements in Sweden.
Of course you can fire someone. You then can be challenged, you have to show cause and what actions you took to build your case and there is a process to deal with that. And in the end if you got it wrong as the employer you have to pay up. But it's definitely possible to fire someone.
Not like in the US though, without any controls or oversight. Sweden is in that sense probably one of the better countries to be an employee in.
> This still doesn't make sense. The law is the law, and breaking it is just as bad with or without union discussion, no?
Yes. But the problem with these allegations is that you need to prove them and that isn't all that easy.
> Like if the law says you need to give your employees X, Y, Z and you haven't , the that's breaking the saw and the state should immediately intervine.
I agree with you, but in practice that's not how I have found the world to work. For the state to intervene someone has to make a formal complaint first. Otherwise the authorities will not make a move.
Well according to the thread Tesla has threatened workers which is illegal but unless there is actual evidence of Tesla threatening there isn't much that can be done. This obviously isn't done yet so we'll see what happens but Tesla most likely will lose this battle and with so many people knowing about it, it could have a tremendous effect in other countries as well which is great!
I don't think the law works like that in any country. The law isn't a omnipresent Santa Claus. It's a slow bureaucracy, the unions can force the issue before the workers die of old age.
I'll wait for the original source. An anonymous comment on reddit with no source, does not a valid claim make.
All I can find is (translated) claims that Tesla said they may remove the stock option program going forward and layoffs. [0] Which is a far cry from "holidays, bonuses, stock and insurance" or "stealing $7000"
> There have also been reports that employees have felt threatened by the company if they go on strike and it has been stated that various benefits could be withdrawn.
> - We have members who confirm this. Tesla executives have threatened layoffs. They have also threatened to withdraw the option program that Tesla has, where you get shares for a certain number of years," says IF Metall's contract secretary Veli-Pekka Säikkälä.
> But that's a lot of smoke already, those reps would likely not say that if it wasn't something they could back up.
Agreed, but the reps would also clearly make the other claims as well, if they were valid claims that they could back up. The fact they didn't makes me think it's someone being overly dramatic with no actual knowledge. Or to put it another way, I don't think it's "a lot of smoke", I think it's a campfire that's being claimed as a forest fire.
Tesla has done exactly that same thing before so it's not as farfetched as it may seem, they may have simply not realized that doing that same thing in Europe is going to have a completely different effect than what happened the previous time in America.
It is tremendous to watch a power hungry, emotionally unstable industrialist run head long into an entire nation state labor movement. Learn to be a partner and not a bully and entire cohorts won't come at you knives out. But he cannot [1], so oh well.
What do you mean I can't just overpower them like I've done to anyone else who has gotten in my way historically?
