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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNordic unions rise up against Tesla over corporate culture clash
Having been hit by a wave of strikes, Elon Musks company stands accused of failing to understand the Scandinavian culture of industrial relations
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/teslas-battle-with-nordic-trade-unions-alarms-investors-dsx7hjn8j
https://archive.is/GecLU
Some of the largest investors in the Nordic countries have challenged Tesla over their deep concern about the electric carmakers intractable conflict with Swedens trade unions, which has led to a series of rolling strikes across the region. Since Swedish mechanics downed tools at the end of October, unions in Denmark, Finland and Norway have joined in a wave of co-ordinated industrial action that threatens to derail the American companys trade across the region.
Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and the worlds richest person, has denounced the strikes as insane. Yet Swedens powerful unions argue that Musk and Tesla have failed to respect a national code of labour practices that have held an almost sacred status in the country since 1938. We have been trying to negotiate with [Tesla] for over five years to sign a collective agreement, Jesper Pettersson of IF Metall, which represents Tesla workers in Sweden, said. The vast majority of workplaces of this size and dignity in Sweden have an agreement.
At its core the dispute is a collision between Musks notorious disregard for unions, which he recently claimed create a lords and peasants sort of thing, and Scandinavias hallowed grand bargain between labour and capital. Eighty-five years ago, representatives from Swedens workers and employers met at Saltsjobaden, a bathing resort in the Stockholm archipelago, to hammer out a deal under which they would negotiate on pay and working conditions without the government involving itself.
The spirit of Saltsjobaden has proven remarkably durable. Over the last decade Sweden recorded only 2.4 days of strike action per thousand workers, compared with 18 in the UK and 128 in France. Yet this apparently immovable object is now confronted with a previously irresistible force. As Tesla expands into Europe it has run into a far more entrenched culture of labour organisation than it was accustomed to encountering in the US. At its vast gigafactory facility east of Berlin, which generates about two thirds of Teslas European sales, the manufacturer has repeatedly clashed with IG Metall, the continents largest union.
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Nordic unions rise up against Tesla over corporate culture clash (Original Post)
Celerity
Dec 2023
OP
no_hypocrisy
(46,414 posts)1. IMO, Musk is on a mission to disable and dismantle European unions.
It's not just about Tesla.
Celerity
(44,018 posts)2. He will fail, and fail miserably. We are not the US in regards to the exploitation of labour.
SoFlaBro
(2,101 posts)3. Apartheid Clyde is a fucking racist scumbag that hates Jews and blacks.
tanyev
(42,751 posts)4. He thought he could just waltz into Scandinavia and treat his workers there
like he treats them everywhere else.