Has nothing to do with politics. We've had this system for almost 100 years, Tesla is not the first company that refused to work within the established system, see Toys R Us in Sweden and McDonalds in Denmark.

You're talking like they're acting out based on some unrelated or irrelevant thing - as if they're taking a stand against Elon Musk's stance on trans people or his rather unique ideas about what "free speech" is. The unions are acting against Tesla out of their own self-interest - Tesla do not want to collectively bargain with a union. This is not something these unions are OK with and allowing it to continue unopposed could set a precedent that threatens their members and the conditions they've fought for.

In a sense these unions do have a lot of power when all of their interests align. But because of the sheer number of people and diversity of their industries and the political capital they expend in performing these actions, they don't tend to act at this scale very often. You need to have fucked up pretty badly to have mobilised all of these people against you.

What is the point of a union without collective bargaining is what I want to know.

It sounds like what anti union people like to portray them as. A tax on employees and nepotism.

I'm part of a union in Sweden and my employer does not have a CBA, I get from my union: income insurance (up to 12 months covering 90% of my current salary), access to free consultation with lawyers, discounts on a few services (even driving schools), and a few other benefits.

It's not a tax on employees, I consider it a quite cheap insurance.

Yep. The main reason I joined a union was for unemployment insurance. If I lose a job I get 80% of my salary for 6 months. I also get discounted home/personal insurance and better mortgage rates. Once you include standard employer perks and you get a pretty decent quality of life without government intervention.

Insurance makes sense. It's a different kind of collective action so my brain kind of routed around it. But it's not capital C, capital B Collective Bargaining, so I can see how you'd pretty easily get the one and have more trouble getting the other.

You can shop around for insurance, you can't shop around for employers.

> Legally that seems a bit crazy that shipping company workers can select what gets shipped based on their political beliefs.

Brother/Sister, a strike can in principle be done for any reason.

Sure but a strike implies not working at all

No. Most unions will support employees not crossing picket lines. Good luck getting Teamsters, who are working and collecting paychecks, to drive a truck past strikers.

You’re telling me this thread spent dozens of comments over semantics (”implies”)? Jeez. Just use a goddamn different word if you prefer.

There's some other things that are called strikes like when the workers follow regulations strictly in a way that makes normal operations impossible.

Which has the problem of striking for the reason that company X paid the transport union to not deliver products for competitor company Y, so that's why usually laws limit that principle.

I would have thought that such “corrupt unions” snipes would be off-topic here but you do you.

You are effectively saying:

"It is crazy that they have an effective mechanism for ensuring good working conditions in their societies"

That's a very narrow view of the situation. It's not up for a small group of individuals to decide that for the whole society. Say they decide tmrw to not accept shipments from Israel. Why should a dock worker have disproportionate say in that?

For a real life example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nae_Pasaran

> Nae Pasaran is a 2018 documentary directed by Felipe Bustos Sierra about a group of workers at a Rolls-Royce factory in East Kilbride, Scotland, who refused to work on Chilean Air Force parts from 1974-78 due to the atrocities carried out in Chile by the Pinochet dictatorship

I'm not familiar with Norwegian labour law, but if it's anything like the Swedish equivalent there are narrowly defined rules about when you can and can't engage in solidarity action.

It's only permissible in response to an active dispute and refusing to unload all shipments from Israel definitely wouldn't qualify.

Thanks for the clarification! Super interesting. I'm curious about how it works. Do they have to actually be on strike? B/c it sounds like in this scenario they don't loose/risk anything (wages/employment). Can the employees be fired for not doing their jobs?

Can the police union also refuse to protect Tesla property/workers? Or like the public transit union? Where do they draw the line in Sweden?

I've never heard of a system where workers can so selectively decide who to target. I've only heard of the "not go into work" type of strikes

It's all about protecting the system of collective bargaining that has been a normal feature of Scandinavian labour relations for a century or more. I suspect that the police have duties that override the union but I imagine that they could still have an overtime ban.

No they cannot be fired under this circumstance so long as the right procedures have been followed by the union and its members.

Unions can't force their members (or non-members) to strike, except for the fact that if as a member you refuse to join a strike organised by your union you might be expelled. Attempting an individual strike without the backing of a union would leave you no protection from retaliation and would likely get you fired. The unions themselves are relatively limited in how and when they can organise legal strikes.

Employers on their part have access to a similar tool in the form of lockout, where they bar employees from coming into work and stop paying their wages. An employer targeted by (legal) solidarity action can't fire their striking employees, but could respond with a lockout.

There's a provision that disallows strike action where it would harm public order, which would apply to the police union refusing to protect Tesla property.

> Unions can't force their members (or non-members) to strike, except for the fact that if as a member you refuse to join a strike organised by your union you might be expelled.

Unless I am heavily misreading, “we organized a strike, and if you don’t join us, you are expelled from the union” sounds exactly like a union forcing its members to strike.

What other kind of “forced to strike” scenario were you imagining? Union leaders holding those refusing to strike at a gunpoint? Because other than extreme examples like this one, it sounds like a textbook version of forcing members to strike.

Historically it wasn't uncommon to attempt to physically prevent strikebreakers from crossing the picket line.

Most if not all organisations have standards of conduct that they expect their members to follow, and its not surprising that unions view strikebreaking ("scabbing") as being contrary to those standards.

But seeing as the whole point of unions is organised action, why would you want to be a member if you weren't interested in participating in that action?

Israel is not a party in the Swedish labor market. Tesla is.

It's not up to an individual, it's up to the unions, that's the whole point of them.

This isn't just some random dockworkers, this is Fellesforbundet, Norway's largest private union. Unions are usually democratic, with elected leaders.

The Israel example is absurdly weak, that has nothing to do with working conditions.

Solidarity strikes/actions aren't a new thing, they are well established things that have forced many other multinational companies to treat their Scandinavian workers better. Most of those companies, like McDonald's, eventually concede and start operating profitable ventures with good working conditions here.

Corporations are led by an even smaller group.

Yeah we've been trained well in the US. Only our corporate overlords should have that kind of power.

Never heard of a shipping company refusing to ship based on political belief

It is not shipping company. It is shipping company workers not wanting to touch Tesla stuff.

Just pretend that the workers have a patent on this (and/or that patents are a "political belief") and you'll think of lots of examples of organisations using leverage over other organisations to achieve some goal, sometimes to the public good and sometimes against it.

> Never heard of a shipping company refusing to ship based on political belief

I actually know a postal worker in the US who got fired ("resign or else type") for refusing to deliver political mail that he didn't agree with, so yeah in the US try this and get fired.

>Never heard of a shipping company refusing to ship based on political belief

The strike is about working contracts not about Elon dumb stuff, and before someone defends Elon I will inform you that Elon himself admitted he said some very dumb stuff.

That's nothing, whole genders have striked before:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Icelandic_women%27s_strik...

In Sweden in 1979, a number of people called in sick for "being gay", to protest that homosexuality was still classified as a disease. After that, an activist occupation of the National Board of Health and Welfare's headquarters began. Within a few months, Sweden became one of the first countries in the world to declassify homosexuality as a disease.

Elmo need to start paying attention.

A bit apples to oranges. That's an actual strike. They don't go in to work and they don't get paid. They didn't selectively continue working but only for X that they decided are they good guys

A strike is only one part of industrial actions which unions can take, other include overtime bans and, in this case, a blockade. The purpose is to force Tesla to the negotiating table and get a collective bargaining agreement, which covers most of the Swedish labour market.

I don’t understand why anyone should care about whatever an “actual strike” is. Maybe some labor organization strikes against working with some hazardous product like asbestos. So they refuse to work with it. But they continue to work with other materials. Because they’re not striking against all the other products that they work with...

> Never heard of a shipping company refusing to ship based on political belief

But there are plenty of examples of companies threatening to leave, or leaving a state due to unfavorable politics. Companies choose all the time where and with whom they do business.

>It sets a scary precedent. They in effect hold disproportionate power and can affect whole sectors of the economy to force whatever they want done

Sweden seems to have low regulation, no minimum wages so is a perfect place for an american company to take advantage, unless the peasants use their rights to strike then the billionaires are demanding regulations. As software developers we should do the same when we are asked to take part on building harfull shit, as an individual we have no power, if I refuse someone else will be paid to do it but as a union we could do some good and reduce the harm int he world.

Tesla is free to use other companies or methods to deliver, create their own delivery companies from scratch , deliver the cars with their rockets. I do not think they can cut off the power but there could be problems finding people fixing their electrical issues if they appear.

> Tesla is free to use other companies or methods to deliver, create their own delivery companies from scratch , deliver the cars with their rockets. I do not think they can cut off the power but there could be problems finding people fixing their electrical issues if they appear.

In theory, but it's not unprecedented for payment providers to refuse to process payments so they'd not be able to pay people to even get started (if they went that way)

> As software developers we should do the same when we are asked to take part on building harfull shit, as an individual we have no power, if I refuse someone else will be paid to do it but as a union we could do some good

Who gets to decide what is harmful and what is not?

Me? You?

Your proposal won't go anywhere because you won't agree with others on what is harmful and what is not.

>Your proposal won't go anywhere because you won't agree with others on what is harmful and what is not.

Maybe in some groups we can achieve a consensus. Say 80% of developers at a company think that the new feature of addicting kids on some game mechanic is harmful?

I am not referring to the stupid culture war in USA, so when I suggest this I am not attacking your political opinions.

> Say 80% of developers at a company think that the new feature of addicting kids on some game mechanic is harmful?

Who cares? The company will just get someone from the other 20% to develop it. Or contract it out.

What is your proposal for stopping a company from developing something you think is harmful? You can't very well complain that other developers have to agree with your opinions[1], after all.

[1] Whether something is harmful or not is simply your opinion. If that something is a fact, then there's probably a law against it, so there's no need to prevent other developers from developing it.

>Whether something is harmful or not is simply your opinion. If that something is a fact, then there's probably a law against it, so there's no need to prevent other developers from developing it.

Cigarettes are harmful and are legal.

It is not an easy as you think, I worked at a small company in a emote team, there was proposed that we all need to install spying software on our computers so we can be better monitored. Everyone in the team refused and the bad stuff did not happen, we were not replaced with a new team. But if it was only one guy he could be replace but good luck replacing 80% of your developers like they are are some pre-made lego bricks you can swap out.

You might be right, maybe developers should instead work on proposing legislation for banning harmful stuff and keep unions focused on work conditions.

> Cigarettes are harmful and are legal.

> I worked at a small company in a emote team, there was proposed that we all need to install spying software on our computers so we can be better monitored. Everyone in the team refused and the bad stuff did not happen, we were not replaced with a new team.

Isn't that different to what you asked for? The harmful stuff in this story was harmful to the workers. Unions protect workers.

You're asking that employees must form a union to protect consumers. Have you ever seen that happen? Unions are not primarily consumer-protection groups.

Once again, I reiterate that you are going to have trouble getting a union (or a bunch of them) all agreeing that their workers would strike if any worker is ever employed producing cigarettes (the example you gave).

The reason this is not going to happen, is because you aren't going to get enough developers to agree with your opinion on what is harmful and what is not.

> You might be right, maybe developers should instead work on proposing legislation for banning harmful stuff and keep unions focused on work conditions.

Give me just one single example that you think should be enshrined in law and currently isn't, and I'll show you how unworkable your proposal is.

Just one.

That is an age old debate in unions, how to agree on what to fight for. It means that things have to get bad for many before unions organize on big new issues.

Feminist issues is a good example it has almost always been up to the women to fight for that, unions have been in the back seat on most of these issues until support was well above 50% in their ranks.

> That is an age old debate in unions, how to agree on what to fight for.

That's not what the poster I replied to was arguing - they were arguing for developers to all agree not to develop harmful (to the consumer) products.

That is not what unions do. Unions are not known for acting in the customers best interest. They are a workers collective, not a consumer advocacy group.