To quote myself from the other day: "Basically, the government has left to the industry and unions to agree on a lot of stuff that is decided by law in other countries. E.g. Sweden does not have a minimum wage. This system has led to much fewer costly conflicts and strikes compared to many other countries for almost a century."

(From the outside) it seems hard to understand why something should be effectively be mandatory without being officially mandatory.

If collective agreements are to be mandatory, the government should just pass a law making them mandatory, then that's done.

Hiding behind the claim "it's up to each employer and their employees" to decide is just silly.

Laws are never perfect, and writing one just for the sake of it both makes complying with the law more complex and opens opportunities for people with money to create legal moats around interpretations and case law precedence.

Well, I'll see that and raise you:

If remuneration packages at Tesla (including in Scandinavia) "pretty much works" (in the sense that Tesla are able to attract and retain talent, which they apparently are), why write a collective bargaining agreement?

Tesla wants to punish anyone who joins a union which is super illegal. We're talking prison time if they don't back down. They can't take away the stock benefit when IF Metall wins. They've put it out there, and if they take it away because of unionisation, they'll lose. It's a huge fucking no.

Nordic countries actually have relatively weak labour laws. What might be handled in legislation in US (e.g. minimum wage), is handled in collective bargaining agreements, that are negotiated between trade unions and employers' associations.

And the trade unions and the employers' associations like it this way, that the power is in their hands, and not in legislation. A government that would try to step on their turf, would be asking for a lot of trouble.

Part of the reason the US has so many onerous labor laws is not necessarily from anti-labor sentiment (though it didn't hurt), but part of anti-crime efforts to fight the mafia in the 50s and 60s.

"Sign this agreement with the Teamsters, or else your parts will sit at the dock and your customer deliveries will sit in a warehouse" was a very real and common tactic. So the US passed a bunch of laws against sympathy strikes.

Obviously the mafia is no longer a bit issue in the economy, but the laws are still on the books, and people in the US still feel uneasy about general strikes.

I can't help but wondering if this is merely an ostensible reasoning. Do you happen to have more information about the "anti-mafia" struggle?

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/labor-ra...

https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-vcrs/infiltrated-l...

There's also a great interview with former mob boss Michael Franzese where he talked directly about how it worked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27p-USEQxe4

I guess I had the dates wrong. Nothing was done about labor racketeering until Jimmy Hoffa was murdered. And there are still active RICO cases to this day.

In exchange the unions get to collect their fees on the salaries of their members, which is used for political influence and funneled to political parties.

This is not the case in Sweden.

Maybe in the US?

Anyway, here's the link: https://www.sjofolk.se/nyheter/2022/medlem-automatiskt/

Now you have the truth right in front of you. Use a translator if you don't understand it.

I'd like for you to apologize for slandering me here in the comments and repeatedly calling me a liar. Will you do that, or will you just down vote and move on, like a hacker?

It's just the difference between opt-in and opt-out and you can simply opt-out and anybody that is subject to these arrangements is aware of them. But then you also don't benefit from the union in times of strikes and such. With the very high fraction of employers that sign up for these programs it's pretty common to automatically enroll them in the union for that segment and usually - but probably not always - the HR department will ask you when they onboard you if you want to join the union or not.

Edit: Apologies for confusing you with the other poster.

Nobody has corrected me, it is a fact that some large employers in Sweden will sign you up to a union without your consent.

I should know, because it happened to me. Decades ago the company I was working for was sold to Sweden. One day I received a bill for a home insurance from a Swedish insurance company. I didn't own a home. Called the insurance company to ask what it was about. They apologized and said a Swedish union had signed me up with them. Called that union and they said yes now you're a member. Told them I didn't want to be a member. They told me I can't exit the union, my new employer had signed me up as a member, talk to them. I called HR and said that I'm not going to be a member of any union. They told me that it wasn't optional and I had to be a union member. I told them I'll get my lawyer if that's the case, and they relented and asked me to hand in a signed statement that I didn't wish to be a union member. And that was the end of it.

Then hackers here say that these things don't happen, even though the union clearly states on their webpage that this is standard procedure. And if it did happen, then it's a good thing. It is a bit funny, and dumb at the same time.

How would you feel if your company was sold to Utah. Then without you knowing, your new boss signs you up as a paying member of the Mormon church, and then the Mormon church signs you up for home insurance? It's kind of the same thing. The union - or the church - might be wonderful, but I'm not going to allow anybody to sign any contract in my name without my permission. That's fucked up.

What he said.

If that doesn't happens then they've made an error.

Your link also states that membership is entirely optional, and you can choose another union or none.

Finally, signing you up for expensive insurance absolutely requires your consent, as doing that is otherwise illegal. Your link also don't say anything about this, so no I don't have "this truth" in front of me.

Just making up anti-union statements all over the place.

https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/penge/3fer-bag-trusler-og-boelleme...

Most wages are of course higher than that because the market can bear more. Those wages are mostly set by market conditions but the unions and the employers' associations do perform a big ritual every few years (and they do affect the wages a bit). The problem comes in sectors with a high degree of monopsony -- only one or a few big employers. Examples are schools and hospitals -- the unions and various levels of the state apparatus (often including parliament and government) have a large influence on the wages there.

The entire point of the german / Nordic union model is that by avoiding legislative action they can be more nimble and reactive to changes. Companies and unions don’t want legislation, and the governments are perfectly happy to let them handle things like adults.

That however only works when everyone plays ball.

Which is the case for 99% of companies. It’s only American ones internationally expanding who don’t realise other economies operate differently that get stung with this.

For decades, Ford and others have factories in Europe and have union members.

Because it largely is.

> For decades, Ford and others have factories in Europe and have union members.

These were handled very differently.

For the most part those were independent subsidiaries, under the same brand but playing with their own set of rules.

They commonly had different lineups entirely, for instance the Ford Focus was created in cooperation by the british (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_of_Britain) and German (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Germany) teams of Ford of Europe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_of_Europe), and while the Focus was designed as an international car, it is the direct descendent of Ford of Europe's first passenger car the Escort (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Escort_(Europe)), which itself directly descends from Ford of Britain's Anglia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Anglia).

It’s hardly a shock to most in Europe that many American corporations (whether by virtue of a subsidiary or not) attempt to bring their American sensibilities to the European labor market.

Yes, the unions and the companies. Neither wants that.

From what I understand they initiated action on behalf of Tesla's workers and did not need to represent all or most of those employees to initiate the strike.

No they do not, and there are workers who work in Tesla services so it's not a complete standstill.

I am not sure, but it is ironic when the guys complaining about over regulation want to regulate a free market that worked well in those countries for so long.

I did not seen that much support for Tesla in Europe communities so the US government would be needed to have any chance to force such regulations.

No, but Sweden has mainly unions based on industries (like IF Metall represents workers in industrial and metal-sector, you have Transport that represents workers in transport industry, Unionen of white-collar trade workers, etc). There might even be no workers in the specific union at the specific workplace and they might still go on strike since they are the union you are supposed to negotiate with. There are requirements of negotiation but no requirements of results from that, which is the cause of the current situation at Tesla. Tesla "negotiated" but flatly refused any outcome involving the union so they fulfilled the lawful requirements. Now the Union uses the tools they have in place when the negotiations ends badly so everything is going as expected.

>Does that mean there are no active Tesla services in Sweden during the strike?

Like I wrote above, Tesla might have all services running if they have workers doing it, but chances are at least some are. There is also the effect of sympthy strikes from various other unions: https://www.ifmetall.se/aktuellt/tesla/darfor-tvingas-if-met... This includes transport (loading/unloading in harbors, transport of goods, etc), Electricians (yep, you can guess it, practically everything involving electricity), Builders (maintenance and construction of buildings), service and communication (This is postal workers refusing delivery of post/goods to/from Tesla), etc.

So the more Tesla refuses to find a deal, the more the unions can escalate it can get quite tricky to find labourers who want to deal with you. Other companies might refuse to deal with you with risk having the strike extend to you to if this goes far enough.

> If union membership is really the way of life in Sweden, is there anything preventing the government from a legislative solution?

It is really complicated, but the main thing preventing government going in with a legislative solution is that no-one (neither the industry or the laborers) wants it. It has been a solution that the union(s) and industry can solve this by themself and as long as they can, the government will stay out of it. This is kind of unique relaxed solution that puts a lot of responsibility on both the industry and the unions to sort things out and has worked well so far. Playing hard-ball like Elon will probably not end well for Tesla in Sweden (possibly Europe) if this continues since the system is kinda built on being mature and able to negotiate. My way or the highway attitudes and not well regarded.

>Just mandate collective agreements?

But what collective agreement? The system in Sweden is built on negotiation between the involved parties and finding some kind of common and sensible ground. There is really no easy top-down fix for that if one party refuses to play ball. Either the other party need to fight back or the whole system collapses.