A gentle reminder that the union and Tesla are still fighting in #Sweden.
Translation by Google.
After Tesla's defeat in the Supreme Court, the company is now taking the issue to the administrative court. It is "sad" that the company is spending millions in legal proceedings rather than providing the same conditions as the rest of the industry, according to the ST union.
Tesla's legal battle to persuade the Swedish Transport Agency to break the blockade and hand over the license plates seemed over. But after the case went through all the courts and was thrown out by the Supreme Court, the company is now appealing to the Administrative Court in Karlstad instead.
โ I'm not surprised, but I'm still a little disappointed. Are these processes going to continue forever?, says Joakim Lindqvist, union lawyer at the ST union.
Since November 2023, ST and Seko have blocked Tesla's mail in sympathy with IF Metall's demand for a collective agreement with the company. This had the effect that the license plates that Tesla needs from the Swedish Transport Agency to put new Tesla cars into service got stuck in the system.
But while Tesla and the unions are playing a cat-and-mouse game with alternative addresses that the union then blocks, Tesla is pursuing the issue in the country's courts.
Now they are demanding that the administrative court in Karlstad force the Swedish Transport Agency to hand over the plates directly to the company.
"How the provision should be practically implemented so that the license plates reach Tesla is, according to Tesla, a question that the Swedish Transport Agency can appropriately take a position on," Tesla writes in the appeal, according to Dagens Arbete, which was first to report on the new process.
The Swedish Transport Agency does not want to break the blockade So far, the Swedish Transport Agency has not filed a response, but in the district court, the court of appeal, and thus also the Supreme Court, the authority's position has been that they cannot make exceptions to the procedures for Tesla.
The relevant workers are mostly not in power in this case. It's not like the workers at Tesla are upset enough at their working conditions that they voted to strike. Some minority of the tesla workers are in the union and that union decided they should then have power over all the workers, regardless of what they want.
The union does this from time to time, sometimes driving the company out of business in the process, making all the actually relevant workers lose their job.
Unions are great when they actually care for the people they organise, but the union in sweden will happily sacrifice you and your job to make a symbolic point
The overwhelming majority of workers in Sweden are unionised. It's not a symbolic point, it's the cornerstone of Swedish industry and society.
You just don't understand, do you? This is not some small subset of Tesla workers vs Musk, it's all Swedish unions vs Musk.
The question being decided here is not whether Tesla pays their workers good, but whether there can be a Swedish car company that's explicitly non-union.
And trying to use the government against the unions like they do in the US is useless, as the government arguably is less powerful than the unions
This legal battle is already a compromise, the unions would be fully able to call in a general strike and get the government to ban Musk and Tesla completely if it really came to a head.
I don't think they could get the government to ban Tesla. You're allowed to run a company without a collective agreement. This has happened before with various outcomes.
If you're a primarily Swedish company the union can certainly make life hard enough to run you out of business, and this strike has already gotten people laid off at Tesla subcontractors, but they can't compell you to make a deal
The government probably won't get involved in this case as it doesn't really matter much, but there are center politicians right now arguing that the union should only be allowed to do this kind of thing if the collective agreement offers better terms for the workers, which seems reasonable to me. Tesla claims they're already exceeding what the collective agreement would guarantee, but I haven't verified it.
Personally I feel it's wrong that the union can do this without a majority support of the workers they are supposed to protect.
You might feel differently.