CNN: 'This is insane.' Swedish workers are getting under Elon Musk's skin

[DBoon]

London CNN —

It has taken nearly a month, but workers striking against Tesla in Sweden have finally drawn a response from the company’s famously anti-union boss. “This is insane,” CEO Elon Musk said Thursday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter that he owns.

Musk was responding to news that Swedish postal workers are refusing to deliver Tesla license plates, joining a wave of action in sympathy with mechanics who stopped servicing Tesla cars late last month.

About 130 mechanics began their ongoing strike in October after their employer, a Tesla subsidiary in Sweden, announced that it would not recognize their labor union, according to Expressen, a CNN affiliate.

The industrial action soon spread to dockworkers who started blocking deliveries of Tesla cars at the country’s ports, to electricians who stopped maintenance work for the carmaker, and other workers in Sweden, Expressen reported.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/24/business/elon-musk-tesla-sweden-strikes/index.html

This is what labor solidarity looks like.

This action in Sweden may inspire similar action in Germany.

[AllaN01Bear]

1. may he have 100000 fleas to make him itch . good .

[Shipwack]

2. This is what Americans need to learn, if we ever knew it.

Even back in the height of union power (such as it was), were there sympathy strikes across diverse occupations? Maybe the SAG/AFTRA strikes, but the Teamsters (for instance) didn't strike when the Air Traffic Controllers were fired.

People in this country have been brainwashed to mistrust unions, and to not work together. I remember a Flintstones cartoon showing union craftsmen to be lazy and greedy. I'm sure there are other examples.

[PatrickforB]

9. Unfortunately, the Taft-Hartley Act, passed around 1947, makes it illegal for one

union to go on a sympathy strike, or for general strikes to occur.

Wall Street got that down real good.

[Shipwack]

11. Thanks for the info!

I need to hit the history books again. Maybe after I read "Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America" by Joan Walsh and Nick Hanauer.

[OldBaldy1701E]

20. I always have to laugh at this.

Because if enough unions do it, what are they gonna do? Arrest them all? (We do have enough prisons to hold such a massive arresting, but the logistics of actually doing this would be impossible. They would negotiate. But, we won't do it.)

[PatrickforB]

21. You bet! The only reason these Wall Street greed lizards and the billionaire parasites

make laws like this is that there are a lot of us and very few of them. It is just their raw greed that is outsized.

[WmChris]

25. Agree whole-heartedly

Unfortunately indivuals just can't seem to recognize the need to support each other if it might involve a little personal sacrifice.

[OldBaldy1701E]

28. Oh there seems to be two things that bring plenty of Americans to a halt.

That is 'effort' and 'sacrifice'. We don't do either anymore, it seems.

[whopis01]

30. You don't get arrested for participating in an "illegal" strike

You get fired.

Taft-Hartley removes the legal protections for striking workers. I imagine quite a number of employers would welcome the chance to fire as many union members as possible if this were to happen.

[mwooldri]

10. In the UK it used to be legal.

Sympathy strikes did happen. Made illegal in the 1920s, when Labour came to power post WW2, secondary action was made legal again. Until Thatcher -1980 and 1990 laws outlawed it.

Back to the USA... under Taft-Hartley, secondary action remains largely unlawful. That's probably why the Teamsters didn't strike when the air traffic controllers did so.

[sab390]

27. They didn't strike but they didn't deliver.

When the UW Madison TAs struck in the early 80s the strike ended when the teamsters wouldn't deliver the liquid nitrogen to cool the experiments. It may have only been because the TAs were teamsters too.

[stopdiggin]

3. +100. "This is what labor solidarity looks like."

brought this on yourself. If the Tesla sub hadn't decided to stiff-arm the union mechanics in the first place ...

[Wonder Why]

4. There was a typo error. Should have been "Eloon is insane"!

[progressoid]

5. Bwahahaahahaha!!!

[2naSalit]

6. ...

[JoseBalow]

7. Workers of the world, unite!

We have nothing to lose but our chains

[Hermit-The-Prog]

8. Stickin' to the Union

Union Maid

[Fullduplexxx]

12. ......

[grumpyduck]

13. The world's richest asshole complaining about his workers

wanting a living wage. What a fucking piece of shit motherfucking prick.

Suck it up, asshole.

[NBachers]

14. "Won't someone please think of the Billionaires??"

[IronLionZion]

15. American workers should do the same

it's time to tell these wealthy "job creators" where they can shove their hostile anti-worker policies. It's time for trickle up from working people.

"They're coming to steal your jobs" doesn't work so well during labor shortage. "Nobody wants to work anymore".

[WmChris]

16. Solidarity

I lobbied my local IBEW union to walk out in support of the air traffic controllers during the Raygun debacle. Had all the union workers supported them then we would be looking a very different labor picture today in this country. IMHO.

[calimary]

18. Thank you for the effort, WmChris.

That would have struck a chord.

[Hekate]

17. You go, Sweden!!!

[Martin68]

19. Musk hates it when he can't control everybody.

[EarnestPutz]

22. I'm as pro-union as they come, but maybe mail delivery should be left alone.+

[Warpy]

23. I'm sure it's driving him completely around the bend that a bunch of poor nobodies

are sticking toether and respecing each other's right to fair treatment and spoiling his cash flow and are telling him to go to hell when he orders them to go back to work.

This is your first lesson in who holds the real power in this world, El;on.

[hydrolastic]

24. whenever I hear a company complain "The workers are striking!"

I think "you guys could stop the strike now" Negotiate!

[Warpy]

26. Exactly, a strike is an absolute last resort

when a boss is an arrogant asshole who thinks he doesn't have to negotiate with nobodies.

[live love laugh]

29. Guess he'll buy Sweden next.

[ampm]

31. Yes, But he took them on

He won by what some newspapers said, it that true?