[ For the first time in his life, the man who opposes any "lords
and peasants sort of thing" may be learning a lesson in labor
solidarity.]
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ELON MUSK’S SWEDISH PROBLEM: HAS THE ANTI-UNION BILLIONAIRE FINALLY
MET HIS MATCH?  
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Les Leopold
December 20, 2023
Common Dreams
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_ For the first time in his life, the man who opposes any "lords and
peasants sort of thing" may be learning a lesson in labor solidarity.
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Elon Musk, Photo by Ludovic Marin/Pool via REUTERS

 

_“I disagree with the idea of unions… I just don’t like anything
which creates a lords and peasants sort of thing.” — _Elon Musk,
November 30, 2023

Unfortunately for Elon Musk, the lord and master of the Tesla electric
automobile company, the Swedish peasants have grabbed their
pitchforks. One hundred twenty Tesla mechanics
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seven service centers are demanding a collective agreement with the
company, one that aligns with all other labor-management agreements in
this heavily unionized country. Approximately 90% of the Swedish
workforce falls under such agreements.

Musk isn’t having any of it. How dare a union tell him what he can
and cannot do with _his_ workers! For the first time in his life,
however, he may be learning a lesson in labor solidarity. The 120
peasant-mechanics are not alone.

The Nordic countries are extremely proud of their labor-management
system. Strikes are very rare as agreements are formed, sector by
sector, to find equitable ways to share the bounty they’ve produced.
After decades of mediating the workplace using this system, Nordic
workers—and most managers as well—believe it is the backbone of
their countries’ high standards of living.

Nordic labor unions are understandably highly protective of their
collective labor-management system. They want every employer to
participate in it, including Tesla, which has a small but robust
Nordic market because the region fully embraces electric vehicles. To
protect what they have achieved, unions are more than willing to
engage in sympathy strikes and boycotts to force recalcitrant
employers to accept the system.

Their strength depends on a simple but powerful working-class
idea—solidarity: _an injury to one is an injury to all_. As a
result, these 120 mechanics have gained an enormous amount of support.

* Garbage is piling up in front of Tesla offices because
the sanitation workers
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pick it up.
* Janitorial workers won’t clean
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showrooms either.
* The postal workers won’t deliver
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Tesla cars. When Tesla appealed to the courts to allow delivery, or
for Tesla to pick them up themselves, the courts ruled in favor of the
boycott.
* The dockworkers won’t unload
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cars in Sweden. Danish dockworkers
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are blocking Tesla shipments heading to Sweden.
* If the strike is not settled by December 20th, Norway’s largest
private sector union said it would block the transit of Tesla cars
to Sweden.
* A large Danish pension fund, Pension Denmark, has divested
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Tesla stocks and other Nordic pension funds are applying pressure as
well.

To be sure, the richest man in the world, will not be easily cowed.
Musk certainly has the resources to hold out and test the union’s
resolve. As witnessed with Twitter, he’s even willing to harm his
own enterprises to put his personal stamp on them. (It was Musk’s
idea
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push the risky autopilot system on Tesla cars, and to mislead buyers
about its abilities. Two million cars are now being recalled.)

If Musk doesn’t settle the strike soon, his worries could quickly
grow, especially if the heady spirit of solidarity spreads southward
to Germany and the 11,000 Tesla workers at the company’s Berlin
Gigafactory. To head off an organizing effort by IG Metall, the
largest union in Germany, Musk announced a four percent raise in
November for German Tesla workers, along with a bonus to make up for
inflation. Nevertheless, union organizers claim workers are signing up
in droves. It’s unclear how long Musk can keep the union at bay.

Can Solidarity Spread to the United States?

Musk’s biggest worry is not the 120 Swedish mechanics. It’s the
organizing efforts of the United Automobile Workers union (UAW) in the
U.S. that poses the biggest threat. Buoyed by its enormous victories
over the Big Three US automakers (GM, Ford and Stellantis), the UAW,
led by Shawn Fain, has Tesla in its sights. As Fain colorfully put
it:
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_“It’s gonna come down to the people that work for him deciding if
they want their fair share... or if they want him to fly himself to
outer space at their expense.”_

Tesla is using the usual toolbox of anti-union techniques to keep the
UAW out, many of which the National Labor Relations Board has
ruled are illegal
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But that battle is just beginning, and Musk is no doubt thinking that
he can’t afford to show weakness by caving in to a handful of
workers in Sweden. Weakness abroad might further embolden workers here
to join up with the UAW.

Will the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) join with
the Nordic unions?

Musk also should be worrying about what the ILWU could do to his cars.
It’s possible that this militant labor union will soon refuse to
handle any and all Teslas in a show of support for the Swedish
mechanics.

While labor law in the United States
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sympathy strikes much more difficult than in Scandinavia, conducting
them here is not impossible. The ILWU, which represents 22,000
dockworkers on the West Coast, has a long history
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striking on behalf of others. On May Day 2008, the union launched a
one-day strike at 29 ports to protest the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. In 2010, 2014 and 2021 it refused to handle cargo on
Israeli ships in honor of community protests against Israel’s
repression of the Palestinians. It shut down the ports for eight
minutes and 46 seconds in 2020 to show solidarity with George Floyd
[[link removed]], Breonna Taylor and
other victims of police violence. And when apartheid ruled in South
Africa, it conducted numerous job actions intended to punish the
institutional practice of discrimination.

The ILWU has yet to say whether they will join in the Scandinavian
struggle. But if these dockworkers do, it will be precisely because
solidarity has always been the essence of union power. Standing
together is the only way labor organizations can successfully
challenge corporate power. Unfortunately, only six percent of workers
in the U.S. business sector belong to unions, down from nearly 35
percent in the mid-1950s, and a far cry from the 90 percent covered by
union agreements in Sweden.

Nevertheless, in the U.S., positive perceptions
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unions are rapidly rising as a new generation of workers take on
companies like Amazon and Starbucks. After hitting their lowest
approval rating in 2010 (48 percent according to Gallop) union
approval climbed to 71 percent in 2021, the highest since the 1960s.

Musk, of course, could care less about union approval ratings. Like
every other multi-billionaire, he believes he knows best about nearly
everything, or how else could he have become so rich? To Musk it’s a
violation of natural law, as defined by him, to concede any power to
labor unions. He created Tesla and, therefore, he gets to run it. The
unions be damned.

But if union solidarity holds in Scandinavia, Musk will have no choice
but to accept the Nordic model, at least in those countries (or
scuttle his market as he seems to be doing with Twitter in Europe.)
Whether the power of solidarity spreads elsewhere will depend on the
courage of unions like the ILWU and the UAW.

In this era of rising autocratic power, wouldn’t it auger a good New
Year if the 120 Swedish mechanics bested Musk?

_Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute
[[link removed]] and author of the forthcoming
book “Wall Street’s War on Worker s: How Mass Layoffs and Greed
Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It.
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Read more of his work on his substack here
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* Elon Musk
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* Tesla; Swedish Unions; United Auto Workers;
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* Labor Organizing
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