Elon Musk has decried a wave of “insane” strikes focused on Tesla workshops in Sweden, as workers target the US electric car manufacturer in a strike calling for collective bargaining rights.
In what has been portrayed as the largest fight in decades to save Sweden’s union model from global labour practices, the powerful trade union IF Metall has been leading a strike across eight Tesla workplaces in Sweden for five weeks.
It is the first time workers for the US carmaker have gone on strike and on Thursday, Musk, the tech billionaire and chief executive of Tesla, made his feelings clear, writing on X, formerly Twitter: “This is insane.”
Cry harder billionaire.
Literally made his money on exploitation and lies. SpaceX is amazing, but built on much smarter minds; he was just the wallet. And he bought Tesla and has been lying and overpromising since he did.
But didn’t he also go above and beyond to have him portrayed as founder of SpaceX?
Yeah, and I’m fairly certain he bought the right to be called ‘founder’ of Tesla… From the founders.
Then almost immediately bankrupted Tesla. Was their first near miss of going under.
Story has been retconned on their website to say Elon fixed the car. That the Roadster wasn’t even close to production ready. He did neither.
What really happened is he wanted to redo much of the looks of the car to put his stamp on it. They spent a small fortune tweaking the Elise body to make it look just slightly less like one. Ballooned their production costs and added a ton of delays. The original team was going to use the Elise chassis as it came from Lotus and people had already lined up to buy that.
No he actually founded spacex, you’re thinking of Tesla.
Yup. The groundwork for privatized space travel had been in the works for a decade or two by that point. But musk wanted to buy an icbm and Russia said no. So he was convinced by much smarter people to become the money mark.
Literally made his money on exploitation and lies. SpaceX is amazing, but built on much smarter minds; he was just the wallet.
Not to mention 100’s of millions of subsidies from the US government. Space X could never have survived with only his wealth!
His real skill is getting people to work hard. And he brought the iterative design he learned in software development to the physical world. Pared with family money, hire the right people to do the work, and you get SpaceX.
His real skill is getting people to work hard.
Did you really just say that on a post about how his workers are striking?! LOL!
Guys, this is what success for the working class looks like.
If the ruling class is upset, it’s because we’re doing something right.
If they’re content, it’s because they’re fucking us up the ass with no lube or reach-around.
They literally want us to roll over and just take it. And some of us are proud to. Glad that number is rapidly diminishing, though.
Frfr, hate on them high billys
I would love to see the number of people upvoting this who are genuinely working class.(remember, every downvote on my reply is a middle class person who does not practice what they preach)
Middle class is the working class and I support our unions. When I worked for one I got a fair wage and just because I’m not in one currently doesn’t mean you cant support them.
The middle class is a made up idea designed to divide the working class. You either have to work for a living or you don’t, and slightly higher income and a bit of savings doesn’t make your function in society entirely different even if it allows you more comfort.
Nope. Totally different universes. Middle class people in the west like to roleplay as downtrodden but none of them have worked actual working class jobs and all enjoy at least some security of education
So you’re trying to tell me that because I have a degree, work in an office job, and have some savings, that I’m not working class? If I lost my job I’d have a few months in savings before I’d be digging into retirement funds, and even then I’d probably be completely broke within a year or two. That’s certainly a lot more comfort than someone who would miss rent next month, but ultimately I still am dependent on an employer and selling my labor, I do not have anywhere near enough money to live on dividends or interest payments. I see much more in common with someone making minimum wage than I do with the owner class who lives on rent, interest, and dividends without working.
You dont think that’s middle class? Because you have to work to not run out of money?
So do most of the upper classes. What you have the luxury of an education that allows them some freedom to work, and the comforts of knowledge work that allow them to not have to sacrifice their physical health and, most likely an income bracket that at least affords you some choice in where you live.
The point is that high levels of migration, effectively forces your own countries working classes to compete with and deal with tons of cheap foreign labour coming in, with little or no conformity to the parent culture because it hasn’t been facilitated. The middle classes traditionally laugh at the working classes and claim they are being “racist”, “stupid” and “lazy” for complaining about this arrangement, while mostly avoiding it’s effects themselves.
This voting is a result of the left wing, middle classes being unable to grasp the obvious effects of their voting record, instead pretending to each other in echo chambers that they are the real working classes and how shocking all this right wing-tilt is. Throwing the incumbent working class culture under a bus.
You either live off wealth or you live off income. If you live off income you are a worker and workers need to stand together.
This is, as I have described above, all well and good to say…
…Apart from when you repeatedly support policies that further squeeze extant working classes, then have the gall to do this vague virtue signalling of “standing together”. It’s hypocritical.
You are doing local workers in the country a disservice and the owning classes a great help to price them out of existence.
You can call it middle class if you want. But it’s also working class. Even most petite bourgeois are working class as they cannot live off capital interest.
Ofc every upvote is working class. There is no other reason I would upvote that comment
deleted by creator
i think your replying to the wrong person there buddy
No your
Ah yes. I might have missed the memo where you became the Judge of who is working class or not.
(And remember if you answer my comment you admit that you have no Idea what you are talking about and are just here to troll 🥸)
.(remember, every downvote on my reply is a middle class person who does not practice what they preach)
Yeah no, that’s not how this works. You’re being downvoted for posting a stupid comment.
Bet you thought you were super smart with that one
It’s an accurate observation, and it’s not so much that I consider myself smart, it’s more that I note most negative replies generally refuse to acknowledge the underlying issue (read: dumb).
The reason they have so many downvotes is because they buy them cheap on Amazon.com
OnT: I’m Swedish and it’s good to see a proper strike, but the real thing motivating the unions on this isn’t workers rights or anything. The unions are subservient to the national labour union organisation, LO, who’ll do the shadiest shit to get more power for themselves, and don’t care about working conditions in the slightest. The only thing that’s a red line for them, is when corporations refuse to take part in the charade, by not signing a collective agreement.
You have to pay some lip-service, even if it costs you. If you do, the unions will be on your side against the workers.
Removed by mod
Downvote for r word
Downvoted for, well, being retarded.
Hmmm calling your workers insane for striking due to their lives and wellbeings endangered, seems entirely responsible and in no way insane.
Is he out of touch? No it is the workers who are wrong.
Well, SOMEONE is gonna have to make sacrifices and we all know that it can’t be the rich guy, so…
He’s actually referring to the sympathy strikers. No Tesla can get a licence plate or registered in solidarity with the autoworkers.
I feel like if someone is insane, it must be Musk, trying to circumvent the unions in a Nordic country, which have one some of the strongest unions and union culture in the world.
Typical rich person mentality. How easily they forget they don’t create wealth in a vacuum. People are only that rich off the hard work of other people
Nobody earns a billion dollars, that’s impossible. People turn into billionaires by stealing the wages and wealth from their workers.
And imaginary wealth in stock market value.
I love thinking about how much of his imaginary wealth was lost due to his Twitter mismanagement.
The sound of strong unions is music to my ears.
There are almost no minimum wage laws but 90% of workers are unionized or represented in some way. They strike very rarely because employers know unions are strong there but when they do, oh boy the whole country is behind the workers on strike.
130 mechanics started the whole thing!
Good for them. This abuse of workers collective bargaining rights is just divide and conquer. Unions cannot work if you allow them to disappear.
It has to be said that the unions in Sweden do not want minimum wage because it would give employers another argument against them in negotiations. Even Elon uses it in countries that do have it.
To me, proof that Elon Musk is a doofus and not as smart as he thinks he is, is that he had this public persona of “real life Iron Man” billionaire playboy thing going, and within just a couple years his public image has become “douche bag with too much money”. Obviously that one is way closer to reality, which is exactly my point.
Someone with half a brain would have hired a PR team to keep the original image intact for as long as possible, but he’s so egotistical and so prideful and so oblivious he thinks he can let his real self on display and that’ll just carry him
I think most people are at a point where they only really want to know what he’s up to to make fun of him.
I would love it if people would just stop talking about him
do you think that will make him go away? Stop shining a light on the dark and disgusting in the hopes that they just disappear? Doesn’t work like that pal.
If you actually cared, there are ways of stopping phony stark from coming up in your feed, yet here you are
who? Elon Musk you mean? That brilliant billionaire inventor and leader?
Removed by mod
dude he HAS a massive PR team to keep his image up, hell that PR Team is the only reason why people had this image of him in the first place
For a while there I had hope he was doing it so he could run as a republican and then do a flip on them when he got elected.
Just started passing things usually called literal.
This was 5 years ago
Evidently he has Asperger’s, so there might be a non-nefarious explanation for his lack of understanding of social things and why he is both simultaneously so successful/creative but also completely socially inept.
He might be actually incapable of understanding others’ perspectives.
You do not need to understand others on an emotional level for this, you can come pretty far on rationals alone. This excuse might work in a personal relationship, not here.
I agree. But not everyone is wholly rational at all times and some people think they are being rational when in reality they made mistakes in their logical thought processes.
Asperger syndrome: A developmental disorder affecting ability to effectively socialize and communicate. Asperger syndrome is a condition on the autism spectrum, with generally higher functioning.
All I said was there may be a non-nefarious reason for him being the way he is. Are you arguing that he is definitely acting out of malice? If you are, I’d like to understand the reasoning you are using. I’m not trying to fight here, I’m trying to understand.
Not this again, really just shitting on Autistic people by saying stuff like this.
I still believe in him
He should just call them all pedophiles, that should resolve the issue.
That whole call people paedophiles for the lolz was originally supposed to be my joke 😭
Yeah the problem with that kind of humour is that eventually you’ll attract the people who think the same thing unironnically.
But preferably only in person face to face and as a joke. Not as behind your back, messing with you kind of thing
Let’s appreciate the insanity of opening factories in countries with some of the best unions and laws supporting unions and then doing a pikachu face when those unions go and decide to bust your kneecaps for essentially abusing the workers… Elon why did you even open a factory in sweden? It was obvious from the beginning this would happen.
Probably some insidious long term plan to weaken unions in Scandinavian countries.
I’ll take “Things petulant billionaires say when they don’t get their way” for $1000, Alex.
“They are insane” = “I’m so far out of touch I can’t understand people who work for a living”
- “people giving a shit about the other people in their country”
More like ‘I’m a sociopath who thinks petty things like empathy and basic human rights are stupid. Now get back to work, my servants are meant to be seen, not heard.’
Billionaires, the true Unskilled Worker
Worker is a bit of a stretch.
I’m an American that hasn’t been to many other countries, but Sweden is fortunately one of them. The culture is different from what I’m used to, and it boils down to respecting the dignity of the people around you, and in the process respecting yourself as well.
So, it’s very nice to see the solidarity of the workers, but also not surprising. In a good way.
Poor guy. It must be so difficult watching his workers joining together to demand their fair share of his company’s profits. It’d be a real shame if workers in other countries follow suit. I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult it must be to be a billionaire. Those poor bastards.
If workers tried this in Canada the police would roll them over.
It’s a crime to block roads and railways in protest here, unless the police like you, then they take selfies with you.
Well, Tesla doesn’t have a production facility in Canada, AFAIK. However…Germany has…and i think he’s going to regret that big time.
Nah I’m sure the Germans would love to work with Tesla corp haha
Musk could spend a million dollars per day for 500 years and still be a billionaire. That’s a literally incomprehensible amount of money.
He could single-handedly end world hunger and barely notice a difference in his staggering wealth. Just paying his fair share of taxes would have a seismic effect on the US in so many ways, but instead he hoards more and more, siphoning wealth from those who need it most into coffers so large, he can’t even really notice.
It’s obscene.
Totally is. And the appetite doesn’t seem to be anywhere near the tipping point yet. Unfortunate.
The appetite is limitless. Wealth hoarding is just like every other type of hoarding. They’re trying to fill a hole in themselves with stuff, and they collect far more than will ever be useful to them, to the detriment of themselves and everyone else. Billionaires just do it at a scale that hurts us all.
“Waaaah my precious market forces are working against me.”
They’ve seen 50-100% payrises in many cases - unions are important.
Unions that are bottom up organizations are important, Unions that are beholden to the political class are just a way to control us.
Sure, I guess.
Eating vegetables is good too - rotten vegetables are bad to eat though.
Unions consisting entirely of Vampires and other human-flesh/blood consuming monsters of myth and legend are also bad.
Because of the murders and the consuming of human flesh and blood.
You forgot to mention also the mess that needs to be cleaned up.
Remember how the railroad workers trid to strike & congress shut them down? Unions in America are not like Unions in Europe.
I’ll put my response aside and ask - What’s your point? Don’t unionise?
Wildcat unions > corporatist unions
I don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other (though I think your binary framing of wildcat Vs corporatist is a little dishonest), but looking at the current Tesla dispute in Sweden, the effect is massive because it’s a cohesive, multi-sector strike. Seems like that’s a pretty effective case of “us” controlling “them”, no?
Yeah that the point the Swedish unions aren’t working in a framework that’s designed to give the political establishment control over the unions. If our ability to legally protest political matters could be vetoed by the people in power what effect do you think it would have on likelihood of effecting change through protect?
Removed by mod
Sometimes it’s not about the truth of the statement, but how it’s attempting to shape a certain narrative, that gets the vote, up or down.
This is exactly why I downvoted it. It’s a comment meant to disparage unions without appropriate context, a classic attack by bad faith actors.
Yep. Scaring people with corruption is usually the number one way of trying to discourage people for wanting unions.
And it’s funny that no other form of governance that can be susceptible to corruption is ever discussed in a discussion about unions.
It’s ok, my instance doesn’t have down vote so I don’t even see them.
