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.”
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.
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)
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
Ofc every upvote is working class. There is no other reason I would upvote that comment
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.
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.
NASA could do what SpaceX does if we gave NASA the money we gave SpaceX. I won’t even give him credit for that.
And don’t change their goals every 4-8 years. It is hard to accomplish a 10 year project if you can’t guarantee you’ll still be working on it in 10 years.
Doubtful, big administrations have big issues with productivity and meeting goals. Not that I think it is thanks to Musk, but startups/scaleups organizations are often much more efficient than traditional companies and administrations.
I think every engineer who has worked both at a big traditional company and a startup can confirm.
I’ve worked at both and cannot confirm. Startups are good at shipping new features, but that’s usually because we don’t spend as long planning, have less legacy code to work around, and most importantly, we cut a lot of corners. These behaviors are not good for space travel
Startups are the land of the MVP, and I don’t mean Most Valuable Player. You don’t want to be sending MVPs into space? Don’t use a private company. NASA has bureaucracy but it also has stability, accountability, and the ability to think long-term.
Wtf are you on about? We give SpaceX nowhere near the funds we give NASA.
We gave NASA $25 billion this year.
SpaceX was awarded a $2.9B contract to fund the entire “land starship on the moon” program (a non cost+ contact I might add) spanning multiple years. They launched two sets of crew to the iss this year, at an estimated cost of ~700m. They have had one cargo mission this year at a cost of about $150m.
Let’s give NASA that 2.9b for a new program then. That’s a 10% budget increase.
Hell give me $2.9b and I’ll find people to put us on the moon. Elon didn’t do shit except take tax money, and give it to smart people, while keeping a cut for himself.
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.
That’s what all “visionary entrepreneurs” do. They pretend like they made every single product they sell with their bare hands and all the engineers and scientists designing them and the factory workers fabricating them are just for decoration.
I’m also convinced that they’ve breathed enough of their own farts that they genuinely believe most of the things they say.
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.
Musk whines: “This isn’t fair, I’m rich, poor people have to do what I say! Get back to work peasants! Why isn’t it working?!”
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.
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.
They used to have an even greater influence… These days there are no real extended demands, just smaller pay rises for many unions. And the social democratic political parties have severed the historical ties to them i many countries.
The collective agreements are still pretty strong, with unions blocking companies unwilling to agree to these collective Agreements.
Like when Burger King came to Denmark I believe it was, they refused to make collective agreements, and like in Sweden now, many other unions joined in year long boycotts until Burger King caved and agreed to comply.
McDonald’s made collective agreements from the start, but had some tax evasion scheme that resulted in them not paying any taxes for decades up until fairly recently.
There is still cross union solidarity, that flair up now and again. But lobbied so called “yellow unions”, that offers economical security benifits but without politics for a much lower fee price have chipped away at the older more classic unions.
The US is one of the most active places union wise these days. God knows they need it.
