News
Tesla
The Tesla battle is about so much more than Sweden
Andreas Cervenka
Reporter and economic commentator
This is a commenting text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.
Updated 19.02 | Published 18.59
Who will be the first to sign the TV rights to Tesla vs If Metall?
The battle between tech phantom Elon Musk and Swedish ombudsmen will reverberate around the world.
Both Tesla and the union play high.
The pot: the future of capitalism.
On sunday, AB Volvo CEO Martin Lundstedt visited Israel and met both the victims of the Hamas terror attacks and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Wearing a bulletproof vest.
Just writing it feels bizarre. The idea of a Swedish CEO who goes around as a kind of statesman without a state is laughable.
AB Volvo CEO Martin Lundstedt Photo: Adam Ihse/TT
But Elon Musk, who did just this this weekend, is so much more than a corporate executive: multi-genius, culture warrior, peacemaker, world's richest man, AI prophet, self-proclaimed crusader for truth (as he sees it).
When other CEOs are content to run their business, there is no question too big for Elon Musk to throw himself into. He is like a cartoon character visiting from the future.
It is therefore quite symptomatic that Elon Musk is in the middle of a battle that will be decisive for the future. And that it takes place in Sweden.
Basically, it is about the age-old struggle between labor and capital. It is, 140 years after the death of the economist Karl Marx, hotter than ever.
One way to measure the balance of power between these parties is to compare how much of the value creation in the economy goes to the companies' profits and how much is paid out in wages.
If the battle of the last fifty years in the Western world has to be summed up in one sentence, it will be this: capital won.
The share of wages has steadily shrunk.
During the pandemic, it fell even more as companies managed to raise their prices and thus their profits – while wages did not rise nearly as fast.
In Sweden, the share of profits last year was the highest in 30 years, according to Statistics Norway. In the US, companies in 2022 had the highest profit margins since the 1950s.
This has made the unions see their chance.
Because at the same time as the companies have raked in record profits, there has been a shortage of labor in many places after the pandemic, in other words a good time to demand more pay. In the US, several unions have gone on strike, including in Hollywood and in the car industry.
It has yielded results.
At the same time, support for unions has increased in the US, despite the fact that only around 10 percent are union members. 67 percent are favorable to unions, up from 48 percent in 2009, according to a Gallup poll. A third of Americans believe that unions will be stronger in the future, in 2018 only 19 percent thought so.
Elon Musk, the world's richest man and owner of Tesla. Photo: Jae C. Hong/AP
This is where Elon Musk and Sweden come into the picture.
Tesla, like many big tech companies, are staunch opponents of unions. It's not really in the nature of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to buy ideas that are a hundred years old, and that others have come up with.
But in recent years, the pressure has increased. Large companies such as Amazon and Apple have been forced to the bargaining table by employees who have started to organize.
The resistance to unions has been picked up by Swedish tech guys who, of course, don't want to be worse than their idols. Spotify has tapped the trays as well as Klarna. But just the other week, Klarna's founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski was forced to do a complete turnaround.
This is a nightmare development for Elon Musk. Being anti-union isn't just a strategy, it's an integral part of his personal brand.
The pressure to accept the unions has increased on Tesla
also in the USA and Germany, two infinitely more important countries for the company than Sweden. In Germany, Tesla recently agreed to wage increases in an attempt to quell the campaigns of powerful IG Metall.
If Tesla accepts a collective agreement in Sweden, it quickly risks having spillover effects. Conversely, if the companies of the future succeed in rounding up unions, it will affect how the economy works for decades to come.
With minimal resistance, it won't be difficult to replace millions of employees with AI.
It is probably no coincidence that Elon Musk is putting hard on hard precisely in Sweden, a country that abroad is still associated with a kind of GDR stamp.
If you can win against the unions in Sweden, you can win everywhere, the Tesla management perhaps reasons.
Sweden has a strong trade union tradition.
In the picture, a demonstration train that passed through Stockholm in 2006. Photo: Pontus Lundahl / TT
The Swedish trade unions also have a lot to lose.
The LO unions are losing members and there has also been a political upheaval. 27 percent of LO members voted for SD in the last election, less than half, 42 percent, for S.
SD, which aspires to become the major labor party, raged this week against the LO strike. "A pure attack on Elon Musk", thundered the chairman of the business committee Tobias Andersson, SD, in a defense speech for the billionaire.
That Musk named the war against "the woke mind virus" as one of his main goals makes him an obvious idol in populist parties.
The right to spread racist dung on X is considered more important than the right to decent conditions in the labor market, the mean would say.
But the union's sympathy measures do not obviously win points in all camps and if Tesla wins its lawsuit against the Swedish state and maybe even receives damages, it will be a great propaganda triumph.
Elon Musk will describe it as having received court papers that trade unions in general, and Swedish ones in particular, are "insane", to use his own expression.
The Tesla drama has likely only just begun. Everything points to a raging season 2.
Inga kommentarer:
Skicka en kommentar