I disagree with the idea of unions. Hey, Ellen.
Don't mess with Nordic workers and our unions because you'll surely lose.
You say that you disagree with the idea of unions in the Nordic.
We love our unions because they make our lives so much better.
For months now, unions in northern Europe have been mobilizing against Tesla.
Now, workers in multiple countries either currently are or are threatening to
withhold their labor against the company.
And Elon Musk didn't like that, and he called the efforts insane.
But one Danish member of Parliament is making it clear to Elon that he's going to
have to get with the program or get out.
We'll watch more of his video in a second.
But first, let me refresh you on some of the details about this ongoing dispute.
About 130 mechanics at ten Tesla garages across Sweden walked off the job
on October 27th over the company's refusal to sign a collective bargaining agreement.
Tesla doesn't have a factory in Sweden, but does have a network
of service centers, since the mechanics with the Swedish Metal Workers Union,
that's called if Metall went on strike.
Other workers around the country have joined in sympathy, withholding
their services to pressure the company.
Members of the company's transport union say they'll stop collecting waste from
Tesla service centers starting Sunday.
Employees with supplier Hydro Extrusions, which makes aluminum profiles,
are refusing to make a component for Tesla cars.
Other unions say their members won't paint Tesla cars, clean the company's offices
or service electrical systems at its workshops or any
of its 70 charging stations in Sweden.
Now, this boycott has escalated, as I alluded to, by spreading
to neighboring Nordic countries, including Denmark, where dockworkers
are not going to unload a Tesla vehicles which are arriving at ports.
That's where Pelle Dragsted comes in.
A democratic socialist member of the Danish parliament
who laid out the many benefits of having powerful unions that they enjoy
in these Scandinavian countries.
When your home country got richer during the last decades, the wealth remained in
the pocket of you and other billionaires.
Quite the opposite in Denmark, when we got richer, the workers got
their share thanks to our unions.
If Tesla gets unionized, it will be because we deserve it
and we failed in some way.
Well, maybe you see it as a personal failure if Tesla gets unionized,
but for your workers, it certainly won't.
Here in Denmark, our unions have secured a decent living wage
for all workers a workweek of 37 hours, the right to at least five weeks
of vacation, paid sick leave, and the right to one year of parental leave.
It's all about freedom.
The freedom for working families to live good lives.
So, dear Elon, respect your workers and negotiate a deal.
Or let me put it more bluntly, get unionized or get out.
That's awesome.
And he's right, because 80 to 90% of workers are covered
by collective bargaining agreements.
In Nordic countries, 80 to 90% of workers is an insane number
to think of as an American.
But that is just the norm in those countries.
It's a little bit more on that across Scandinavia, trade unions and employers
negotiate deals on wages and working conditions
with almost no involvement from the state.
It's a system that oriented in the 1930s and is originated, excuse me,
in the 1930s, and is widely acknowledged as the backbone of a labor market model
that has helped workers benefit from decades of economic prosperity.
Workers in Nordic countries enjoy comparatively high average salaries,
with employers in Denmark paying labor costs of $48 an hour per worker in 2018,
the highest in the EU. For comparison, for US Americans, the average hourly wage
in the US was about $26 at the time.
Remember, those are averages.
Not usually as accurate as, medians probably be lower if we looked
at that number in the United States.
But naturally, Elon Musk sucks and Tesla is trying to fight back.
According to CNBC, a job posting on Tesla's website, the company is now
seeking an all around Stockholm or Oslo based Nordic public policy and business
development manager, whose role will be to ensure that the political, regulatory
and fiscal frameworks in the Nordics, quote, support Tesla's mission.
And that's so funny reading that to me, Jake, just knowing the intense strength
that the unions have in that those countries, because some that type of role
might be effective here in the United States where having that type of influence
over elected officials, you know, and, you know, essentially having someone to track
and lobby members of Congress to make sure that labor conditions never get better
works here, because we don't have the same level of union strength that they have.
But as we pointed out while reporting this, they're able to get all
these benefits that Americans don't enjoy, not through passing it
through their their legislators, but by negotiating through their unions.
Right.
So I'm going to explain why, all these Nordic countries
are uniting against Elon Musk.
It's actually about Germany more than anything else.
I'll get to that in a second.
But as I watched that tape, I thought, you know what?
We live in a cage here in America and we don't even know it.
Look at what they get in Europe.
Five weeks of guaranteed vacation every year.
A year off when they have a kid, we can't even get 12 weeks.
We're busting our asses trying to get 12 weeks paid family leave.
And our politicians say no way. Why?
Because they're funded by corporations, and corporations don't want it.
$48 an hour for the average laborer in Denmark? 48. We can't eat.
You know what our minimum wage is?
I know it's average and minimum, but our minimum wage is
$7.25 at the federal level.
There are $48.
Guys, we don't understand how much we live under corporate rule here in America.
It's totally oppressive.
And so when do you think it's just a coincidence that Denmark
and all those Nordic countries rank at the very top in happiness
in every poll done in across the world?
No. They're happy because they got a pretty good life.
You know why? Because they actually have a democracy.
And they have unions to protect workers rights.
You put those two together and people are like, oh, this is great.
Here in America, we don't have democracy. We have open auctions.
The corporations and the rich buy off all of our politicians
through campaign contributions.
And then they set the rules so that only the rich win and no one else does.
And the middle class has to pay for everything here in America.
It's sick. So I love that they're fighting back.
So what's it about?
It only affects a small number of workers in Sweden, that original strike.
But it is now spread to Denmark Norway and Finland is considering it as well.
And different workers in all those different countries.
Why?
Because they know that if you let this take hold, as they did a little bit
in Germany, it spreads like a virus.
And so there's a factory of 11,000 workers in Germany that put together Tesla's.
It's a much bigger number and they're not unionized.
And so these countries and the unions in those countries are pushing back
so they don't lose any further ground.
Because once you start losing ground, next thing you know, you turn it into
America, where our, the percentage of our, workforce that's unionized is tiny.
Tiny. And guess what?
Because of that, we have much lower wages.
We have much less vacation, no sick leave for a lot of industries
and no paid family leave at all.
We're brutalized by corporate rule. That's the reality.
And I think that this story is more telling of that
than it is of Tesla or anything else.
And we're brutalized, too, by the absence of national health care.
You know, we're, you know, the the resistance to unions is the increased cost
in providing health care and retirement and all the other perks
that go with being in a union, let alone just being an avenue for grievance,
against unfair labor practices.
But, you know, corporate America doesn't want to, you know, they don't want
to chip in for health care.
And we have a government that doesn't want to do much
to help people with health care, either.
So we're all kind of like, lost.
I'm in the Screen Actors Guild, I'm in a union.
I have to work X number of days and earn at least $26,000 a year
to qualify for health insurance.
So I got to make sure I get work next year so I can continue my health care.
I mean, this is these are this is like a feeling of desperation, you know, and and
you know, I think don't Sweden and Norway and a lot of the Scandinavian countries
have national health care already.
Yeah. In there.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
Not only the Nordic countries, Brian, but literally every developed nation on earth
has universal health care except America and tons of middle class and and even,
poor countries have nationalized health care, and we don't, I keep using
this example, and I wrote about how we got captured by corporate rule in, justice
is coming and get it at tyt.com/justice.
And, and the one that's really stunning is Estonia.
Estonia has it. Sweden has 52 weeks off.
For if you have a baby. Okay.
For every baby.
Estonia has 82 weeks off and and they have enough money.
They're good. They can do that.
But America, the richest country in the world, go.
No, we don't have enough money for a single day off.
So you can. It's not about the money.
It's about who gets the money, the distribution of the money.
And in America, since the rich bought off our politicians, the wealth
is redistributed to the very top.
Yeah. That's right.
I don't know, I without unions, would there be any impediment
to just basically out of control wealth and capitalism just run amok?
And. I don't think so.
So, you know, as Elon Musk said, if you wind up with a union,
then you probably deserved it.
In a good way. That's the part he didn't understand.
Yeah. Right.
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