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by ClumsyPilot 918 days ago
> The way our unions are being portrayed by Americans is ridiculous.

Americans policymakers believe in freedom of association only when it suits them.

Its cool for Google or banks to close all your accounts without any reason, and make your life impossible.

Its wrong for all unions/workers to refuse to work with Google and make their business impossible.
1 comments
randall 918 days ago
This feels very disingenuous, and pretty unfair. I don’t think most Americans think it’s ok for google or banks to act that way, and I also feel very uncomfortable about a sort of “mob rule” system… where informal agreements dictate which businesses are allowed to operate.

They both feel weird for roughly the same reasons: arbitrary decisions instead of laws dictate which behavior is tolerated for which group of people. In both cases the rights of individuals seem like they’re subject to the whims of other groups of people, instead of “liberty and justice for all.”

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eropple 918 days ago
> I don’t think most Americans think it’s ok for google or banks to act that way

Will Americans support laws to encode that Google or banks can't do that? I don't think so. You'd think it could be a bipartisan slam dunk, but, hey!

> where informal agreements dictate which businesses are allowed to operate.

They're not informal. They're part of Swedish law and the Swedish economic system. Tesla is attempting to act like a not-Swedish company in Sweden and is reaping what they've sown.

You say that "laws dictate"--sure, and the Swedish system delegates the particulars to the employer/union interaction much as, for example, the United States delegates to the regulatory regime. Unions can agree to pretty wide-ranging outcomes in Sweden. They, collectively, are refusing to do that.

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martin_a 918 days ago
> arbitrary decisions instead of laws

You're free to go to a court and fight against a strike organized by a union. If the court decides the strike is unlawful, the union will have to pay and stop striking.

Strikes and unions are not as arbitrary as it might seem.

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ClumsyPilot 918 days ago
It's written in jest, it's more of an observation of what seems to be taking place rather than how individuals feel.
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