How the Removal of a Private Doctor Sparked a Union at the Developer of Candy Crush (nordic.ign.com)
from chobeat@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.world on 20 Jan 10:20
https://lemmy.ml/post/24989976

#technology

threaded - newest

jlh@lemmy.jlh.name on 20 Jan 11:07 collapse

If enough employees join the same union at a company, they can vote to install a union board to negotiate a CBA on their behalf.

This isn’t correct, this sounds like they are thinking of the US’s National Labor Relations Act. In Sweden, the coercive option that a union has to implement a collective agreement (“kollektivavtal”), is only to organize a strike against the employer until a collective agreement is signed.

This is why Tesla employees in Sweden have been in a strike for over a year, and why many unions in Europe are engaging in solidarity blockades against Tesla. As Tesla has refused to sign a collective agreement with its employees, something that would be illegal under the US’s NLRA. Obviously, strikes are very costly for a company, as they must both preserve the positions of those striking, but also buy in labor from non-unionized employees to replace the shortfall. But it’s obviously a worthwhile cost for some people’s political goals, as the Tesla strike nears its second year.

There is also a large loophole in Swedish labor law, where a company can simply sign a collective agreement with another union than the union that the employees are members of. All employees are then banned from going on strike, as they technically have a collective agreement. This is a loophole that Klarna exploited in order to prevent their tech workers from unionizing. I believe that the courts have not yet ruled on whether this is legal or not.