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That's wild! As a (pseudo-) government agency, it seems like the postal service shouldn't be legally allowed to pick and choose whose mail to deliver and whose
by gottorf 3y ago
That's wild! As a (pseudo-) government agency, it seems like the postal service shouldn't be legally allowed to pick and choose whose mail to deliver and whose to withhold.
- oldpersonintx 3y ago[dead]
- j4yav 3y agoIs it the employees or the agency that decided that?
- toxik 3y agoRight, and they don’t. The workers do.
- jsiepkes 3y agoShould a mail worker be able to decide who gets their mail and who don't? For example as a mail worker should I be able to opt out from delivering mail to politicians whose political statements I find deplorable?
- eddtries 3y agoAbsolutely not! But that isn't what is happening here.
- actionfromafar 3y agoYou wouldn't have the right to do that by Swedish law. You only have the right to strike.
- eddtries 3y ago* and the strike must be lawful, to strike. You couldn’t arbitrarily strike and stop delivering mail to Trump for example.
- Leherenn 3y agoSorry if I am obtuse, but what's the difference between Trump and a specific company? That one is a legal entity? If the plates were to be delivered not to Tesla, but to an individual, then they wouldn't be allowed not to deliver them?
- morelisp 3y agoYou'd have to a) convince a majority of your coworkers, and b) have some associated, relevant labor demand. A strike isn't just "I don't want to do this."
- eddtries 3y agoI probably shouldn't have complicated things by mentioning an individual, I really don't know if that could even be possible. Imagine I said Republican Party. The key thing is that for a strike to be declared it has to be called for by the union, it would be unprecedented to call a strike for political action against a party.
- yreg 3y ago>it would be unprecedented And is there a precedent for what's happening now?
- xorcist 3y agoIt is not a question of what is allowed. The company delivering parcels must fulfill their contracts, but the contracts clearly have stipulations for force majeure. Which a strike is, by the very definition. What is not clear here? Sweden has very few strikes, but this is a textbook example of one. The postal worker's union have called for their members to refuse to carry out a specific work. This is well within their rights to do. The union calls for this as part of a collective action for their fellow workers. The company delivering the parcels could call for their employer's union to lock out the workers on strike. But why would they want to escalate the conflict? They too prefer their collective bargaining agreements respected. And they are clearly not in violation of any of their contracts as this is a legal strike. There are plenty of gray areas within worker's rights, but this is as simple as it could be.
- elteto 3y agoAnd then you can strike by selectively refusing to deliver mail for _one_ entity? I mean, call it whatever you want, but it is a selective strike and a government agency shouldn’t have the right to do that. You either don’t deliver _any_ mail, or you deliver it all. Btw I can totally empathize with the reason of the autoworkers strike, yet not agree with this.
- actionfromafar 3y agoI honestly don't see what so bad about the union action here. Would honestly love to understand what you don't like about this.
- robertlagrant 3y agoThey've laid it out pretty well. A strike is downing tools and not showing up to work. Not doing your work, but neglecting certain customers.
- thecopy 3y ago…according to you:) This is a so called sympathy strike: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_action https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_action
- robertlagrant 3y agoThe only example of this exact thing in there is...the exact thing against Tesla we're talking about. Everything else is striking against a related company to one's employer's company.
- thecopy 3y agoWell, its wikipedia. Im not sure what you are arguing against. Sympathy strikes are guaranteed by the Swedish constitution.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoPosnord isn't striking. They are doing everything else and except servicing tesla.
- enterprise_cog 3y agoIt’s the same thing as delivery drivers refusing to cross a picket line. You stand in solidarity with fellow striking workers, because their wellbeing is directly related to your own. It’s collective action and should be praised in an age where opaque corporations and oligarchs run everything.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoCompletely independent of if you think it is good or bad, it is clear that that the postnord sympathy action is not a strike or walkout.
- actionfromafar 3y agoWhat is it then?
- s1artibartfast 3y agoSimply denying service. If Starbucks workers go to work all day and serve every customer but Bob, that's not a strike or walkout. Those terms have real definitions. That doesn't mean it isn't a union activity.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y agoSeems like if the reason for it is within the law regulating worker action, it is, in fact, union activity, and is, in fact, a strike against Bob, according to some Nordic countries. Is your sole problem with the fact that people are calling something a strike, and you personally don't think they should, according to your possibly single-country-centric view of the term, or is there a substantive objection?
- morelisp 3y ago> For example as a mail worker should I be able to opt out from delivering mail to politicians whose political statements I find deplorable? Ironically, I think this would be illegal in Sweden but might be legal in the US under Title VII exemptions.
- oh_sigh 3y agoCompare and contrast the reception Swedish mail workers are getting for their behavior, versus Kim Davis, who refused to issue an otherwise non-problematic marriage license(which was part of her job).
- morelisp 3y agoEven Davis was ultimately allowed to refuse to issue licenses personally; she just couldn't forbid the deputy clerks from doing it (only one of whom, her son, also refused). She also had an elected position with an oath of office, not an employment contract.
- oh_sigh 3y agoActually, the judge ordered that the deputy clerks must issue the marriage licenses(save for her son), unless they wanted to be held in contempt of court. I'm not sure how the path matters much. It contains language along the lines of "I will faithfully execute, to the best of my ability, the office of...." I'm imagining having religious qualms about certain behaviors would fall under "best of my abilities"
- yreg 3y agoI find it insane that the workers of the state-owned postal office can decide what mail to deliver based on their personal views. What's next, the mass transit drivers refusing to stop near Tesla's offices? Court workers refusing to accept Tesla's lawsuits? Firemen refusing to put out fire on Tesla's properties?
- actionfromafar 3y agoThey can't decide based on personal views. That is illegal. It's only legal during a strike.
- tshaddox 3y agoIt’s a strike. How could the workers be prohibited from deciding whether to strike?
- dragonwriter 3y agoProhibited is easy. Just pass a law making it illegal for workers in that agency to strike, or to advocate, promote, discuss, etc., potential strikes (that may conflict with existing law, be politically difficult, etc., but the mechanism is clear.) Prevented, though, is harder. Prohibitions aren't always effective prevention.
- VoxPelli 3y agoThere are no agency workers who are participating in any strikes? Unlike the US we have a privatized postal service and the old postal service is now merged with the danish postal service and co-owned between the Swedish and Danish states and competing on an open market with other postal services. Not everyone has state postal services like in the US
- robertlagrant 3y agoAre they on strike? I thought they were just refusing to provide services to single customer.
- vanderZwan 3y agoI'm guessing that in this case enforcing that would break the right of government employees to strike.
- Hikikomori 3y agoThey're not allowed to pick and choose themselves. Why and when you can strike and sympathy strike is clearly defined, if you take action outside this framework it would be an illegal strike. And just to add, the postal service in question is private and works like a private company, though the states of Sweden and Denmark fully owns it. Employees are not state employees.
- gottorf 3y ago> the postal service in question is private and works like a private company, though the states of Sweden and Denmark fully owns it. A "private company" that is fully owned by the government is private company in name only; hence my calling it a pseudo-government agency. Especially for a legally-privileged function that is serving postal mail.
- actionfromafar 3y agoThe government isn't meddling in the daily operation of Postnord. They can, via the board, replace the CEO. A blunt tool. The privileged function that is serving mail is clearly defined by law, but the right to strike is also clearly defined in law.
- bayindirh 3y agoDoesn’t matter. Even when you’re fully owned by a government, unionization allows you to do this. This is what unionization is, protects the worker regardless of your employer.
- robertlagrant 3y agoUnionization shouldn't be there to disrupt another company. It should be there so you can bargain against your employer. This seems really inappropriate.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Unionization shouldn't be there to disrupt another company. It should be there so you can bargain against your employer. That's what Tesla's employees are doing. The point of a sympathetic strike is so that a small country's workforce can stand up to the likes of Tesla. Tesla can always withdraw from the Nordic market if they don't like the rules (which never changed). They don't want to do that because there is something there worth negotiating for.
- dragontamer 3y agoUPS and FedEx are mail delivery companies that are completely unrelated to US Government. I dunno much about Europe but if it's a private company, then rules and services are obviously different.
- riversflow 3y agoUPS and FedEx also arent allowed to touch your mailbox, and don't have their own law enforcement wing.
- VoxPelli 3y agoSwedish postal service is open to any private actor and does not have any law enforcement wing. Lots of companies have access to the mail boxes. I know of at least three companies that deliver to my mailbox + one that delivers marketing materials to it.
- bee_rider 3y agoI’m not sure what exactly the rules are in these foreign countries, but it doesn’t seem unbelievable that the state could end up bound by a contract with the union. In a good country, the state also follows rules and laws and makes contracts, after all. Particularly, as you note, in the case of a pseudo-government agency like Postnord. The only tricky bit, IMO, is the requirement that the plates must be delivered by Postnord. If it is a bit of law, it seems a little unfair that there should be a legal requirement to do business with Postnord. I thought there’d been a story recently about some alternative arrangement where the plates were instead delivered to a dealership or something, and the people could pick them up… I wonder if that changed.
- orwin 3y agoPlease, if you want to call it pseudo-something, call it pseudo-state agency. The government own nothing except their personal stuff, hopefully. Its owned by the State. Two of them even. One of them can call for a board meeting and fire the CEO (who does not have any right to force his employees). But it is not owned by the government. Please continue the discussion,i just wanted it out.
- bee_rider 3y agoThat’s fair, I was just sticking to the language used in the comment I responded to. Of course, it is an easy mistake for those of us in the US to make; we tend to use “government” more generally. I guess because we used the name “states” for our province-sized administrative unit thingies.
- orwin 3y agoYeah, it wasn't against you or your take, it was the nth post saying it and it bothered me. I also just wanted to disagree with some on the internet because I'm procrastinating.