The unlikely conflict between the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer and one of Sweden’s main unions threatens to spread like an oil spill across northern Europe. Something like a Tesla against Scandinavia. “Tesla creates cars that are climate sustainable. Now is the time to create sustainable working conditions for employees. “It’s time for a collective agreement!” cry those responsible for IF Metall, the latest nightmare of billionaire Elon Musk. His company does not manufacture in the Nordic country, but 120 mechanics from seven workshops spread across the country repair cars when they have a problem. A month and a half ago they started a strike demanding a collective agreement, but what at first may have seemed like a minor labor dispute given the enormous size of Tesla, with a global workforce of 127,000 employees, is gaining dimension week by week.
The first support for the strikers came from dock workers on November 7. They blocked the entry of Tesla cars into the four largest Swedish ports. Then in all of them. It was just the beginning of the boycott. Employees of the power grid, Elektrikerna, refused to maintain the Tesla Supercharger stations. Stockholm taxi drivers threatened to suspend new vehicle orders. Fifty workers from the firm Hydro Extrusions, which supplies Tesla with aluminum components used to reinforce security, stayed at home or carried out other tasks. Body painters stopped painting Teslas. The janitors did not clean their buildings. Even the Swedish postal service refused to provide license plates to Tesla, which de facto prevented its new cars from circulating.
The reaction from Musk’s company was twofold. On the one hand, The controversial executive described the veto of postal service workers in X as “insane”the social network of which he is the owner, and in an interview with The New York Times He even showed his disagreement with the very idea of the existence of unions. The second front was the judicial one: he went to court to denounce the illegality of the boycott of the postal service. The judges, however, concluded this Thursday that PostNord is not obliged to deliver license plates.
The IF Metall union defends that collective agreements are the basis of the Swedish labor model, and that approximately nine out of ten workers are covered by them throughout the country, which has proven to be a successful formula for maintaining social peace. Thanks to its existence, they insist, certain working conditions are guaranteed sector by sector, from salaries to pensions, including the length of the day or vacations.
But the wave of union sympathy unleashed, the media resonance of the case, and the disproportionate size of the enemy have turned the battle against Tesla into much more than a simple fight for the rights of a few dozen mechanics. It has become a tense battle that measures the power of unions with that of multinationals, the result of which could set precedents: if workers give in to Tesla, few companies will dare to embark on similar challenges in the future.
Denmark, Norway and Finland
The unions have demonstrated an unexpected capacity for mobilization, to the point of extending the case to neighboring countries. This Tuesday the Danish union 3F, which its Swedish counterpart asked for help, announced that it will refuse to unload or transport cars manufactured by the American automotive company for customers in Sweden. “Solidarity is the cornerstone of the union movement and extends beyond borders,” justified its president, Jan Villadsen. Also in Denmark, a pension fund told Reuters which has sold its 63 million euro stake in Tesla due to the company’s refusal to reach an agreement with the unions.
Norway and Finland can be the next pieces in the chess game. The unions of the first country are analyzing their own response in a key country for Tesla, since there, in its fourth market – the first three are the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom – it sells more vehicles than in Sweden. And the Finnish transport workers’ union, AKT, decided on Thursday to join the solidarity strike against Tesla and stated that it would begin a blockade of Tesla vehicles bound for Sweden in all Finnish ports from December 20.
It remains to be seen to what extent the conflict translates into a reputational blow for the company, and whether Tesla’s Scandinavian customers choose other alternatives in retaliation or decide to ignore the case and choose to continue trusting the brand, the eighth in the world by stock market value with more than 700,000 million euros. Far ahead of the rest of the competitors in its sector. It does not seem that Elon Musk, accustomed to moving like a fish in water in the midst of scandal, is going to begin to care at this point what the rest of the world thinks of him or his company, but at least the fierce resistance of the unions to give in will cost them a handful of millions.
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