2023-11-30 13:35:00
On October 27, 130 Swedish Tesla employees went on strike to obtain a collective agreement. A month later, Elon Musk having refused the request, the entire Swedish society moved to boycott the brand. Norway could well join the movement. For the billionaire, “it’s crazy”.
It was supposed to be a small, inconsequential conflict. This was without counting on Nordic solidarity, which cherishes its “Scandinavian model”. Elon Musk having refused to grant employees a collective agreement (90% of Swedes have one), in particular because it could have caused him to lose money and give ideas to others, the IF Metall union launched a call for a general boycott to help them.
Result, as reported Numeramaelectricians refuse to repair Tesla charging stations,
cleaning is no longer done in showrooms, garbage is no longer collected in front of Tesla centers,
dockers refuse to unload Teslas arriving at ports… Above all, the postal service no longer delivers license plates to Teslas, which prevents drivers from getting behind the wheel, even if they have received their vehicle. In short, it’s a disaster for Tesla.
Ingeniously, the brand wanted to get around the problem by going through Norway and using their trucks to deliver the vehicles. Except that the Norwegian unions refuse to be a vulgar stepping stone: “Norway must not be a transit country allowing Tesla to get away with breaking strikes”, underlined Jorn Eggumn, leader of a Norwegian union on The Guardian.
It’s more and more difficult to get out of this story. Tesla has therefore decided to take legal action against the Swedish government’s transport agency to restart the production and delivery chain. A frontal attack which will certainly not restore the image of the manufacturer. Especially since the Swedish unions are tenacious.
As Numerama recalls in its article, “the last foreign company to want to override the unions in Sweden ended up giving in, after three months of strikes. This was the Toys’r’us company in 1995.”
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