“Shame On You, Tesla, Shame On You!” Sweden’s Labor Unions Fight Back

By Carolyn Fortuna - Clean Technica, November 5, 2023

Tesla is facing its most serious labor dispute ever in Europe as dock workers in Sweden threaten to block deliveries of new Teslas entering the country. If the November 7 blockade is enacted, “no Teslas will be able to enter Sweden” in the 4 ports of Malmö, Gothenburg, Trelleborg, and Södertälje, says union chair Tommy Wreeth. It’s part of “sympathy measures” as labor unions reinforce the efforts of other workers who are currently on strike against Tesla, as reported by Wired.

The Swedish Transport Workers’ Union represents 57,000 workers. They are rallying to stand by metal workers at Tesla’s Swedish 7 repair shops who have been on strike since October 27. Their dispute rests with Tesla’s refusal to sign a collective agreement with their union, IF Metall. Collective agreements in Sweden are quite common and outline terms of pay, pensions, and working conditions. Without a collective agreement, these repair shop workers earn less and lack the same benefit packages as the others in their field.

Around 90% of Swedish employees are covered by collective agreements. “We would like our members working at Tesla to have the same benefits as basically everybody else on the Swedish labor market,” says Jesper Pettersson, spokesperson for IF Metall. “We don’t see any reason why Tesla should play by different rules.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has consistently rejected calls to allow the company’s 127,000 employees worldwide to unionize.

“Shame on you, Tesla, shame on you!” Stefan Löfven, former Swedish Social Democrat Prime Minister and former IF Metall leader, exclaimed. Löfven’s message was posted on Facebook on Sunday, October 29. It revealed he would be boycotting Elon Musk’s cabs and encouraged others to postpone a purchase of a Tesla “until an agreement is signed.”

The first stage of the strike affected some 130 mechanics, but the strike was expanded on Friday to include some 470 more workers at 17 other facilities. These facilities service many brands of vehicles, but the work stoppage on repairing cars only applies to Teslas. What does that look like? The workers attend their usual shifts, and they work on other car models as assigned. The Teslas that have been brought in for repairs sit unattended.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author.