Tesla vehicles may be prevented from entering Sweden as a labor dispute with the company’s repair shop workers widens. Set to begin on November 7, the blockade would be the most serious measure yet taken against the American EV manufacturer in Europe.
The action is being led by the Swedish Transport Workers’ Union, IF Metall, which represents 57,000 people. That includes both the dockworkers who could soon refuse to unload Tesla vehicles, as well as those who work at Tesla’s repair shops, which is where this fight started.
The majority of Swedish workers are represented by unions, and collective agreements are the norm, reports Wired. However, Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk, are staunchly opposed to unions, and the company has refused to sign a collective agreement with the workers at its repair shops.
Read: Tesla Fired Workers After They Announced Plans To Unionize, Employees Claim
“We would like our members working at Tesla to have the same benefits as basically everybody else on the Swedish labor market,” a spokesperson for IF Metall said. “We don’t see any reason why Tesla should play by different rules.”
IF Metall has been trying to get Tesla to sign a collective agreement that would give repair shop workers a pension and other benefits since 2018. However, last year, the company decided to walk away from negotiations.
That eventually led the repair shop workers to launch a strike last Friday. However, the action has been criticized as being ineffective, and Tesla owners have reported that their vehicles are still being repaired.
However, since the dockworkers threatened to block the delivery of Tesla vehicles, the company has come back to the negotiating table. Tesla delivered more than 16,000 new vehicles in Sweden in the first three quarters of 2023, making it the fifth-largest market for the automaker in Europe.
A fierce opponent of unions, workers around the world are observing the fight that’s going down in Sweden. With the UAW reportedly looking to unionize American Tesla workers, this fight could be a sign of things to come. Europeans are also watching on, according to Mikael Stahl, the deputy general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation.
“The electric vehicle is a symbol of the whole green transition, and it’s a big irony that Tesla is refusing to engage in the social dimension of the big transition that we’re going through,” said Stahl. “I think it will be inspiring for unions in other countries to see this, because I think that the Swedish union will be successful in the long run.”
