Whatever your view on the escalating situation between Tesla and Scandinavian labour groups, you have to admire Swedish workers’ willingness to get behind their cause. Now, they’re really sticking it to Tesla by refusing to pick up its trash.
Just the latest development in a labor dispute that began in late October when mechanics employed by Tesla in Sweden walked off their jobs, the country’s Transport Workers’ Union has now announced that it will cease collecting the automaker’s waste starting on December 24 if Tesla continues to resist signing a collective agreement with its employees.
“This type of sympathy action is very rare. We are using it now to protect the Swedish collective agreements and the safety of the Swedish labor market model,” Tommy Wreeth, the president of the Swedish Transport Workers’ Union, said per Reuters. “Tesla can’t ignore the norm on the Swedish labor market.”
Read: Tesla’s “Insane” Swedish Nightmare: No Mail, No Plates, No Deliveries
The union’s beef with Tesla stems from a conflict with mechanics employed at the automaker’s service centers. As with the vast majority of Swedish workers, they belong to a union (in this case, IF Metall), and expected the automaker to follow local custom and agree to a collective bargaining agreement.
However, Tesla is staunchly opposed to unions, and after five years of refusing to sign, the mechanics decided to launch a strike. They were quickly joined by dockworkers, who refused to unload the company’s vehicles at Swedish ports.
Growing Scandinavian row
Questions about the efficacy of the measure arose after reports emerged that Tesla was simply driving vehicles in from neighboring countries. So unions in Denmark, Norway, and Finland also joined in, and said they would not unload vehicles bound for Sweden out of solidarity with their neighbor.
In addition, postal workers, drivers, and even maintenance workers in Sweden also joined the strike against Tesla. That means that the automaker’s locations will no longer be cleaned, a situation will likely be made significantly worse if garbage starts piling up.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk signaled his frustration with the strikes, calling the action by postal workers “insane.” The company has also initiated lawsuits in the country, but so far has not been successful in forcing them to deliver mail, such as license plates for new vehicles.
In addition to widespread strikes, the labor dispute is bleeding over into other aspects of Tesla business. Last week, the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest stock market investor in the company, said that it would push the American automaker to sign a collective agreement with its Swedish workers.
