Denmark’s 3F union for harbor workers says that, in two weeks, it will stop unloading Tesla vehicles bound for Sweden. The action is being taken out of solidarity with a coalition of unions there that are striking against the company, in an effort to get it to sign a collective with its mechanics.
Tesla has started sending its Sweden-bound vehicles to ports in neighboring countries, after dockworkers there joined mechanics in protesting the American automaker. Now, Danish stevedores will support their action by refusing to participate in Tesla’s efforts to get around the embargo. However, Tesla vehicles bound for Denmark will continue to be unloaded.
Read: Everyone Seems To Be Striking Against Tesla In Sweden As Postal Workers Join In Too
“Even if you are one of the richest people in the world, you can’t just make your own rules,” Jan Villadsen, the 3F union’s chairman for transport, told Autonews. “We have some agreements on the labor market in the Nordics, and you have to comply with them if you want to do business here.”
The Finnish Transport Workers’ Union will meet this week to decide whether to join the solidarity action. The Norwegian United Federation of Trade Unions says it is also monitoring the situation.
If the Nordic transport unions join together, Tesla will be left with only one other option to get its vehicles to Swedish customers: trucking them straight from Germany. That would be an expensive solution, since each truck can only carry a limited number of vehicles, and the drive takes five hours.
That would make it much more difficult for the automaker to get vehicles to its fifth-largest market in Europe, and is an impressive level of solidarity considering this all started as a contract dispute between Tesla and just 130 mechanics.
The fight kicked off when IF Metall, which represents technicians at Tesla’s service centers, called a strike following years of failed attempts to get it to sign a collective agreement. The automaker is vehemently opposed to unions. However, in Sweden, roughly 90 percent of workers are represented by one. That gave the relatively small dispute nationwide — and now region-wide — stakes.
“Solidarity is the cornerstone of the trade union movement and extends across national borders,” Villadsen said. “The Swedish workers are currently fighting an incredibly important battle.”
