Date: 2025-08-20 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00026175
SWEDEN
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
My Economist: Sweden’s polite war with Elon Musk ... Unions are cheerfully preparing to fight Tesla for 538 years
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
My Economist: Sweden’s polite war with Elon Musk ... Unions are cheerfully preparing to fight Tesla for 538 years
Original article: https://www.economist.com/1843/2024/01/18/swedens-polite-war-with-elon-musk
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
Peter Burgess
Unions are cheerfully preparing to fight Tesla for 538 years
Written by Miles Ellingham
Jan 18th 2024
The Swedes don’t often go on strike. “It’s about 40 years since we’ve had one of this magnitude,” explained Stefan Leiding, a co-ordinator for if Metall, the country’s main industrial union, as we drove to a Tesla service centre on the edge of Stockholm. The car crawled on frozen roads past warehouses and dealerships framed by white, skeletal trees. Leiding, who used to sing in a heavy-metal band, gripped the steering wheel, tattoos protruding from beneath his sleeves.
It was well below freezing, and the cold bit through both my pairs of socks. As Stefan’s Skoda pulled up at the picket line, he told me that he expected people to be standing out there for a long time. “Why is that?” I asked. “Because…it’s Elon Musk,” he replied.
When the Tesla chief began operating in Sweden in 2013, it probably didn’t seem like the first step on the road to an international public-relations crisis. Tesla’s pioneering use of electric power is appealing to the environmentally conscious Swedes, who love the brand (the Model y was Sweden’s bestselling car last year).
Tesla doesn’t manufacture vehicles in Sweden, but it employs about 300 people to service them. The country is hardly a bastion of left-wing militancy, but its unions are very powerful; employers usually set pay and conditions for their staff by negotiating directly with them. Once established, a collective agreement applies to everyone in the section of the workforce represented by the union who negotiated it, even if they’re not members. Such agreements cover roughly 90% of Swedish workers.
As the scale of Tesla’s Swedish operations increased, pressure grew for the company to do things the Swedish way. Tesla refused several attempts by if Metall to start negotiations on a collective agreement (the company says it provides fair pay and working conditions). By October 27th last year, the union had the support of enough mechanics to force the issue with a strike.
On the face of it, a few striking mechanics (if Metall won’t give an exact number, but say it’s more than 50) don’t constitute much of an opponent for the world’s most valuable car company. But for many Swedes, the mechanics’ stand is about more than conditions at Tesla workshops: it’s a test of whether the country can defend its collective bargaining model against foreign companies that don’t believe in it. if Metall threw its considerable power and resources behind the Tesla mechanics, and the strike not only held but spread to different sectors of the economy, and to other Nordic countries.
Sjöström liked his job: it paid better than his previous one. But, as time went on, he started to find the management of the workshop troublingly un-Swedish The stakes are high for Musk, too. He is opposed to unions (he recently said that he disagreed with the very idea of them) and runs the only big American car manufacturer that has kept its domestic workforce union-free. Tesla workers in other European countries, some of whom are unionised, are watching the Swedish dispute closely and may be inspired to take action themselves.
The drama of the situation was not readily apparent on the picket line north of Stockholm, which was small and rather quiet. There were only three people there: Leiding, who sustained himself by ceaselessly popping tobacco pouches, and two other men, who held a banner that declared: “We demand a collective agreement!”
Polling suggests that most Swedish people back the strike, and I heard passing cars honk their support. (The major exception may be the Tesla owners who find it harder to get vehicles repaired – Leiding told me they sometimes stopped to argue with people on the picket line.) At one point a young man from the union that represents hospitality workers turned up to stand in solidarity with the mechanics. “For me it’s about the principle,” he said.
if Metall is not exactly rallying people to the streets, but that’s because it doesn’t really need to. The union has at least 300,000 paying members. Leiding said the union had run calculations on how long it could afford to maintain its stance by paying the salaries of the striking Tesla mechanics and compensating those participating in “sympathy actions” (people who don’t work for Tesla but strike anyway to express support for Tesla workers). He scratched his shaven head, trying to recall the number, then levelled his gaze: “538 years.”
Sweden’s industrial disputes haven’t always been conducted so calmly. The government has historically done little to regulate wages, leaving employers and workers to scrap it out among themselves. In the early 20th century the country was roiled by an extraordinary series of strikes and lockouts. In 1938 a landmark agreement between unions and employers provided a stable framework for the two sides to negotiate with each other. Pay and conditions for most workers have been set through this framework ever since.
The so-called “Swedish model” of industrial relations is seen as being good for most workers (though the high wages agreed through collective bargaining make it harder for Sweden’s 250,000 refugees to find entry-level jobs).
Employers have grown used to the system, and foreign firms have generally accepted it. ibm, McDonald’s and Microsoft have all entered into union-backed collective agreements for their Swedish workforce. But peril awaits companies that won’t play the game. Swedish law gives unions significant latitude to bring them in line.
Multiple unions from other industries can gang up on a single firm. Their members can boycott it, refusing to deliver goods to it or fix its plumbing. If such sympathy actions harm the union members’ own employers, their bosses cannot sack them, as they probably would in Texas, where Tesla is based. The ability to cause this kind of disruption is so potent that Swedish unions rarely have to use it.
When Olof Sjöström started working for Tesla as a mechanic three years ago, he thought it was “a cool company”, part of the green revolution. He liked his job, which paid better than his previous one. But, as time went on, he started to find the management of the workshop troublingly un-Swedish.
Employees were marked for their performances on a scale of one to five. According to Sjöström, if mechanics took longer than the expected time to complete tasks, they were automatically relegated to level two. If they slipped to one, they risked being fired. Sjöström felt that this inflexible system pushed people to cut corners, and also stopped them from raising questions.
This was Sjöström’s first job that wasn’t covered by a collective agreement, and he started to think that having one would make it easier to address his concerns. By the end of his first year, union members were holding secret meetings where they discussed using strike tactics to force Tesla to enter into a collective agreement.
Tesla announced one lunchtime that all employees were to watch an hour-long corporate video. The presentation extolled the company’s virtues, and explained that unions couldn’t support workers as well as Tesla itself could
A few days before the action began, Tesla’s managers made a last-ditch effort to win over the workers. One lunchtime they announced that all employees had to watch an hour-long corporate video. The presentation extolled the company’s virtues, and explained that unions couldn’t support workers as well as Tesla itself could. But the mechanics were unpersuaded.
For a man at the centre of one of the most high-profile industrial disputes in modern Scandinavian history, Sjöström was remarkably laid-back. He spoke warmly about many of his managers (though he remains wary of their ultimate boss, Elon Musk). “I’m as calm as can be,” he said. “I don’t feel any stress.”
It would be wrong to say that the Tesla dispute has set Sweden ablaze. Chatting to people about it in the street, you’re likely to get either a shrug or a very mild expression of sympathy with the workers. Passions ran a bit higher in a heavy-metal bar I visited one night. Two industrial workers drunkenly called Tesla’s approach “dogshit”. One of them reached across the table and grabbed me violently by the nose to reinforce his point. “Musk doesn’t understand Sweden!”
Tesla certainly made moves that were likely to antagonise Swedes. One was the decision to bring in strikebreakers, something that is rarely done in Sweden. Other Swedish unions were quick to mobilise against the American firm. Electricians refused jobs involving Tesla vehicles, postal workers stopped delivering Tesla licence plates to the mechanics (prompting Musk to take to his social-media platform, X, and declare their actions “insane”). Dock workers will no longer unload Tesla vehicles that arrive by port and transport workers have stopped collecting waste from Tesla’s workshops.
Tesla said it would pick up its own licence plates, but the ministry of transport refused to let it do so, and did not relent until Tesla sued. The situation kept on escalating. Soon workers in Denmark, Finland and Norway were refusing to handle Tesla products bound for Sweden.
Few expect the unions to budge, and Tesla, whose sales in Sweden don’t seem to be drastically affected by the action so far, doesn’t look likely to either. This means there are essentially three ways this could end. Tesla could back down and give IF Metall its collective agreement. It could set up some kind of subcontractor to run Swedish affairs and let that company deal with the union – Amazon has a similar arrangement. Or it could leave Sweden completely.
Some think IF Metall has gone too far. Lise-Lotte Argulander, a labour-law expert at Sweden’s main business lobby group, told me that forcing Tesla into an agreement it didn’t want risked harming the reputation of Swedish unions. “Which company would have trust in a union when it makes these kinds of threats to businesses?”
I ventured to Tesla’s repair workshop in northern Stockholm in search of their side of the story. I produced my press card, but the man behind the desk wasn’t impressed. He told me he’d had a lot of journalists asking questions and that he didn’t trust them. Then he muttered something about “false news” and ordered me to leave. The interaction ended with him telling me, “I don’t like you, bro!” I felt like I was being booted out of an empty nightclub.
In the end I emailed a press officer at Tesla’s Swedish branch. He said that, like many companies, Tesla had chosen not to enter into a collective agreement because their employees were “rewarded with fair terms and working conditions” and that more than 90% of them had chosen to stay in their posts. He added that the company had prevailed over many challenges in its 20-year history because of its “unique approach to problem-solving”.
One drinker reached across the table and grabbed me violently by the nose to reinforce his point. “Musk doesn’t understand Sweden!” Marie Nilsson, IF Metall’s chairperson, became a little exasperated when this figure was raised. “Half the staff are white-collar workers. They are not our members,” she said when I met her. “If that part doesn’t want a collective agreement, that’s not our business.”
Nilsson, who has a reasonable turn of phrase and a cheerful manner (she bounced into the room in green Doc Martens), is a far cry from the archetype of a lectern-thumping union leader. She was keen to emphasise the ubiquity of collective-bargaining agreements in Sweden. “We do this for 200 companies a year.”
When I asked her what she thought of Musk, Nilsson was diplomatic. Tesla, she said, was a “typical” American company. “They are suspicious of trade unions; they think we want to take over the company and create conflict among the workers. We are actually the opposite. We are interested in good jobs in Sweden so our members have safe work and get a good salary. So we have the same interest.”
Not all interests converge. The industrial action has almost certainly hurt some small businesses, such as Tesla taxi drivers who find it harder to fix their vehicles. When I pushed Nilsson on whether the industrial action was proportionate, I saw a glimpse of steel. “We are in a conflict.” she said. “If you go into a war and think ‘no one is going to be hurt here’, then you are quite naive.” ■
Miles Ellingham is a freelance journalist. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, Rolling Stone and the Independent