The dockworkers are boycotting the ports to protest the unloading of Teslas
The Swedish Building Maintenance Workers’ Union’s boycott of the U.S. electric vehicle maker EV maker, Tesla, and the Metall Workers Trade Union
The Swedish Building Maintenance Workers’ Union will join the blockade on Friday at 12pm local time because of their association with the Metall Workers Trade Union. Four showrooms and service centers will be affected—three around Stockholm and one in the city of Umeå. “Their workshops and showrooms will not be cleaned.”
Goran Larsson, a cargo ship inspector, said he’s informing the crew on each arriving vessel of the labor action and assessing whether any Teslas are on board.
Swedish dockworkers, electricians, cleaners and others are all joining in a boycott of the U.S. company.
Tommy Wreeth, chairman of the transport workers’ union, said the Swedish labor system is based on collective bargaining agreements, which Tesla, led by the staunchly anti-union Elon Musk, is reluctant to embrace.
“This is the way we regulate working conditions in Sweden and has been for a long, long time,” said IF Metall spokesperson Jesper Pettersson. “It has been very beneficial for both parties – both for employers and for employees.”
They see the American EV maker’s efforts to circumvent collective bargaining as an affront to the entire Swedish labor system, where trade unions are part of the fabric of the economy.
Wreeth said it was important for the model to be protected, not just for the employees of the company.
Tesla did not respond to NPR’s requests for comment. A representative from the company told Sweden’sTT News Agency that it wasn’t going to enter a collective agreement.
“If the Tesla workers in Sweden would manage to sign the first collective agreement ever with Tesla, I think that could have a symbolic importance in other markets,” Bender said.
But German Bender, a labor market analyst at Stockholm think tank Arena Idé, said it’s unlikely Tesla will leave Sweden. And he doubts the Swedish unions will give up anytime soon – their fight, he said, is “too symbolically important” to abandon.
Anders Gustafsson, a former dockworker who now works for the Swedish transport workers’ union, said his union has received messages of support from unions in other countries, including in the U.S. and Canada.
