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STRIKES

Swedish postal workers join mechanics and dockers in strike against Tesla

Swedish postal workers are halting deliveries to Tesla repair shops as part of a strike over the US company's refusal to sign a collective bargaining agreement.

Published: 20 November 2023 14:14 CET
Swedish postal workers join mechanics and dockers in strike against Tesla
Several other unions have also announced solidarity action unless Tesla signs a collective bargaining agreement. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

Some 130 mechanics at 10 Tesla repair shops in seven cities across Sweden first walked off the job on October 27th, according to trade union IF Metall.

The strike has since been expanded to include other repair shops that service Tesla among other car brands, and dock workers have stopped unloading Tesla cars at all Swedish ports.

On Monday, the Swedish Union for Service and Communications Employees (Seko), said it had started blocking deliveries and pickups of mail and packages via postal companies PostNord and CityMail at all Tesla workplaces in Sweden.

This meant spare parts and components would not be delivered to Tesla sites, according to the union.

“By refusing to play by the rules here in Sweden Tesla is trying to gain a competitive advantage by giving workers worse wages and conditions than they would have had with a collective agreement,” Seko president Gabriella Lavecchia said in a statement.

Negotiated sector-by-sector, collective agreements are the basis of the Swedish labour market model, covering almost 90 percent of all Swedish employees and guaranteeing standard wages and working conditions.

In late October, IF Metall – which has some 300,000 members – told AFP that “many” of Tesla’s workers in Sweden are members of IF Metall, but would not disclose an exact number.

According to IF Metall, Tesla had told them it would not sign a collective bargaining agreement because they “don’t do that anywhere in the world.”

In addition to IF Metall, nine other unions have announced “sympathy measures”, including the Swedish Building Workers’ Union announcing last week it would stop servicing and repairs on Tesla facilities as of November 28th.

Despite this, several Swedish media have reported that the impact of the strike has so far been limited, and IF Metall has accused the electric carmaker of systematically using strike breakers to circumvent the strike.

Tesla has also found other ways to deliver new cars to Sweden, notably by road.

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WORK PERMITS

Business leaders: Work permit threshold ‘has no place in Swedish labour model’

Sweden's main business group has attacked a proposal to exempt some jobs from a new minimum salary for work permits, saying it is "unacceptable" political interference in the labour model and risks seriously affecting national competitiveness.

Published: 25 April 2024 17:37 CEST
Updated: 26 April 2024 06:11 CEST
Business leaders: Work permit threshold 'has no place in Swedish labour model'

The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise said in its response to the government’s consultation, submitted on Thursday afternoon, that it not only opposed the proposal to raise the minimum salary for a work permit to Sweden’s median salary (currently 34,200 kronor a month), but also opposed plans to exempt some professions from the higher threshold. 

“To place barriers in the way of talent recruitment by bringing in a highly political salary threshold in combination with labour market testing is going to worsen the conditions for Swedish enterprise in both the short and the long term, and risks leading to increased fraud and abuse,” the employer’s group said.   

The group, which represents businesses across most of Sweden’s industries, has been critical of the plans to further raise the salary threshold for work permits from the start, with the organisation’s deputy director general, Karin Johansson, telling The Local this week that more than half of those affected by the higher threshold would be skilled graduate recruits Swedish businesses sorely need.   

But the fact that it has not only rejected the higher salary threshold, but also the proposed system of exemptions, will nonetheless come as a blow to Sweden’s government, and particular the Moderate Party led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, which has long claimed to be the party of business. 

The confederation complained that the model proposed in the conclusions of the government inquiry published in February would give the government and political parties a powerful new role in setting salary conditions, undermining the country’s treasured system of collective bargaining. 

The proposal for the higher salary threshold, was, the confederation argued, “wrong in principle” and did “not belong in the Swedish labour market”. 

“That the state should decide on the minimum salary for certain foreign employees is an unacceptable interference in the Swedish collective bargaining model, where the parties [unions and employers] weigh up various needs and interested in negotiations,” it wrote. 

In addition, the confederation argued that the proposed system where the Sweden Public Employment Service and the Migration Agency draw up a list of exempted jobs, which would then be vetted by the government, signified the return of the old system of labour market testing which was abolished in 2008.

“The government agency-based labour market testing was scrapped because of it ineffectiveness, and because it was unreasonable that government agencies were given influence over company recruitment,” the confederation wrote. 

“The system meant long handling times, arbitrariness, uncertainty for employers and employees, as well as an indirect union veto,” it added. “Nothing suggests it will work better this time.” 

For a start, it said, the Public Employment Service’s list of professions was inexact and outdated, with only 179 professions listed, compared to 430 monitored by Statistics Sweden. This was particularly the case for new skilled roles within industries like battery manufacturing. 

“New professions or smaller professions are not caught up by the classification system, which among other things is going to make it harder to recruit in sectors which are important for the green industrial transition,” the confederation warned. 

Rather than implement the proposals outlined in the inquiry’s conclusions, it concluded, the government should instead begin work on a new national strategy for international recruitment. 

“Sweden instead needs a national strategy aimed at creating better conditions for Swedish businesses to be able to attract, recruit and retain international competence.”

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