SHARE
COPY LINK

STRIKES

Swedish Tesla strike expands to include charging stations

An almost four-month long strike in Sweden against carmaker Tesla over its refusal to sign a collective wage agreement will be extended to include a blockade on charging stations, a union said.

Swedish Tesla strike expands to include charging stations
File photo of Tesla charging stations in Sweden. Photo: Jonas Dagson/TT

Swedish union Seko said it would halt maintenance on, and the installation of, Tesla charging stations.

The Swedish strike was launched by the metal workers’ union IF Metall on October 27th when mechanics at 10 Tesla repair shops in seven cities walked off the job.

It has since grown into a larger conflict between Tesla and almost a dozen unions seeking to protect Sweden’s labour model, including postal workers, dock workers and even spreading to neighbouring Nordic countries.

The Swedish Union for Service and Communications Employees (Seko) said its measures included “the blocking of work on planning, preparation, new connections, network expansion, service, maintenance and repairs for all Tesla charging stations in Sweden.”

It said the industrial action would come into force on March 4th.

Negotiated sector by sector, collective agreements with unions are the basis of the Nordic labour market model, covering almost 90 percent of all employees in Sweden and 80 percent in Denmark, and guaranteeing wages and working conditions.

Despite the fact that many of Tesla’s employees in Sweden are union members, they cannot benefit from the collective bargaining agreements unless Tesla signs on to them.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has long rejected calls to allow the company’s 127,000 employees worldwide to unionise.

Earlier this week, newspaper DN reported that IF Metall was struggling to get mechanics to participate in the strike and cited statistics from the Swedish National Mediation Office which showed that only about a third of the some 130 Tesla mechanics had actually walked off the job.

IF Metall announced last week it would allow a temporary exemption to allow some repairs on older Tesla cars.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

HEALTH

Swedish convenience stores to stub out sale of cigarettes

Sweden's two most well-known convenience store chains, Pressbyrån and 7-Eleven, plan to completely remove cigarettes from their shelves in the long run.

Swedish convenience stores to stub out sale of cigarettes

Reitan Convenience, the company that owns the chains, is set to phase out their sale of cigarettes and ultimately stop selling them, it said in a press statement.

“The risks of smoking tobacco are well known, both when it comes to health risks but also the impact on the environment and labour conditions in the production chain. We’re also seeing that some countries are introducing various forms of bans on smoking, for example progressive age bans,” Reitan’s CEO for the Swedish market, Anna Wallenberg, told Swedish news agency TT.

The UK and New Zealand have both spoken of introducing laws to ban young people from buying tobacco.

Just over half of the chains’ tobacco sales today comes from cigarettes, and the rest is made up of other nicotine and smoke-free products as well as snus, Sweden’s moist tobacco pouches which may be part of the reason why the use of cigarettes is dropping in Sweden.

READ ALSO:

Reitan Convenience also said it aims to phase out the sale of products containing palm oil, a controversial oil criticised by environmental and human rights groups for causing deforestation and human rights violations in the tropics where the palms are grown.

SHOW COMMENTS