Tesla may have picked an unwinnable fight with Sweden’s powerful unions — The first ever strikes and a solidarity blockade against the US carmaker could force it to rethink its entire anti-union model::The first ever strikes and a solidarity blockade against the US carmaker could force it to rethink its entire anti-union model, says journalist Martin Gelin
Scandinavia is pretty hooked on EVs. If Norway and Denmark pick up on this, it will not only harm Tesla but give the competition a really strong advantage to establish a competition that already is threatening Tesla’s market shares
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Yeah… The absolutely completely pro-union Chinese EV car makers…
It’s possible competition will just recognize their advantage and pay workers more to get that step ahead.
Polestar? ID3-5? There are options.
Polestar is Chinese.
Sort of. The parent company is Chinese, but you don’t see the Swedish unions having massive strikes with Volvo or Polestar workers and they are headquartered there.
Maybe the reason why the Swedish unions aren’t having massive strikes with Polestar workers might be slightly related to the fact that the are no Swedish workers in Polestar?
It is headquartered in Torslanda outside Gothenburg, Sweden. Its vehicles are produced in China, home to Volvo’s corporate parent Geely.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polestar
It is true that there’s no Polestar manufacturing in Sweden and Tesla’s dispute seems to centre on those workers in Sweden. However there are still a couple of thousand Polestar employees in Sweden, whereas the Tesla action is against only ~120.
It is not just factory workers that are striking and getting involved. Every field in Sweden is unionised and it is not even just Tesla employees taking action against the company. As the link above states, dockworkers who are not affiliated with Tesla are refusing to unload their cars.
I’m pretty sure they are less than “thousands”. Wild guess… Maybe around 788?
Polestar has white collar staff here. Finance, marketing, design etc.
Yeah, seems to be all white collar. I was going off another source I saw saying around 1900, but yours is suspiciously specific!
Anyway its definitely more than the 120 or so blue collar Tesla workers that started this whole thing.
But Polestar has signed collective agreements in Sweden.
Signing a collective agreement doesn’t in any way change the fact that Polestar is a Chinese company that manufactures their product in China and that China is not pro union.
So does Volvo and they haven’t done much against unions. Chinese companies seem to adapt a bit easier to wherever they do business while American companies seem hellbent waging war against themselves like tesla do now.