Every day, port workers in Malmo, Sweden’s third largest city, unload shipping containers, oil, chemicals and building materials destined for places across the country. But there’s one thing they won’t touch: Tesla cars.
For more than two months, dockworkers at Swedish ports have refused to load or unload the electric cars made by billionaire Elon Musk. They’re part of a growing movement of workers across Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark who are protesting in support of striking Swedish Tesla technicians and their demand for a collective agreement on the terms of their employment.
Since October, when a subset of Tesla’s 130 technicians in Sweden first went on strike, tens of thousands of workers in Northern Europe have joined the largest coordinated labor action against Tesla since its founding in 2003. Norwegian and Finnish ports have likewise closed to Tesla shipments. Danish truck drivers won’t transport Teslas through their country. Postal workers have refused to deliver license plates to new Tesla drivers in Swedenn , cleaners won’t work in the company’s Swedish offices and electricians won’t service its chargingpoints. Waste collectors added their support, refusing to pick up from Tesla’s repair shops across the country.
The solidarity blockades have the potential to disrupt Tesla sales in Northern Europe — a relatively small market compared with the United States and China, but a wealthy and environmentally conscious one, with some of the most electric vehicles per capita in the world. Even more, though, the labor actions are being watched as a test case for global ef- forts to crack Musk’s strict no-unions policy. Neither Tesla nor Musk responded to requests for comment from the Washington Post.
Today, about 65 percent of Swedish workers are part of unions, one of the highest rates in the world, and nearly 90 percent are covered by a collective agreement, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
“If you come to Sweden, you have to abide by these rules,” said Anders Linde, a Swedish postal worker and union activist in Malmö, who is participating in the effort to block Tesla’s mail. “We have fought for these rules for generations, so we’re not going to give them up easily.”
By Gerrit De Vynck, Washington Post