In Sweden, Tesla employees are on strike to denounce the American car manufacturer’s refusal to sign a collective agreement on wages. A social conflict of rare harshness in a country where the social model is based on branch agreements and negotiations between social partners. For a week, 130 workers in Tesla workshops spread across ten workshops have been on strike, and they have been joined since Saturday morning, November 4, by 470 mechanics who will no longer repair the electric cars of Elon Musk’s flagship in their garages.
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With our correspondent in Stockholm, Carlotta Morteo
If the strike extends to repairers approved by Tesla it is because the movement is having difficulty taking hold within the ten workshops of the American giant in Sweden. And it’s not just because of the wet and cold weather: many workers who work at Tesla are relatively young and therefore not very unionized, and for the oldest, threats of dismissal or reductions in income have reportedly been made. . Tesla even hired strikebreakers.
A week after the start of the movement, the factories are still running and the management has not even deigned to speak out.
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Towards a blockage in four ports
The strike is therefore taking place in 17 garages where Tesla cars will now be the only model not to be repaired by the 470 solidarity mechanics, members of the IF Metall union.
If the American luxury electric car giant still refuses to sign the sector agreements, then the transport workers’ union has said it is ready to block “ loading and unloading of Tesla cars at four Swedish ports from November 7 “.
Tesla is now the largest company to engage in a standoff against collective agreements in Sweden, but others are questioning the rules of the game, particularly in the tech sector. The Swedish giant Spotify, for example, also refuses to sign branch agreements.