Musk thinks Swedish Tesla strikes are ‘insane’

At the end of October, around 130 employees from ten Tesla workshops in Sweden stopped working because Tesla refused to sign a collective labor agreement with the mechanics. It doesn’t do that anywhere in the world at all. Port employees shortly later began blocking the loading and unloading of Tesla cars in Sweden out of sympathy for the mechanics. Meanwhile, Swedish postal employees also stopped delivering mail and packages to Tesla workshops in Sweden this week. According to the Swedish business newspaper Dagens Industri the postal workers’ strike could prevent new Teslas from hitting the road. This is because the license plates for new cars issued by the Swedish Transport Organization may only be delivered via the postal company Postnord.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk broke his silence about these developments on Thursday. In a message on It does appear that Tesla has already found a way to at least bypass the port blockade. New cars would now be brought into Sweden by road. Moreover, according to the IF Metall union, Tesla would ‘systematically deploy strikebreakers’ to undermine the strikes. According to that union, Tesla has now emphasized that it does not sign a collective labor agreement, because, as stated, ‘it does not do that anywhere in the world’.