Realtid är en oberoende och kostnadsfri nyhetskanal för dig som vill fördjupa dig inom finans- och näringslivsnyheter. Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker The expected tariff cost is significantly lower than the $4 billion to $5 billion crosstown rival General Motors estimates, which Ford attributes to its higher mix of U.S.-built vehicles. Reporting by Anna Ringstrom and Marie Mannes in Stockholm; Anne Kauranen in Helsinki; additional reporting by Johan Ahlander and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Nick Zieminski Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab , opens new tab Browse an unrivalled portfolio of real-time and historical market data and insights from worldwide sources and experts. , opens new tabScreen for heightened risk individual and entities globally to help uncover hidden risks in business relationships and human networks. © 2025 Reuters. All rights reserved Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information Union members during a labor protest outside the Tesla service center in Segeltorp The court ruling against Elon Musk’s company means it cannot receive license plates intended for new EVs making it difficult for customers in its fifth biggest European market to legally drive Teslas on the roads Postal workers in Sweden are refusing to handle any Tesla-related mail in sympathy with a walkout by repair-shop mechanics that began Oct Tesla's ongoing dispute with striking workers in Sweden is set to get bigger as a Norwegian union threatened to block shipments In a statement IF Metall said it wanted "our members at Tesla to have the same decent and safe working conditions as the members at other similar companies in Sweden." Swedish dockworkers who aren't employed by Tesla then said they would block all deliveries of the company's vehicles from being unloaded Nine unions in Sweden are backing IF Metall, including postal workers who are refuse to ship license plates — leaving Tesla unable to complete deliveries On Tuesday, a labor union in Denmark backed IF Metall in its action against Tesla 3F said it would refuse to unload or transport Tesla vehicles made for Swedish customers The country's largest private-sector labor union said Wednesday it would block Tesla shipments meant for the Swedish market if the dispute hasn't been resolved by December 20 "The right to demand a collective agreement is an obvious part of our working life and we can't accept that Tesla places itself on the outside," said the union's leader Tesla did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment You don't have permission to access the page you requested What is this page?The website you are visiting is protected.For security reasons this page cannot be displayed Billionaire is against the labour movement and workers believe their country’s traditions are under threat “I just don’t like anything which creates a lords and peasants kind of thing.” His appearance at the New York Times event may be best remembered for Musk’s diatribe against X’s missing advertisers; but the anti-union outburst shed light on a clash taking place thousands of miles away in Sweden Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, employs only about 120 workers in Sweden, servicing vehicles for Swedish drivers across several different sites. Read moreYet this small group of engineers is at the centre of a wave of industrial action in which Swedish trade unions believe the very existence of the country’s long-established model of harmonious labour relations is under threat So the union representing the Tesla employees has been backed by a string of boycotts and embargos called in other industries – and encompassing far more workers than those at the centre of the dispute Dock workers are refusing to unload Tesla cars at Swedish ports; postal workers won’t deliver their number plates; electricians won’t service Tesla charging points Tesla is seeking to take legal action against some of these solidarity strikes while flatly refusing to budge on the unions’ central demand – that the company signs up to a collective agreement often drawn up between employers’ associations and unions to cover entire sectors are key to the way Sweden’s labour market has been governed for almost a century Elon Musk’s Tesla employs about 120 workers in Sweden Photograph: Toru Hanai/ReutersUnlike many other European countries and little statutory labour market regulation the system is essentially voluntary – with the baseline for pay and other conditions The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimated in 2018 that almost 90% of Sweden’s workforce was covered by one of these deals The result is a remarkably peaceful industrial landscape even by Nordic standards: Sweden lost an average of 8,100 working days a year to industrial action between 2010 and 2021 against more than 120,000 in Norway and Finland Tesla has flatly refused to sign a collective agreement to cover its Swedish workers members at IF Metall opted to use the only weapon at their disposal “We have tried to negotiate with Tesla for the better part of five years and we have tried to explain to them the benefits with the collective agreement But if they still refuse then we have the option to take action: and finally we ran out of patience,” said Jesper Pettersson the head of investigations at the Arena Idé thinktank and an expert on the Swedish labour market said he could understand the unions’ concerns “It’s a very small conflict – maybe 120 or 130 employees with potentially norm-setting consequences,” he said the next day the Swedish model ceases to exist; but it is important in principle because if the unions were to allow Tesla to get away with this other employers would start asking themselves why do I have to sign a collective agreement?” He added: “It’s hard to say how fast that would happen but we’ve seen that in Germany collective bargaining coverage has come down substantially in the past 10 So it is a plausible outcome of this event.” the general secretary of the Prospect union which represents workers at Spotify in the UK agrees: “These things rapidly become slippery slopes The Swedish trade unions cannot allow an offshore giant to arrive and start to nibble away at the social model – because what’s next?” but only after the threat of strike action as economies transition from fossil fuels to new energy sources there is a live question about what that means for jobs and workers “There is an industrial relations and community aspect to every industry’s transition as we try to meet our decarbonisation targets,” Clancy said The Swedish buy now pay later lender Klarna recently signed up to a collective agreement the mighty United Auto Workers union has just won pay increases worth as much as 25% over the next five years for its members But it is yet to win recognition at many of the plants making the next generation of vehicles – including where collective bargaining is traditionally widely used the IG Metall union is actively seeking to organise in Tesla’s gigafactory near Berlin which employs as many as 11,000 workers – and watching the Swedish standoff closely said: “Tesla is a major player in the green transition I think it’s obvious that they should compete on the same terms as all other companies in Sweden and respect the basic principles of the Swedish labour market.” which plays a similar role to Acas in the UK has attempted to act as a go-between but its senior labour adviser Per Ewaldsson acknowledges that it is a difficult one to resolve That is the way that politicians in Sweden relate to labour conflicts: they don’t interfere with themArena Idé’s German Bender“In this case the dispute is more about principles than matters of substance – because the trade union demands a collective agreement with this company it’s rather complicated to find a compromise,” he said where the widespread strikes of the past 12 months have become a live political question Bender says Swedish politicians tend to stay out of labour disputes Support for our labour market model is very strong and politicians don’t even want to go near it,” he said “That is the way that politicians in Sweden relate to labour conflicts: they don’t interfere with them.” A month into its strike, IF Metall is firmly dug in for the long haul. Striking workers are being fully compensated for lost pay. With a strike fund worth an estimated £1bn, the union says it can cover the cost of industrial action for decades if need be. “We have always anticipated that it might take a long time,” Pettersson said. One solution would be for Tesla to subcontract the work done by Swedish staff to another company with a collective agreement. Amazon has taken this approach with its Swedish warehouses. But that would still leave the wider issue of Tesla’s approach to unions – and the conditions for workers in the hi-tech green economy – unresolved. Meanwhile, as Bender points out, “considering that all this concerns Elon Musk, we can’t really rule anything out”. Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; editing by Terje Solsvik and Jason Neely