Well he may simply fire all locals and bring in all-foreign staff. What will stop him? Salaries Tesla pay are sufficient for Blue Card or similar permit.
They would quickly end up in violation of "Lagen om anställningsskydd". All terminations must adhere to the minimum notice, be objectively justified, and can be appealed in case of unfair dismissal. The employer may be forced to pay up to 36 months of full severance pay.
Firings for reasons not related to individual misbehavior must also be Last-In, First-Out, disallowing replacing employees with those hired after them.
And the government is making it even harder for immigrants who work there to stay:
> Even though the salary is in line with the collective agreement, she earns too little when the regulations for being allowed to stay in Sweden are tightened next month.
Well, if that is even legal in Sweden (I'm not sure) - the striking workers could _physically_ stop this. And then there would be the question of the statutory limitations on Swedish state involvement in labor disputes.
(And the union could also get in touch with such hires and explaining the situation to them, which is also likely to be somewhat effective in deterring this sort of scabbing.)
In .no the visa application process involves a form where the prospective employer states that we tried and failed to find employees in the country. I've written justification prose for that form. I would be astonished if there isn't a similar form in Sweden.
Last time I dealt with this in Sweden there was a similar form. There was also a form that should certify that the offered salary is not below the "industry level" - which in many industries is set by unions. Also a form that the employee candidate should submit to Migrationsverket (this concerned only non-EU candidates) contained data about life and health insurance companies/contracts that cover expenses in case of injuries and such, so that Migrationsverket could (and sometimes did) check if the named companies exist.
There are a couple of different ways the union might "fight" (not sure of the english term). They can block things physically, like standing around the shop to prevent people in/out. They can also expand the strike outside Teslas shops, for example to transportation companies supplying parts to Tesla etc.
Given how core this question is to the Swedish Unions and Sweden in general, I expect it would be very easy to get support for many wide-reaching actions both from other unions and from the public. (For example, there's no minimum salary in Sweden, instead the companies & unions are supposed to handle it)
Blue Card is 1.5x gross average local salary. Rather annoyingly, googling this gives me a headline answer of "SEK 57,450 per month" that doesn't actually correspond to any of the actual results following this (many of which aren't for this year anyway).
Also odd (given that it's in the news), I can't get search results telling me what Tesla is currently paying, nor what higher level of pay the union is asking for.
Downloading TM Sweden AB's fiscal report for 2022 (årsredovisning), under "Not 7" there is costs for staff and average number of staff for 2021 and 2022:
Both seem to come out to an average of around 38 KSEK/month (~€3250). I'd suspect the mechanics to have the lowest salary in the organization, so probably somewhat lower than that. But that's pure speculation on my behalf.
It could be a matter of coincidence due to hiring of more staff in more junior positions or so, but the lack of salary increases from year to year could be more interesting to the union (the unions typically have a percentage "mark" salary bump in the collective agreement that you're guaranteed every year). That is also speculative.
Right-wing anti-immigration / self-protection politics, just like in the US. The weird conundrum between being economically liberal ("bring in cheap foreign workers") while politically conservative ("own people first").
In a post-Trump era it almost makes perfect sense, but the world doesn’t work according to the internal talk inside a MBA’s head ( yet ). In other words, just go to the location and make your theory work, I’ll wait..
Firings for reasons not related to individual misbehavior must also be Last-In, First-Out, disallowing replacing employees with those hired after them.