Tesla Service workers have gone on strike across Sweden due to Tesla’s refusal to sign a collective bargaining agreement. In response, Swedish dockworkers have stated that they will refuse to unload Tesla vehicles in Swedish ports unless the conflict is resolved quickly.
Tesla does not have any manufacturing presence in Sweden, but it does have a significant sales presence.
Electric cars are incredibly popular in Sweden – not as much as in neighboring Norway, but pretty close, with about a 60% market share for plug-in cars in Sweden.
And, like in most other markets, the Tesla Model Y is the best-selling car there. (Tesla’s other models are far behind in sales.) Tesla has sold around 14,000 Model Ys in Sweden so far this year, about 6% of the total car market with just this one model.
So there are quite a few Teslas out and about, and those Teslas need someone to service them.
The problem is those service workers haven’t felt too appreciated by their employer. They say that working conditions are worse at Tesla than they are for other auto mechanics and want Tesla to sign a collective bargaining agreement to ensure that conditions are brought in line with the rest of the industry.
Collective bargaining agreements are incredibly common in Northern European countries. Union membership is high on its own – with about two-thirds of employees in Sweden belonging to a union. But many nonunion employees are still covered by collective bargaining agreements that are often negotiated industrywide. In terms of collective bargaining coverage, some 90% of workers across the Swedish economy find themselves protected by some sort of agreement. The country doesn’t even need a legally mandated minimum wage, since that is covered by collective bargaining agreements.
So, if anything, it’s a bit of a surprise that Tesla has gone this far without an agreement. Tesla famously opposes unionization, but as it has moved out of the American market (with its tiny ~10% union membership rate) and into international markets where collective bargaining is considered a matter of course, there were always bound to be conflicts.
One of those conflicts is happening now, with Swedish Tesla workers declaring a strike Friday, after posting notice last week of their intent to do so. Tesla did not come to the table in response to the notice, and thus workers have gone forward with the strike.
The strike includes around 130 workers in seven locations (Tesla operates 9 service centers in 7 cities in Sweden – we’re not sure, via translation, if the strike covers seven service centers or all seven cities). Not everyone who works at these locations is unionized, and because of European data privacy rules, neither the union nor the workers need to specify exactly which workers are part of the union.
It is being led by IF Metall, a major union covering hundreds of thousands of industrial workers across Sweden. The union says that it will remain on strike until a collective bargaining is in place and that it has plenty of funds to sustain the strike for months if need be.
It remains to be seen what the effects of the strike on Tesla’s operations will be. This will make servicing a car much harder in Sweden, but Tesla has committed to hiring strikebreakers (also known as “scabs”) so that operations can continue smoothly.
Scabs are a common feature of strikes in America, but they’re incredibly rare in Sweden. An IF Metall spokesperson said “that would be crossing all boundaries. That kind of thing happened in Sweden in the 1920s and 30s,” as reported by thelocal.se, an English-language Sweden news site.
There are other third-party auto shops that service Teslas and are not currently covered by the strike. But IF Metall says that it plans to expand the strike to 20 of these third party workshops starting November 3 if Tesla still does not come to the table. These shops would continue work as normal but stop working on Tesla cars specifically.
But that’s not the only way the strike might expand. This morning, the Swedish dockworkers union said that it would stop unloading Tesla cars from ships at four Swedish ports – Malmö, Södertälje, Gothenburg and Trelleborg – if the strike isn’t resolved. That action will start on November 7 if Tesla has still chosen not to come to the table with the union.
Electrek’s Take
We aren’t experts in the history of Swedish labor action, or Swedish labor law, but this seems like quite the misstep by Tesla. It sounds like few people think that Tesla will prevail here, and their refusal to come to the table smacks as either stubbornness, ignorance of Swedish culture, or simply a lack of focus (as some Tesla efforts are wont to fall victim to).
Strikes are generally rare in Sweden. The high levels of collective bargaining coverage and high levels of social welfare in the country, along with pay transparency and a strong social commitment to equality, mean that everyone across all industries is pretty much on the same page when it comes to worker treatment. And when collective bargaining coverage is so high, companies (minus a few of the less-internationally-aware American ones) generally recognize that workers are going to get their way if it comes to blows, so it’s best to just come to the table and negotiate in good faith to begin with.
While 130 workers may sound like a small amount across a whole country, this is not the first time a similar situation has happened in Sweden. In 1995, Toys ‘R’ Us entered Sweden and refused to sign a collective bargaining agreement, and about 80 retail workers decided to strike over it.
That strike spread to delivery workers, warehouses, banks, advertisers, even garbage collectors who all refused to do business with Toys ‘R’ Us, and word continued to spread to consumers and workers in Sweden and across Europe to avoid shopping there. While Toys ‘R’ Us had previously had a global policy not to sign collective bargaining agreements, they ended up relenting to this strike in Sweden. So it doesn’t sound like the right country to mess with in this respect.
As for a personal anecdote: I have some Swedish friends who came to visit me in America on vacation in their early 20s. One of them worked an entry-level job at a sporting goods store, and yet was able to afford a 6-week paid vacation to Hawaii, California and Florida, with no trouble or pushback from her job. They were still doing their best to not overspend on the trip, but getting 6 paid weeks off an entry level job to travel to expensive tourist destinations is the kind of thing that Americans just generally cannot even conceive of doing in this day and age, unless subsidized by their parents.
And yet, despite all the warnings we hear in America about how companies can’t possibly work with unions or they’ll go out of business, companies are still able to do business in Sweden, and the country still does well economically. After all, they’ve got enough money that ~6% of new car sales are Teslas, and that’s higher than the US average even.
So maybe high collective bargaining coverage, even for retail employees, isn’t all that bad of a thing.
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Global renewable developer and energy giant RWE has halted its US offshore wind operations “for the time being” because of the “political environment” the Trump administration has created.
RWE, Germany’s biggest electricity producer, said in March that it had dialed back its US offshore wind activities. But now, CEO Marcus Krebber said in a speech transcript, which he’ll deliver at the company’s Annual General Meeting in Essen on April 30, that its US offshore wind business is now closed (but it wasn’t all bad news):
In the US, where we have stopped our offshore activities for the time being, our business in onshore wind, solar energy, and battery storage has so far been developing very dynamically. At the start of this year, we reached an important milestone when our US generation capacity hit the 10 gigawatt mark. The construction of a further 4 gigawatts is secured.
He went on to say that renewables have created regional value and jobs, but that the company remains “cautious given the political developments.” RWE has introduced more stringent requirements for future US investments:
All necessary federal permits must be in place. Tax credits must be safe harbored and all relevant tariff risks mitigated. In addition, onshore wind and solar projects must have secured offtake at the time of the investment decision. Only if these conditions are met will further investments be possible, given the political environment.
About half of RWE’s installed renewable capacity is in the US, where it’s the third-largest renewable energy company through its subsidiary, RWE Clean Energy. RWE holds the rights to develop US offshore wind projects in New York, Louisiana, and California.
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RWE paid $1.1 billion for the New York lease area in 2022, where it’s meant to develop the 3 gigawatt (GW) Community Offshore Wind with the UK’s National Grid. Community Offshore Wind was projected to come online in the early 2030s and expected to power more than a million homes.
The developer paid $5.6 billion for the Louisiana lease in the Gulf of Mexico in 2023 as the lone bidder for development rights, and the Canopy Offshore Wind project off Northern California was not expected to be completed for another decade.
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WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump and his allies have raked in nearly $900,000 in trading fees over the past two days from the president’s $TRUMP cryptocurrency token, according to Chainalysis, a blockchain data company.
The surge came after a Wednesday announcement in which the top 220 holders of the token were promised dinner with the president.
“Have Dinner in Washington, D.C. With President Trump,” reads a message on the front page of the Trump coin’s website. The event, which is black tie optional and hosted at the president’s private club in the Washington area, is scheduled for May 22, with a reception for the top 25 holders. A “VIP White House Tour” will take place the following day, the site says. The website also hosts an active leaderboard displaying the usernames of top buyers.
The $TRUMP memecoin jumped more than 50% on the dinner news, boosting its total market value to $2.7 billion. It was met with fierce criticism from some of Trump’s political opponents who said the move was further evidence that the president was using crypto to enrich himself. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a prominent Trump critic, wrote on X that the sale was “the most brazenly corrupt thing a President has ever done. Not close.”
Roughly 80% of the $TRUMP token supply is controlled by the Trump Organization and affiliates, according to the project’s website. Since its launch in January, trading activity has generated about $324.5 million in trading fees for insiders, Chainalysis found. These fees are generated through the token’s built-in mechanism that routes a percentage of each trade to wallets controlled by the project — wallets that, according to the website, are linked to the coin’s creators.
Memecoins, often referred to as meme tokens, are a subset of digital assets that use blockchain technology and derive their value largely from internet culture, memes and social media hype rather than from an underlying utility or asset. The originators of memecoins can make fees when their coins are bought and sold.
They have grown in popularity in recent years as speculative assets, with some coins including dogecoin and fartcoin amassing total market values in excess of $1 billion.
Most of the $TRUMP supply remains locked under a three-year vesting plan, with coins gradually becoming available over time. Lockups like these are meant to protect investors by preventing insiders from cashing out all at once — a scheme commonly known in the crypto world as a “rug pull.” Vesting schedules aim to give retail buyers confidence that early holders won’t overwhelm the market and tank the token’s value.
Still, the dinner contest is being viewed by critics as an unusually explicit attempt to monetize presidential access.
As CNBC reported Friday, Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts are urging the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to investigate whether the promotion constitutes “pay to play” corruption.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The company behind the memecoin also did not respond to a request for comment.
Delaney Marsco, the director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit focused on campaign finance and government accountability, told NBC News the coin and dinner contest amounted to an unprecedented ethics breach — though it is unlikely to be illegal.
“Criminal conflicts of interest statutes don’t apply to the President,” she said. “That has allowed him to go against decades of of norms that every modern president since Carter has adhered to, which is to divest your financial interests, rid yourself of your businesses, and kind of go in to the presidency with a clean financial slate so that no one could accuse you of manipulating policy decisions or using your position in order to enrich yourself.”
“The fact that he is not barred by the law from having these financial interests like this meme coin allows him to engage in a lot of seemingly corrupt activity. It has the appearance of a pay to play, so the President is apparently selling access to himself,” Marsco added.
Molly White, an independent crypto researcher, told NBC News that the leaderboard only shows top $TRUMP holders — and then only by their chosen screen name, making it difficult to identify who is paying to potentially join the dinner.
Schiff and Warren have cited public reports showing that some $TRUMP investors have ties to foreign exchanges or received funds from crypto platforms banned in the U.S., including Binance.
White also noted that at least one top $TRUMP owner has an account on Binance, a cryptocurrency company that doesn’t allow American users.
Trump was elected with significant help from the cryptocurrency industry, which poured tens of millions of dollars into the 2024 election, outpacing corporate donations from traditional sectors like banking and oil. After opposing digital assets during his first term, Trump pivoted in 2024 to campaign as a champion of cryptocurrency, casting Democrats as hostile to innovation and as advocating for tighter regulation.
The $TRUMP token itself offers no product or service, according to the project’s website. It is part of a broader push by the Trump family into digital assets, despite the market’s volatility and regulatory risks.
In addition to the $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins, the family is backing World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance venture that has raised $550 million across two token sales since last October. Buyers are barred from reselling their tokens and receive no share of profits — but a Trump-affiliated entity is entitled to 75% of net revenue, including token sale proceeds.
Together, these projects have created new streams of revenue for Trump and his inner circle at a time when regulatory oversight of cryptocurrency has weakened sharply under his administration.
It’s that time of year again, time for events across the country to show off electric vehicles at Drive Electric Earth Month.
Drive Electric Earth Month is an offshoot of Drive Electric Week, a long-running annual tradition hosting meetups mostly in the US, but also occasionally in other countries. It started as Drive Electric Earth Day, but since not every event can happen on the same day, they went ahead and extended it to encompass “Earth Month” events that happen across the month of April. It’s all organized by Plug In America, the Sierra Club, the Electric Vehicle Association, EV Hybrid Noire, and Drive Electric USA.
Events consist of general Earth Day-style community celebrations, EV Ride & Drives where you can test drive several EVs in one place, and opportunities to talk to EV owners and ask them questions about what it’s like to live with an EV, away from the pressure of a dealership.
But the bulk of the events happened on the weekends surrounding Earth Day, April 22, so there were several last weekend and will be even more this upcoming weekend.
There are plenty of events in the big cities where you’d expect, but Plug In America wanted to highlight a few of the events in smaller places around the country. Here’s a sampling of upcoming events:
Big Island EV – Cruise and Picnic in Waimea, HI on April 26, 10am-1pm – EV drivers will congregate in various places around the Big Island (Kona, Waimea, Waikoloa and Hilo), then drive up Saddle Road to the Gil Kahele Recreation Area on Mauna Kea for a potluck and a chance to talk about the experience of owning EVs on the Big Island.
Santa Barbara Earth Day 2025 and Green Car Show in Santa Barbara, CA on April 26-27, 11am-8pm – This is part of Santa Barbara’s Earth Day celebration, which routinely attracts 30,000 participants and is one of the longest-running Earth Day celebrations on the planet. The Green Car Show includes ride & drives and an “Owners Corner” where owners can showcase their EVs and attendees can check them out and ask questions.
Earth Day’25 – EV’s role in a sustainable future in Queretaro City, Mexico on April 26, 9am-4pm – The sole Mexican event, this is a combined in-person/online seminar at the Querétaro Institute of Technology.
Norman Earth Day Festival in Norman, OK on April 27, 12-5pm – Another municipal Earth Day festival, with hands-on activities for kids to learn about the environment. A portion of the parking lot reserved for an EV car show for EV owners who pre-register to show off their vehicles.
Oregon Electric Vehicle Association Test Drive & Information Expo in Portland, OR on April 27, 10am-4pm – This one is at Daimler Truck’s North American HQ, and will have several EVs for test drives, owner displays (including DIY gas-to-EV conversions), and keynote presentations by EV experts. They’ll even have a 1914 Detroit Electric EV available for test rides!
And, we at Electrek want to give a shoutout to Rove’s EV Drive Days in Santa Ana 10am-3pm April 28 – ROVE is the company behind the “full-service” EV charging concept that we’ve talked about several times here on Electrek, and we like what they’re doing for EV charging. They’ve hosted a few community events, and this is their contribution to Earth Month.
Each event has a different assortment of activities (e.g. test drives won’t be available at every event, generally just the larger ones attended by local dealerships), so be sure to check the events page to see what the plan is for your local event.
These events have offered a great way to connect with owners and see the newest electric vehicle tech, and even get a chance to do test rides and drives in person. Attendees got to hear unfiltered information from actual owners about the benefits and trials of owning EVs, allowing for longer and more genuine (and often more knowledgeable) conversations than one might normally encounter at a dealership.
And if you’re an owner – you can show off your car and answer those questions for interested onlookers.
To view all the events and see what’s happening in your area, you can check out the list of events or the events map. You can also sign up to volunteer at your local events, and if you plan to show off your electric car, you can RSVP on each event page and list the vehicle that you plan to show (or see what other vehicles have already registered).
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