There are laws and there are norms. In Sweden, both are equally important and you'll get left out if you break either. It's sad in a lot of cases, as it removes some individuality, but it's how the country been operating for a long time.

Expecting to run a company against the norms in a culture that so heavily leans on norms is bound to create conflict, which is what we're seeing here.

Laws upheld by the state are the worst good way to maintain order.

A much better way is to have the parties play nice with each other, build trust, and negotiate as equals. This allows for much better and more detailed agreements, for quicker reactions if market conditions changes, and for more flexibility within each economic sector. The fact that the Nordic countries operate in such a way no doubt contributes to these countries both having great standards of living, and being among the best in the world to start and run businesses in.

Tesla doesn't play nice. They don't build trust, and they don't try to negotiate as equals.

True, it is not illegal. It doesn't need to be. We have other ways to keep hostile actors from misbehaving.

Strikes are one of those ways.

Sweden has a small government approach to labour, the idea is that Unions are more agile and closer to the market so they are given the power to negotiate. The legislation is basically "there are no laws, speak to the Unions and sign the agreement". So yes you're correct they aren't breaking any laws, but neither are the Unions for not working for companies without a collective bargaining agreement.

This system has worked well for a hundred years with Sweden ranking highly across most metrics for work satisfaction, happiness, etc... however every now and then an American company comes over and tries to challenge it. These companies get sympathy striked into the ground, sign a collective agreement, and live happily ever after.

The other companies and unions are also complying with the country's laws, and they're exercising their choice to not do business with a company that is choosing to operate in a way that contradicts the existing social structures.

And so do the unions. The law takes a hands off approach to regulating the conditions of workers, but that goes both ways. If Tesla avoids signing a collective bargaining agreement, the law won’t help the unions force them to, but it also won’t protect Tesla from the unions.

What apparently a lot of commenters don’t know is that in Sweden a lot of things that in other countries are regulated by laws are regulate by agreements between the unions and corresponding organisations for the employers. This an order that both parties prefer, instead of legislations that none of them might be happy with.

It has been like this in Sweden since 1938 (if I remember correctly), and it is unlikely that any American company will be allowed to come in and change that order. I think the last one that tried and failed was Amazon, and before that Toys R Us.

This is one of the fundamental things about Sweden which is really quite weird when you come from the outside. Much of Swedish society runs on "recommendations" (or norms as someone else put it), so technically you don't have to abide by them (i.e. under the thread of the government monopoly on violence, how we enforce laws), but everyone just does it anyway.

This was an interesting experience for me during COVID, where lots of other countries put lots of rules/laws in place, while Sweden just had "recommendations" (and lax ones at that). The way I understood it, it would have been even incredibly difficult/legally impossible for the government to impose some of the same restrictions as in other countries.

It's actually fascinating how well the Swedish society functions without these laws.

They are.

Then again, so are the unions.

Tesla just chose the most expensive way possible to solve the matter. That's well within their rights, of course.