Tesla may have picked an unwinnable fight with Sweden’s powerful unions — The first ever strikes and a solidarity blockade against the US carmaker could force it to rethink its entire anti-union model::The first ever strikes and a solidarity blockade against the US carmaker could force it to rethink its entire anti-union model, says journalist Martin Gelin
I’m not saying that Polestar didn’t follow the Swedish modell in Sweden. They most likely do.
However, if the subject is Chinese car manufacturers in the context of working against unions I think it’s most honest to put Polestar in the box marked Chinese since the majority of their employees are in fact employed in China and the owning company is Chinese.
I’m swedish and as a Swede I’ve always been sort of proud of IKEA being Swedish. But then again… Was IKEA really Swedish when the founder was living in Switzerland, the company was owned by a foundation in some other country and a majority of the products were produced in other countries than Sweden?
What I’m trying to say is that Polestar, as many other companies, is Shrödingers Swedish company … it’s both Swedish and not Swedish at the same time …
That’s fair enough and all good points. Before this thread I didn’t know about Volvo’s parent company being Chinese and thought Polestar was simply a Swedish company owned by another Swedish company. Very disappoint to learn.
I feel like you’d be hard pressed to find a major corporation these days either not being owned by a foreign parent company/investor, or manufacturing their products in another country, or both. It’s kind of understandable when the raw materials are abundant in the country of manufacture, but it becomes a problem when there are questionable labour practices there, as you say.