The conflict between Tesla and IF Metall has been going on for a month and continues to expand. So far, nine unions have launched sympathy actions against the auto giant.

The President of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO), Susanne Gideonsson, has previously announced that they are ultimately prepared to drive the company out of the country.

"This is madness," Tesla CEO Elon Musk said of the Swedish strike, when he first commented on the conflict in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

PM Nilsson: "Doesn't solve the conflict"

PM Nilsson, CEO of the free-market think tank Timbro, believes that the unions' negotiation tactics mean that Tesla perceives the situation more as blackmail and threats rather than a negotiation.

"What Tesla has to choose between is signing a collective agreement or leaving the country. That type of negotiation situation is not good, it does not solve the conflict, he says in SVT's Agenda.

According to PM Nilsson, Sweden stands out internationally in that there are no restrictions on how sympathy measures may be used.

"Many other countries have a rule that it has to be proportionate to what you want to achieve. In this case, they want to sign a collective agreement, and that means that the sympathy measures must be limited, they must not be so extensive.

The alternative: Give up the Swedish model

German Bender, head of research at the trade union-funded think tank Arena Idé, on the other hand, does not believe that Tesla sees the situation as blackmail.

"IF Metall has been trying for five years to negotiate with Tesla and they have been completely uninterested. It wasn't an extortion situation then, and it's not now," he says.

According to German Bender, the alternative to sympathy measures is a labour market regulated by law, where conditions cannot be adapted for specific sectors as they can in collective agreements.

"This is something that employers and trade unions have so far not been interested in. You don't want to go down the legislative route," he says.

How will the conflict end? Hear the debaters' guesses in the video.