Tesla Faces Investor Pressure Over Collective Bargaining Concerns Amid Ongoing Swedish Labor Dispute

Tesla, Inc. TSLA shares are trading slightly higher on Thursday.

Norwegian pension fund KLP, a Tesla investor, might request the company’s AGM to tackle CEO Elon Musk’s hesitance regarding collective bargaining, Reuters reported.

A strike by Tesla mechanics in Sweden, one of the country’s lengthiest labor disputes, has long disrupted the automaker’s operations, drawing attention from multiple Nordic institutional investors, the report read.

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On Monday, Musk said, “the storm had passed on that front,” Reuters added.

The ongoing strike persists, with the leading union informing Reuters this week of potential escalation.

KLP, Norway’s biggest pension fund, joined Nordic investors in December, expressing worry over the Swedish strike and Tesla’s stance on collective bargaining.

“That Elon Musk is saying that the ‘storm has passed’ is just his way to underestimate the conflict and the issue,” Kiran Aziz, KLP’s head of responsible investments, told Reuters.

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“The conflict is still going and Musk does not really want to understand that collective bargaining is the backbone of the Nordic labour model,” the report stated.

Tesla did not promptly respond to a comment request to Reuters. Earlier, it stated that its Swedish employees enjoy terms equal to or better than what the union seeks.

Aziz said Tesla had not answered the December letter, and KLP was now “trying to figure out how to escalate,” the Reuters report added.

KLP owns 900,000 Tesla shares valued at around 1.7 billion crowns ($157 million).

Last summer, it excluded Tesla shares from its sustainable funds, Reuters added.

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Price Action: TSLA shares are trading higher by 0.35% at $172.36 on the last check Thursday.

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

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