COPENHAGEN: Denmark’s biggest union 3F said on Tuesday its transport workers would launch a strike in solidarity with Tesla workers in neighboring Sweden on December 18 if Tesla refuses to sign a Swedish collective wage agreement.

“All members of 3F Transport are covered by the solidarity movement. This means that dockers and haulers will not unload Tesla cars nor transport them into Sweden,” 3F said in a statement.

The Swedish strike, launched by the metal workers’ union IF Metall, began on October 27 when some 130 mechanics at 10 Tesla repair shops in seven cities walked off the job.

It has since grown into a larger conflict between the US electric car giant and almost a dozen unions seeking to protect Sweden’s labor model.

Despite this, several Swedish media have reported that the impact of the strikes has so far been fairly limited, and IF Metall has accused the electric carmaker of systematically using strike breakers to circumvent the labor action.

According to the Swedish Transport Agency, there are 51,617 Teslas registered in Sweden.

“Solidarity is the cornerstone of the union movement and stretches beyond national borders,” the chairman of Denmark’s 3F Transport, Jan Villadsen, said in Tuesday’s statement.

“Even if you’re one of the richest companies in the world, you can’t impose your own rules. We have labor market agreements in the Nordic region, and you have to respect them if you want to run a business here,” he said.

Negotiated sector by sector, collective agreements with unions are the basis of the Nordic labor market model, covering almost 90 percent of all employees in Sweden and 80 percent in Denmark and guaranteeing wages and working conditions.

Despite the fact that many of Tesla’s employees in Sweden are union members, they cannot benefit from the collective bargaining agreements unless Tesla signs on to them.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has long rejected calls to allow the company’s 127,000 employees worldwide to unionize.

Marie Nilsson, the head of IF Metall, told AFP the conflict was “a clash between the Swedish or the European culture and the American way of doing business.”