Which serves to protect the workers much like unions right? Genuinely asking.

The collective agreements in Sweden are pretty much a win-win between workers and employers. It is something that most of the industry and the unions care about. Basically, the government has left to the industry and unions to agree on a lot of stuff that is decided by law in other countries. E.g. Sweden does not have a minimum wage. This system has led to much fewer costly conflicts and strikes compared to many other countries for almost a century.

You can have perfectly fine conditions without a collective agreement. The conflict is not about the conditions, it is about power.

Well, it's also about power. But at the end of the day big companies refuse collective agreements because they want the options to make conditions worse than the proposed minimum, and frequently they also have many actual employees working at below the proposed minimum already.

This is the situation at Tesla Sweden, which pays wages below the market average and tries to cover the gap with stock options which Tesla is free to rescind at any time. There is also a points-system that in practice requires unpaid overtime in order to get a raise.

Some companies are bound to have wages below market average, that is unavoidable under all circumstances, collective agreement or not.

Specifics such as salary, overtime, vacation etc are more tangible and with more direct impact on working conditions. But striking for a specific type of agreement, which ties conditions in one workplace to a broader context are a different matter. That is a more strategic play which is about who sets the rules and who has the power.

In the Swedish business context, refraining from a collective agreement when you are the scale of Tesla is in no way a neutral choice: it is in fact an open attack on one of the central bargains of Swedish commercial society. Of course defending that bargain is unavoidably a strategic, if self evident, choice.

It's probably about left wing union activism and Twitter/X as well.

How so? It is pretty clear what the conflict is about, and it is not about anything of that. People may have their sentiment towards Tesla affected by Musk's antics, but it has nothing to do with the negotiation between the union and Tesla.

You don't think if he hadn't bought twitter/x the unions would have been quite so uncooperative?

Tesla has refused to even negotiate agreement for six years, that's not the union being uncooperative.

No I don't think it is part of it at all. It may motivate onlookers to cheer the union on, but it is immaterial to the conflict as such.

Clearly being sarcastic my guy