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.