Oljefondet CEO Nicolai Tangen has invited Elon Musk to “the coolest dinner in Europe”.
Frode Alfheim reacts to that. He is head of a large LO confederation with 80,000 members.
– It shows a simple understanding of the society for which he is appointed to manage the money. We ask him to stop waving to union breakers, says Alfheim to E24.
Oljefondet is among the largest shareholders in Tesla.
The Tesla boss has repeatedly criticized trade unions. The electric car company has no collective agreements with its employees.
The LO summit points out that trade union organization is a human right.
– If he had said that he is going to have dinner with Musk to have a serious talk about human rights, my respect would have been great. But the way this is served, I do not accept, says Alfheim.
Frode Alfheim
Federation leader
Tangen himself and Ferrari top boss Benedetto Vigna will be behind the pots. They will serve reindeer. They will organize the dinner in connection with next year’s edition of the fund’s investment conference.
Suggests inviting LO-Peggy
Alfheim leads the new confederation IE&FLT, a merger of Industri Energi and the Confederation of Management and Technology.
In Norway, the cooperation between employers, employees and authorities has created the foundation for our prosperity, Alfheim asserts.
– If Tangen has forgotten that, he should rather invite LO leader Peggy Følsvik to a dinner with Musk than bring the Ferrari boss with him.
Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna is fond of cooking.
Photo: Flavio Lo Scalzo / Reuters / NTB
In Sweden, mechanics at Tesla workshops have been on strike since October last year. They require a collective agreement. Musk has called the strike “madness”.
One of Denmark’s largest pension funds, PensionDanmark, disposed of its Tesla shares last year.
– Rather than inviting Musk to a lads’ night out, the Oil Fund manager should settle a settlement with companies that violate our basic values as a society. That’s what Norwegian working people should be able to expect from companies that manage our common money, says the union leader.
– The world’s worst union busters
The oil fund is so large that what it invests or does not invest in has an impact on how the world develops, Alfheim points out. The fund excludes investments in companies that “contribute to or are themselves responsible for particularly serious breaches of ethical norms”.
– Therefore, Norwegian workers cannot accept that the Oil Fund invests our tax money in the world’s worst union busters, says Alfheim.
The oil fund has been submitted to the criticism. The answer comes from communications manager Line Aaltvedt.
– We think it is natural to invite speakers to a dinner once they have made the trip to Norway to participate in the conference. We have also done this the two previous times we have organized the conference, writes Aaltvedt in an e-mail to E24.
The oil fund had a meeting with the chairman of Tesla in March at the latest. In the meeting, the fund took up the right to organize and communicated its expectations, Aaltvedt says. It is unknown what came out of the meeting.
– It is the independent Ethics Council that is responsible for assessing whether the fund’s investments are in line with the ethical guidelines, and making recommendations about observation and exclusion of companies to Norges Bank, writes Aaltvedt.
The Ethics Council will not comment on individual companies, says the council’s leader Svein Richard Brandtzæg.
– Violation of freedom of association has been included in the assessment of several companies as one of several violations of employee rights, but so far has not been the sole basis for excluding a company, says Brandtzæg in a statement sent to E24.
Svein Richard Brandtzæg
Chairman of the Ethics Council
Tesla has not responded to E24’s inquiry about the matter.
Tangen recently asked Musk about unions, when the Tesla boss was a guest on the Oil Fund’s podcast “In Good Company”. He later admitted that he did not get a good answer.
Tesla’s Norway manager Axel Tangen said before Christmas that the company’s employees in Norway are free to choose whether they want to organize or not. It will have no consequences for their working conditions, he stated.
No Tesla ban in the association
– Many Norwegians own Teslas, as Musk recently pointed out. Is there a Tesla ban in the union now?
– No. There are guaranteed to be many of our employees who drive Teslas. I’m not going to start dictating what makes of car people drive. But I have to speak up when large business owners say no to collective agreements. It would have been a better car if Tesla employees were allowed to do so, says Alfheim.
– What car do you own?
– An Opel Astra. It is 100 percent manufactured in Germany. Support for trade unions is high there.
Alfheim is an Opel man from the old days, as this was the car brand his friends drove in his home village, he explains.
