“Threatening and lying” – action

On Thursday, the union and Swedish engineers announced a strike for their members at Klarna Bank AB. This is after the collective agreement negotiations that have been ongoing since March of this year faltered at the end of last week.

The announcement upset the company’s CEO and co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkovsky. On X, formerly Twitter, he previously wrote that it was the union, not Klarna, that withdrew from the negotiations.

The union says they will be listed and will not be allowed to become members of any other union again unless they go on strike.

CEO: It creates tremendous pressure

Yesterday, more accusations were made against the unions. According to the CEO, the union and Swedish engineers must now keep lists of members who do not want to strike. The reason must be to prevent them from joining other unions if they do not agree to strike.

“Due to the notification, there are of course many questions now! Our main focus now is on our employees who were shocked: they thought they could decide for themselves whether they wanted to strike or not. The union says they will be shut down and lose their wages if they do not strike. The union says they will be listed and will not be allowed to become members of any other union again unless they go on strike. So far, unions are not advertising employees specifically, and those who are not in those unions are concerned about what is happening. This creates tremendous pressure on our employees and our primary focus is their well-being. We will come back later“, wrote Sebastian Siemiatkovsky on X yesterday.

The union says it’s completely wrong

But according to the federation, this is not true at all.

– This is of course not entirely true. We have freedom of association in Sweden. Both employers and employees can organize themselves as they wish. This also includes the right to park outside if you wish, says Martin Westveldt, the union’s head of negotiations. He continues:

– What we are doing is obstructing work. This means that no one is allowed to do the work that would have been done by the strikers. If the company tries to rearrange tasks, we will regard this as breaking the strike and escalating the conflict if necessary.

This is of course not entirely true. We have freedom of association in Sweden.

in Interview at DN Sebastian Siemiatkowski also says that Klarna’s private agreement is worth about 250 million more than the collective agreement now on the table. He also claims that Klarna was unable to confirm that any other bank had signed the union agreement.

Even there, Martin Westvelt has difficulty understanding Siemiatkovsky’s objections.

– It is difficult to know how they calculated this number. But Klarna is now spreading the misconception that the agreement will be standard. Officials have individual salaries. This is about the minimum rules. We have contacted the financial association that has the agreement, and there is no problem at all. This also does not apply to our members of Volvo Finance who are also covered by this collective agreement.

‘Threats and lies’

Even Swedish engineers reject Klarna CEO’s claims. Negotiations manager Camilla Frankelius believes Klarna’s CEO is dealing with “threats and lies”.

– I think he drives with threats and parents with lies. Of course, it’s not that you’ll be excluded forever if you don’t want to strike as a member. This is a stressful situation, as he himself says. As a company leader, in such a situation, it is important to convey the facts before making a statement, she told Arbitit.

The work sought to ask Klarna more questions, which refers to Sebastian Siemiatkovsky’s statement about X.