Lea prefers not to be named. The 30-year-old woman, a widow and mother of two, hopes to soon find work at an electric battery factory in Skelleftea, in northern Sweden. American group Lyten, which became the new owner in early August following the bankruptcy of giant Northvolt, contacted him via email to ask if he wanted to return. He accepted it. Lea, a former nanny, was hired there in 2023 as a production operator. His job is “stimulate”his colleagues came from all over the world, and he received a good salary, enough to allow him to buy an apartment.
And then the bad news started piling up. “Some of our members told us that many batteries were thrown into the trash due to quality problems”explains Lena Lundgren, head of the IF Metall union in the Norra Västerbotten region. Customers complain about delivery delays. For a long time, the management of the company, founded in 2015 by two former Tesla employees who raised more than 13 billion euros, showed good performance: “We are told everything is fine, but the media says otherwise, and usually they are right”Lea said.
The layoffs occurred on March 12: after the first restructuring plans were announced in autumn 2024, Northvolt, which was an example of Swedish green reindustrialization, closed its doors. In Skelleftea, a town of 77,000 people, the shaking was quite severe: “We were the fastest growing city in Sweden in decades, and now we are facing the biggest bankruptcy in the history of the country”summarizes Kristina Sundin Jonsson, dynamic director of city services.
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