Is history repeating itself? In a column published on November 25, the Swedish business daily Dagens Industri recalled that “dark evening” in December 2014, when the Northland mining company, based in Pajala, northern Sweden, announced its bankruptcy, the largest in the kingdom’s modern history. The creation of thousands of new jobs was supposed to revitalize this region, which had been steadily losing its inhabitants. But the debts piled up: 14 billion krona (€1.2 billion) in the end, which was unheard of in Sweden. The following year, unemployment exceeded 10% in Pajala.
Is this the scenario that awaits the municipality of Skelleftea, population 77,300, located almost 800 km north of Stockholm? Having experienced a boom since Northvolt built its first gigafactory there, which opened in 2021, the town will be hit hard by the bankruptcy of the giant, which filed for US Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on November 21. With it, the whole country is wondering if the “green bubble,” which some warned against, is about to burst.
Northvolt may be hoping to rise from the ashes, but for the time being, the company is leaving behind a field of ruins. In mid-October, 338 engineers and employees at the Skelleftea plant, where 3,800 people worked before the summer, learned of their redundancy. Since then, 880 workers have been laid off. The situation is particularly precarious for specialists recruited in third countries, some of whom have had time to settle at Skelleftea: “By law, they have the right to stay in Sweden for three months after the end of their contract, provided their work permit is still valid,” explained Anja Palm, Skelleftea’s director of economic activities.
Swedish courses
In recent weeks, the municipality and the region have organized four meetings with employers, which attracted a total of 6,000 people. “We want to help them find a job as quickly as possible, preferably in Skelleftea, or in northern Sweden, where their skills are in demand,” explained Palm. Swedish language courses are being provided to facilitate integration into the job market for these ex-Northvolt employees, who only needed English until now.
The municipality’s Social Democrat mayor, Anders Burman, has also appealed to the liberal-conservative government, allied with the far right, for a temporary exception to the rule requiring a minimum income of SEK 28,480 to hire an employee from a third country. In his view, this rule makes it more difficult to recruit Northvolt’s redundant workers. But “the government has done nothing” and has “no intention of doing anything,” he observed bitterly in Dagens Industri, criticizing in passing the “lack of interest” of the right and the far right “in the environmental transition” and ongoing industrial projects.
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Publish date : 2024-12-10 14:35:00
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