A Decolonial View

By Simon S.

                                                            

The once forested land (left) which gave way to Northvolt’s manufacturing plant in Skellefteå (right). (Source: Google Earth & Wikimedia Commons).

Introduction

STOCKHOLM 2025, March 12 – Northvolt’s file for bankruptcy marks the largest bankruptcy in Sweden’s modern industrial history as it affects over 5000 employees at the manufacturing plant in Skellefteå. 

It is yet too early to speculate on what place Northvolt – producer and manufacturer of electric vehicle batteries – will hold in regional and national consciousnesses, nor on what in the aftermath of the bankruptcy will happen to Northvolt and the built industrial milieu, inaugurated in 2022, that required the de-forestation of 19 000 m² of land. Regardless of what company name or form it takes as a façade; capital tends to seek out where opportunities exist and at the moment of writing, Scania – producer of heavy trucks and buses – are already acquiring parts of Northvolt’s enterprise. With these problems of writing on such a contemporary topic in mind, this blog post seeks to chronologically and on a general level shed light on some of the currently known social conditions which can be said to have constituted the underbelly of Northvolt. Prior to that, I will provide a background section which explores the rather remarkable preconditions of Northvolt as well as discuss how we may understand the so-called ‘green transition’ in relation to Northvolt. 

Background: the discrepancies between expectations and outcomes

By focusing on the production of lithium-ion batteries with a minimized carbon footprint, Northvolt was framed not only to have central significance to the ‘green transition’ in Sweden but also to function as an example for the EU in counterweighting the dependency on the Chinese dominance in these sectors. Given these expectations, Swedish media and political discourses at times ended up framing the Northvolt project in nationalist connotations inasmuch it was referred to as a revival of a Swedish historical entrepreneurial spirit in industrial innovations into a post-Paris Climate Accords era and beyond. Moreover, there was potential for the flourishment of the Northern Sweden as the enterprise was expected to attract unprecedented labor and opportunities to municipalities and regions normally considered peripheral. The establishment did undeniably play a role in establishing a more translocal social environment, but, in the long run, they were perhaps expected to contribute more towards minimizing the socio-economic South/North gap in Swedish relational geographies. In sum, these are only some of the aspects which constitute the deep discrepancy between expectations and outcomes, and it ultimately came as no surprise that Northvolt’s fall would awake strong reactions across the political spectrum. 

Conceptualizing the ‘green transition’ in the case of Northvolt

Northvolt’s ascribed role in the so-called ‘green transition’ was perhaps one aspect which contributed to its public attention. However, we still must question what goes into such terms and processes. Arbetet, a newspaper which examines malpractices, writes in an editorial that: “The problem with Northvolt’s bankruptcy isn’t that the business idea was green – but that it was predatory capitalist.” However, it is questionable whether we can separate “green” from “predatory capitalism” in the form of a cartesian binary, since the mechanisms of green capitalism often enable corporations to produce ‘sustainable forms of energy’ while allowing them to maintain reaping profits from environmental activities. Moreover, the processes and the capital investments involved are of planetary matter. Hence, a proper study of Northvolt – which I do not claim to be doing here – that seeks to address such issues, thus, need to move beyond the extraction site to emphasize the uneven planetary effects and the cross-spatial infrastructures which interconnects the worldwide surplus population from Skellefteå to Shenzhen. One entry to such relational geographies will briefly be outlined when addressing how thousands of former Northvolt employees have found themselves in uncertainty in relation to their working visas and stays in Sweden.

A chronological account of the underbelly

Tragedies

Northvolt gained widespread public attention after four employees tragically died off-duty under “unexplained circumstances” during 2024. All these four deaths have so far by the police been ruled out of foul play. Additionally, a direct workplace accident leading to casualty in 2023 is currently under investigation.

Dismantling the union

Nortvolth’s downfall happened rather quickly but was nevertheless marked by various top-down driven waves of terminations, downsizes and dismantles. Many of the labor union representatives, for example at IF Metall, were terminated in a way which resulted in scarce union representation at the workplace. This development hints at a rather strategic decentralization of the labor union, whose role in Sweden generally is considered as an influential counterpart to the employer. 

Board member bonus-systems contra unpaid salaries

Despite these terminations intended to cut costs in a supposedly rough economic situation, whereby the lowest ranks of the labor organization were targeted, the bonus system which Northvolt’s executives enjoyed quickly caught public attention. These documents suggest that two of the board members, when working more than four hours a day, and besides the monthly salary of 396 000 and 660 000 SEK respectively, could cash in an additional amount of 55 000 SEK per occasion, whereas thousands of the former employees have had to await their salaries which amount to approximately 35 000 SEK a month. 

The layoffs and current realities

The layoffs from Northvolt happened abruptly and of the 5000 total employees affected includes 1500 international workers. Given the work permit system, many of the international workers who seek to stay in Sweden must find new jobs in Sweden within weeks or months. Hence, thousands of people have ended up in especially precarious situations marked by uncertainty when it comes to life plans and other existential matters. As I do not seek to speak for these experiences, each of the following four in-text hyperlinks constitute processed parts of some of the stories of the 5000 workers, who on their own as well as collectively are awaiting various forms of reparations and vindications from a company which has yet taken full responsibility.

Concluding reflections

While Northvolt is by no means unique when it comes to the mistreatment of lower ranked employees, such realities in combination with the company’s contemporary relevance in Swedish news media discourse have nevertheless warranted this text. This of course implies that I too am contributing in co-producing a certain discourse – especially since these reflections are mainly built upon material processed by the media. Despite this, I have sought to counteract the predominant media narrative which often tends to fall into a pragmatic “what was economically lost” focus when discussing Northvolt after the bankruptcy. Because the news media and political discourse focus placed on macroeconomic and developmental loss continues steering the focus away from the question of accountability. Hand-in-hand with the company’s supposed mission, such outcome-oriented viewpoints – constituting the mirage of green capitalism – have seduced media and political discourse away from more important issues. On an individual/collective level, thus, one must continue to be critical towards naïve portrayals of what a company seeks to do. Lastly, the uncertainty that the former workers face after the bankruptcy continues to raise questions about the restrictive work permit system and highlights the lack of safety nets in Sweden’s deregulated labor market environment.

Disclosure statement 

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

References

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