More than one in three employees at Northvolt’s Skellefteå plant has been imported from outside the EU. In total, 1650 work permits have been granted – often to people from the other side of the world.

The bankruptcy of taxpayer-funded battery manufacturer Northvolt has been described as one of the biggest industrial crashes in Sweden’s modern history, with thousands of employees expected to lose their jobs in addition to the billions that went up in smoke.

Now an investigation shows that the battery giant has systematically used non-European labor immigration from the third world – and that all migrants attracted by Northvolt are now at risk of deportation.

When Northvolt filed for bankruptcy earlier in March, around 3,000 employees were still working at the battery factory in Skellefteå – and almost 1,100 of them have migrated from outside the EU.

It is noted that a total of 1650 Swedish work permits have been issued where Northvolt was listed as the employer on the application. The IF Metall trade union is one of several stakeholders reacting to the proportion of the workforce coming from non-European countries.

“A little over half”

– I have received information that a little over half of the employees here come from third countries, so there are quite a few. This is a special situation, says IF Metall’s chairman Marie Nilsson, who wants the migrants to be allowed to stay in Sweden.

Many of the immigrants come from Africa and Asia, but why the battery manufacturer has invested heavily in importing labor from the other side of the world, instead of attracting Swedes or other Europeans to the factories, is not something that the company itself has commented on.

The imported migrant workers now have three months to find a new job where they earn at least 80% of the median wage in the profession – otherwise they lose the right to stay in the country.

“Basic knowledge of English”

Already in November, researchers found that Northvolt was in many ways a very dysfunctional workplace, with foreign staff living segregated in shanty towns and the proportion of migrants so high that English – and not Swedish – was the language spoken inside the factories.

– They have become very vulnerable to their employers when they are in a country where the majority language is different from the one used in the workplace, said linguist Andreas Nuottaniemi at the time.

– Many people have moved here with only a basic knowledge of English, which is different from the rest of society, where Swedish is quite highly valued, he continued.

Despite Northvolt being touted as an innovative leader in the “green transition”, audits have also shown that the company never managed to produce a single Swedish battery – instead, the batteries consisted mostly of imported parts from China.