🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, approximately seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront one of the globe's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This labor strike at the American automaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has now entered its second anniversary, and there is little indication for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been at the electric car company's picket line since the autumn of 2023.

"It's a tough period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's cold winter weather sets in, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday with a colleague, standing near an electric vehicle service center within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, plus hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it's operations continue normally nearby, at which the workshop appears to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action involves an issue that goes to the core of Swedish labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages and conditions representing their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish employees are members of a trade union, and ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

It's a system supported across the board. "We prefer the right to bargain freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However Tesla has upset the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups attempt to generate negativity in a company."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, while IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they did not reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "And we got the impression that they tried to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She states the union ultimately found no other option than to call industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically agrees to the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay and conditions frequently dependent on the discretion of managers.

He recalls a performance review where he states he was refused a salary increase because he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to have been turned down for increased compensation due to having the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers went out on strike. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty mechanics employed when the strike was called. IF Metall says currently around seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has not occurred since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, this being important to recognize. However it violates all established practices. Yet the company shows no concern about norms.

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when somebody tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they perceive this as praise."

The automaker's local division refused requests for interview in an email citing "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has given just a single press discussion in the two years since the strike started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it benefited the company better not to have a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and provide workers optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was determined by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such decisions," he stated.

The union is not entirely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway & Finland, are refusing to process Teslas; waste is no longer removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed power points remain linked to the grid across the nation.

There is one such facility close to the capital's airport, where twenty charging units stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the stand-off. The union risks setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is that that would spread," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode