🔗 Share this article

Across Sweden, approximately seventy car technicians continue to challenge one of the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the American carmaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has now reached its second anniversary, with little sign for a resolution.

One striking worker has been on the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

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

The mechanic spends every start of the week with a fellow worker, standing outside an electric vehicle garage within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, as well as coffee and sandwiches.

However it remains operations continue normally across the road, at which the workshop seems to operate at full capacity.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right of trade unions to bargain for wages and working terms on behalf of their members. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish employees belong of a trade union, and 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We favor the right to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I simply don't like anything which creates a sort of lords and peasants situation," he informed an audience at an event last year. "In my view labor groups attempt to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has long sought to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they did not reply," states Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "And we got the impression that they tried to avoid or evade discussing the matter with us."

She says the organization ultimately found no alternative except to announce industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to make a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

However this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages and conditions frequently dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he states he was denied an annual pay rise because that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was reported to have been turned down for a pay rise due to he had the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers participated on strike. The company employed approximately one hundred thirty mechanics employed when the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall states currently around seventy of its members are on strike.

Tesla has since replaced these with new workers, for which there is no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is important to recognize. But it violates all established norms. But Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to become norm breakers. Thus when somebody tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they see that as a compliment."

The automaker's local division declined attempts for comment via correspondence citing "record deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has given only one press discussion during the entire period after the strike began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it benefited the organization better to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with the team and provide them the best possible conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take independent such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations remain linked to power networks across the nation.

There is one such facility close to the capital's airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station six miles from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it's hard to see an end to the stand-off. The union risks setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that that would spread," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode