🔗 Share this article

Across Sweden, around seventy automotive technicians continue to challenge among the globe's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has now reached two years of duration, and there is little sign of a resolution.

One striking worker has been at the electric car company's protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a tough period," states the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to grow more challenging.

Janis spends each Monday with a colleague, positioned outside a Tesla garage within a business district in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation in the form of a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee & light meals.

But it's operations continue normally across the road, where the service facility seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the core of Swedish labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay & conditions representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, and ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement supported by all parties. "We favor the right to negotiate directly with the unions and sign collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I just disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience at an event last year. "I think the unions attempt to create negativity in a company."

The automaker entered Sweden back in 2014, while IF Metall has for years wanted to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"But they wouldn't respond," states the union president, the union's president. "We formed the impression that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She says the organization ultimately found no other option than to announce industrial action, which started in late October, last year. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, started working with the automaker in 2021. He claims that wages & conditions were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he says he was denied a salary increase on grounds he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be rejected for increased compensation because he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed some 130 technicians working when the strike was initiated. The union says that today approximately 70 of its members are on strike.

Tesla has long since replaced these with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, this being important to recognize. But it goes against all traditional norms. But Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

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

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

In fact, the company has given only one press discussion in the two years since the strike began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it suited the company better to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with the team and provide them the best possible terms".

The executive denied that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points are not being linked to the grid across the nation.

There is an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The concern is that this could expand," states the researcher, "and ultimately {erode