🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics continue to challenge one of the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action at the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently entered two years of duration, and there is minimal indication of a resolution.

One striking worker has remained at the Tesla picket line since the autumn of 2023.

"It's a tough period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

Janis spends every start of the week with a fellow worker, standing near a Tesla service center within a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation via a portable builders' van, plus coffee & light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally nearby, where the service facility appears to operate in full swing.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for pay and conditions representing their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Swedish employees belong of a trade union, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the ability to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply don't like any arrangement which creates a sort of hierarchical situation," he told listeners at an event in 2023. "I think the unions attempt to generate conflict in a company."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," states the union president, the union's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to hide away or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She says the organization eventually saw no alternative except to call industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," comments the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

But not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla several years ago. He claims that pay and work terms were often subject to the discretion of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he states he was denied a salary increase because he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been rejected for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company had some 130 technicians employed when the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says currently approximately 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, this being important to recognize. However it goes against all traditional practices. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

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

The automaker's local division declined attempts for interview via correspondence mentioning "record deliveries".

Indeed, the company has given just a single press discussion during the entire period after the strike started.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the organization better not to have a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision not to enter a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have a mandate to make independent such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, are refusing to process Teslas; rubbish is not removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to the grid across the nation.

There is one such facility close to the capital's airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our cars, we can power our cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall risks setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is that that would spread," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode