🔗 Share this article

Across Sweden, around 70 car technicians persist to challenge one of the globe's wealthiest companies – Tesla. The labor strike targeting the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently reached two years of duration, and there is minimal indication for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the electric car company's picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," states the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to grow even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned 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 portable construction vehicle, plus coffee & light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the workshop appears to operate at full capacity.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to bargain for pay & conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly a century.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish workers belong to labor organizations, while 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

It's an arrangement supported across the board. "We favor the ability to bargain freely with the unions and establish labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However Tesla has upset established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "In my view labor groups try to create conflict in a company."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "And we got the belief that they attempted to hide away or not discuss this with our representatives."

She states the union eventually found no alternative than to announce a strike, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually signs the contract."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay and conditions were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review at which he says he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a coworker was said to be rejected for increased compensation because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company had some 130 mechanics working at the time the strike was called. The union states that today around 70 of its members are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which there is not occurred since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, which is crucial to recognize. However it violates all established norms. But the company doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when somebody informs them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they perceive this as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for interview via correspondence citing "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has given only one press discussion in the two years after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the organization more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and provide them the best possible terms".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to take independent such decisions," he stated.

The union is not entirely alone in its fight. This industrial action has received backing by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to process Teslas; rubbish is not removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed charging stations remain connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty charging units stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from this location," he says. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can power our cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is that that would spread," says Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode