🔗 Share this article

Across Sweden, around 70 car technicians persist to confront among the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike at the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached two years of duration, with little sign for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the Tesla picket line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," states the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's chilly winter weather arrives, it's likely to become even tougher.

Janis spends each Monday alongside a fellow worker, standing near a Tesla garage on an industrial park in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter via a mobile construction vehicle, as well as coffee and light meals.

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

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for wages & conditions on behalf of their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations in Sweden for almost one hundred years.

Currently some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers belong of a trade union, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We favor the right to bargain freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just disapprove of any arrangement which creates a sort of hierarchical situation," he informed listeners at an event last year. "I think the unions try to generate negativity in a company."

Tesla came to Sweden starting in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has long wanted to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they did not respond," says Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She states the organization eventually found no other option except to call industrial action, beginning in late October, last year. "Typically it's enough to make the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually agrees to the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that wages and conditions were often dependent on the discretion of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was refused a salary increase because he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to be rejected for increased compensation due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out on strike. Tesla had some one hundred thirty mechanics employed when the strike was initiated. IF Metall states that today around 70 of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," states German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, which is crucial to understand. But it violates all established practices. But Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to be norm breakers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for comment via correspondence citing "record deliveries".

In fact, the company has given just a single press discussion during the entire period after the strike began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it benefited the company better not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with the team and provide workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take independent such choices," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while newly built power points remain linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty charging units stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from here," he says. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

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