🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, approximately 70 automotive technicians continue to confront one of the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently reached its second anniversary, with minimal sign for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been on the Tesla protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult time," remarks the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become more challenging.

Janis devotes each Monday with a colleague, standing near an electric vehicle service center within a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation via a portable construction vehicle, as well as coffee & light meals.

But it's business as usual nearby, at which the service facility appears to be in full swing.

This industrial action concerns a matter that goes to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to negotiate wages and conditions representing their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Today approximately 70% of Scandinavia's employees belong to labor organizations, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the ability to negotiate freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has said he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I just don't like anything which creates a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups attempt to create conflict within businesses."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market back in 2014, while IF Metall has long sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the union's leader. "And we got the impression that they attempted to hide away or not discuss this with us."

She states the organization eventually saw no other option than to announce a strike, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the agreement."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that wages & conditions were often dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused a salary increase on grounds he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was said to be turned down for a pay rise because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla had approximately one hundred thirty technicians employed when the industrial action was called. The union states that today around seventy of its members are on strike.

The automaker has long since replaced the striking workers with new workers, for which that has not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is crucial to recognize. But it violates all established practices. Yet Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to become convention challengers. So if anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see that as praise."

The automaker's local division declined requests for interview via correspondence citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has given just a single media interview during the entire period since the strike began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the company better to avoid a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and provide them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the choice not to enter a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take independent such choices," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in this conflict. The strike has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway & neighboring states, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points remain linked to the grid in the country.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, where twenty chargers stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from here," he comments. "And we can still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it's hard to see a resolution to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is how that would spread," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode