🔗 Share this article

Across Sweden, around seventy car mechanics continue to confront one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action at the US automaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has now reached its second anniversary, with minimal sign of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been at the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

"It's a difficult period," states the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to grow even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week with a colleague, positioned near an electric vehicle service center within a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter in the form of a portable builders' van, plus hot beverages and light meals.

However it remains business as usual across the road, where the workshop seems to be in full swing.

The strike concerns a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for wages and conditions on behalf of their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations across the nation for nearly a century.

Today approximately 70% of Scandinavia's employees belong to labor organizations, while ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

This is an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like any arrangement that establishes a sort of hierarchical situation," he informed listeners in New York in 2023. "In my view the unions attempt to create conflict within businesses."

Tesla entered Sweden back in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to secure a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they did not respond," says the union president, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they attempted to hide away or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She states the union eventually found no alternative than to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, began employment for Tesla several years ago. He claims that wages & work terms frequently subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he states he was denied an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a coworker was reported to be turned down for increased compensation because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone participated in the industrial action. The company employed some one hundred thirty mechanics employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall states currently around 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since replaced the striking workers with new workers, a situation there is not occurred since the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," states German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, this being crucial to recognize. But it goes against all established practices. Yet the company shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become convention challengers. Thus when anyone tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as a compliment."

The company's local division refused attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has given just a single press discussion in the two years since the strike began.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a financial publication that it suited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with employees and provide them optimal conditions".

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

IF Metall is not entirely alone in its fight. This industrial action has received backing from several of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & Finland, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; waste is no longer collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed power points are not being linked to the grid across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station six miles from here," he says. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union risks setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is how this could expand," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode