🔗 Share this article

Across Sweden, around 70 car mechanics continue to challenge among the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike targeting the American carmaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has now entered its second anniversary, and there is little sign for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the Tesla picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

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

Janis spends every start of the week alongside a colleague, standing near a Tesla service center within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation via a mobile builders' van, plus coffee and sandwiches.

However it remains business as usual nearby, at which the workshop seems to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the core of Swedish labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for pay & working terms on behalf of their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly a century.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish workers belong of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is an arrangement supported by all parties. "We favor the right to bargain freely with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement which creates a kind of hierarchical situation," he informed an audience at an event last year. "In my view labor groups try to generate conflict within businesses."

The automaker entered Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has for years sought to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She states the union ultimately found no alternative than to announce industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue a warning," says the union leader. "The company typically agrees to the agreement."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay and work terms frequently dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review where he states he was denied a salary increase on grounds that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was reported to be rejected for increased compensation due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company employed approximately 130 technicians employed at the time the strike was called. IF Metall says currently approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted these with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," says German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to understand. However it goes against all traditional practices. But Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. Thus when somebody tells them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they see this as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for comment in an email citing "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the company has given just a single media interview during the entire period after the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the company better not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and provide workers the best possible terms".

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 make independent such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway and Finland, decline to handle Teslas; rubbish is not removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while newly built power points remain linked to power networks in the country.

Exists one such facility near the capital's airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station six miles from here," he says. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can power our cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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