🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, around 70 automotive technicians persist to challenge one of the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action at the American automaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has currently reached its second anniversary, and there is minimal sign of a settlement.

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

"It's a tough period," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become more challenging.

Janis devotes every start of the week with a colleague, positioned outside a Tesla garage on an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a portable construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

But it's operations continue normally across the road, where the workshop seems to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay and conditions representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees are members of a trade union, and 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is a system supported across the board. "We prefer the ability to negotiate directly with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Vocal CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of anything which creates a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience in New York last year. "I think the unions attempt to create conflict within businesses."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to secure a labor contract with the company.

"But they did not respond," says the union president, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to hide away or not discuss this with us."

She says the union ultimately found no alternative except to call a strike, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to make a warning," says the union leader. "The company typically agrees to the contract."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, started working with the automaker several years ago. He claims that wages & work terms frequently dependent on the whim of managers.

He recalls a performance review at which he states he was refused a salary increase because that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be turned down for increased compensation because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out in the industrial action. The company employed approximately one hundred thirty mechanics employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall states currently around seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which there is no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, which is important to recognize. But it violates all traditional practices. But the company doesn't care about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. Thus when anyone informs them, hey, you are violating a standard, they see this as praise."

The company's local division refused requests for interview in an email citing "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has given only one press discussion during the entire period since the strike started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", the executive, informed a financial publication that it suited the organization more to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with the team and provide workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision not to enter a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to take independent such decisions," he said.

The union is not completely alone in this conflict. The strike has been supported by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, are refusing to process Teslas; rubbish is not collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to the grid across the nation.

There is one such facility close to the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

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

With consequences significant for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

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