🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics persist to challenge one of the world's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike at the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has now reached two years of duration, with minimal sign for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the Tesla protest line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," remarks the 39-year-old. With Sweden's cold winter weather sets in, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a fellow worker, positioned near an electric vehicle service center on a business district in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, plus hot beverages & light meals.

However it's business as usual across the road, at which the service facility appears to be at full capacity.

This industrial action involves an issue that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to bargain for wages and working terms representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost one hundred years.

Today approximately 70% of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement supported across the board. "We prefer the ability to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like any arrangement which creates a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners at an event last year. "In my view labor groups attempt to create negativity within businesses."

The automaker came to Sweden starting in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to secure a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they did not respond," states Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to avoid or evade discussing the matter with us."

She states the union eventually saw no alternative than to call a strike, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually signs the contract."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, began employment for Tesla several years ago. He claims that pay & conditions frequently subject to the discretion of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he says he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been turned down for a pay rise because having the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone participated in the industrial action. The company had some 130 technicians employed at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall says currently around seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

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

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," says German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, this being crucial to understand. But it goes against all established norms. But Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to be convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, listen, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as a compliment."

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

In fact, the company has granted only one media interview during the entire period since the strike began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, informed a financial publication that it suited the organization better to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with employees and give them the best possible terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "We have a mandate to take independent such choices," he said.

IF Metall is not completely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to the grid across the nation.

There is an example close to the capital's airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it's hard to envision an end to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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