🔗 Share this article

Across Sweden, around 70 automotive technicians continue to challenge among the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike at the American automaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has currently reached two years of duration, and there is little sign of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it's likely to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a colleague, positioned outside a Tesla service center on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

But it's business as usual across the road, at which the workshop seems to operate at full capacity.

The strike concerns a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages and working terms representing their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for nearly a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Scandinavia's workers belong of a trade union, while 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement supported by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain directly with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement which creates a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York last year. "In my view the unions attempt to generate conflict in a company."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market back in 2014, while IF Metall has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they did not reply," states Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "And we got the belief that they attempted to avoid or not discuss the matter with us."

She says the union ultimately found no other option than to announce a strike, which started on 27 October, last year. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," says the union leader. "Employers typically signs the contract."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that wages and work terms were often dependent on the discretion of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he says he was denied a salary increase because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be turned down for a pay rise due to having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out on strike. The company had approximately 130 mechanics employed at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall says that today approximately 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted these with replacement staff, a situation there is no precedent since the 1930s.

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

"It's not illegal, which is important to understand. However it violates all traditional norms. Yet Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. So if somebody informs them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive this as praise."

The automaker's local division refused attempts for interview via correspondence mentioning "record deliveries".

In fact, the company has given only one press discussion in the two years since the strike started.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it suited the organization better to avoid a union contract, and rather "to work closely with employees and provide them the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the choice to avoid a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have a mandate to take independent such choices," he stated.

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

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway and Finland, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed power points are not being connected to power networks across the nation.

There is one such facility near the capital's airport, at which twenty charging units remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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