🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, approximately seventy car technicians persist to challenge one of the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike at the American carmaker's 10 Swedish service centers has now entered two years of duration, and there is minimal sign for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been on the electric car company's picket line since October 2023.

"It's a tough time," states the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's chilly winter weather sets in, it is expected to become more challenging.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a colleague, positioned near an electric vehicle garage within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides shelter via a mobile builders' van, as well as coffee and light meals.

However it's business as usual across the road, where the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

The strike involves a matter that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to negotiate wages & conditions representing their members. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish employees belong to labor organizations, while ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just don't like anything which creates a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told listeners in New York in 2023. "In my view the unions try to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market back in 2014, and IF Metall has for years wanted to establish a labor contract with the company.

"But they did not reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "We formed the belief that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She states the organization eventually found no other option than to announce a strike, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to make the threat," says the union leader. "The company typically agrees to the contract."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay and work terms frequently dependent on the whim of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he states he was refused a salary increase because he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to be rejected for increased compensation because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone went out on strike. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty technicians working at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall says that today around 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with new workers, for which there is not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," says German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, this being crucial to recognize. However it goes against all established practices. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when somebody informs them, listen, you are violating a norm, they see this as praise."

The automaker's local division declined attempts for interview in an email mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the company has given only one media interview in the two years since the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a business paper that it benefited the organization better not to have a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and give workers the best possible conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such decisions," he stated.

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

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Norway and Finland, decline to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is not collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations remain linked to the grid across the nation.

There is one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

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

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