🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics continue to confront one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action at the American automaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now entered two years of duration, with minimal sign for a resolution.

One striking worker has remained at the electric car company's picket line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a tough period," states the 39-year-old. With Sweden's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, standing near a Tesla service center on a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages and light meals.

However it remains business as usual nearby, at which the workshop seems to operate at full capacity.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to bargain for pay and conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish employees are members of a trade union, while 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

This is an arrangement supported across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of anything that establishes a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience at an event in 2023. "In my view the unions try to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has long sought to secure a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "And we got the belief that they tried to avoid or evade discussing this with us."

She states the organization ultimately saw no alternative than to call a strike, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," says the union leader. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that wages and conditions were often dependent on the discretion of managers.

He recalls a performance review where he says he was refused a salary increase because he was "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a coworker was said to be turned down for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty technicians employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union says that today approximately seventy of its members are on strike.

Tesla has long since substituted these with new workers, a situation there is no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, which is crucial to recognize. But it violates all traditional norms. But Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. Thus when anyone tells them, listen, you are violating a norm, they see that as praise."

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

In fact, the company has given only one media interview in the two years after the strike started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the organization more not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with employees and provide workers optimal terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was determined by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to take independent such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & neighboring states, are refusing to process Teslas; waste is not collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations are not being connected to the grid in the country.

There is one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from here," he says. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is how this could expand," states Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode