🔗 Share this article

Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront among the globe's richest corporations – Tesla. The industrial action at the US carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has now entered two years of duration, with little indication for a resolution.

One striking worker has remained on the Tesla picket line since October 2023.

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

Janis devotes every start of the week with a colleague, positioned outside a Tesla service center within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter via a mobile builders' van, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the workshop seems to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay and working terms on behalf of their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Today some 70% of Swedish workers are members to labor organizations, and 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the ability to negotiate directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "In my view the unions try to generate negativity in a company."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has long sought to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they did not reply," says the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the impression that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with our representatives."

She states the organization ultimately saw no alternative except to announce a strike, beginning in late October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to make the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically signs the agreement."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages and conditions were often subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused an annual pay rise because he was "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out in the industrial action. The company employed approximately one hundred thirty technicians employed when the strike was initiated. IF Metall says that today around 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has since replaced these with new workers, for which that has not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, which is important to recognize. However it goes against all traditional practices. Yet the company doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to become norm breakers. Thus when somebody informs them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they see this as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused requests for comment via correspondence mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has given just a single press discussion during the entire period since the strike began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a business paper that it benefited the company more not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with employees and provide them the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was determined by US leadership overseas. "We have authorization to make our own such decisions," he stated.

The union is not completely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & neighboring states, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while newly built power points remain linked to power networks across the nation.

There is one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president 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 continue to buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it's hard to envision an end to the stand-off. The union risks setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is how that would spread," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode