🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics persist to challenge one of the globe's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action at the US automaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has currently entered two years of duration, with minimal sign for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been at the electric car company's protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it's likely to grow more challenging.

Janis devotes each Monday alongside a fellow worker, standing outside an electric vehicle service center on a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, provides accommodation via a mobile builders' van, plus hot beverages and light meals.

But it's operations continue normally across the road, at which the workshop seems to be in full swing.

The strike concerns an issue that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages & working terms representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics across the nation for almost a century.

Currently some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, and 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement supported across the board. "We favor the right to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But Tesla has upset the apple cart. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I simply don't like anything which creates a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he told an audience in New York last year. "I think the unions try to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, and IF Metall has long wanted to establish a labor contract with the automaker.

"But they did not reply," states the union president, the organization's president. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She states the union ultimately found no alternative than to call industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to make a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company usually agrees to the agreement."

However not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that wages & work terms were often dependent on the discretion of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he says he was denied a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was said to be rejected for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone went out on strike. Tesla employed approximately one hundred thirty mechanics working when the strike was initiated. The union says that today around 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

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

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," says German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not illegal, this being crucial to recognize. However it goes against all traditional practices. Yet Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to become norm breakers. So if anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see that as a compliment."

The company's local division refused requests for interview in an email citing "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has granted just a single press discussion in the two years after the industrial action began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the company more not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with employees and provide workers the best possible terms".

Mr Stark denied that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to take independent such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway & neighboring states, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; waste is not removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and newly built charging stations are not being linked to the grid in the country.

Exists one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from here," he says. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it's hard to envision an end to the stand-off. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is that this could expand," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode