🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, around seventy car technicians persist to challenge among the globe's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike targeting the US automaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently reached its second anniversary, and there is little sign for a settlement.

One striking worker has remained on the Tesla protest line starting from October 2023.

"It's a tough time," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to grow even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, standing outside an electric vehicle service center on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, as well as coffee and sandwiches.

However it's business as usual nearby, at which the workshop appears to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for wages & conditions representing their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics across the nation for nearly a century.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's employees belong of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's a system supported by all parties. "We prefer the ability to bargain directly with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However Tesla has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners at an event last year. "In my view the unions attempt to generate conflict in a company."

The automaker came to Sweden starting in 2014, and IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they wouldn't reply," says Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "And we got the impression that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She states the union ultimately found no other option except to call industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, started working with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that pay & conditions frequently dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review where he says he was denied a salary increase because that he "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been rejected for a pay rise due to having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out on strike. The company employed approximately 130 mechanics working when the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says that today around 70 of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is crucial to understand. But it violates all traditional norms. But Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to be convention challengers. So if somebody tells them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they see that as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for comment in an email citing "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has given just a single media interview during the entire period since the industrial action began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the company better not to have a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and give workers optimal conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice not to enter a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "We have a mandate to take independent such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely alone in this conflict. The strike has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and Finland, are refusing to process Teslas; waste is no longer collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points are not being connected to the grid across the nation.

There is an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty chargers stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is how that would spread," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode