🔗 Share this article

Across Sweden, approximately 70 automotive technicians persist to challenge among the world's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike at the US carmaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has currently reached two years of duration, and there is little indication of a settlement.

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

"It has been a difficult period," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to grow more challenging.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a colleague, standing near an electric vehicle garage within a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a mobile builders' van, as well as coffee & light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally nearby, at which the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to negotiate pay and working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Currently some seventy percent of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, while ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

This is an arrangement supported by all parties. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with the unions and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But Tesla has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has said he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like any arrangement which creates a kind of lords and peasants situation," he informed an audience in New York last year. "In my view labor groups try to generate negativity within businesses."

The automaker entered Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has long sought to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"But they wouldn't reply," states Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "And we got the impression that they tried to avoid or evade discussing the matter with us."

She says the union eventually saw no other option except to call a strike, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to make a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically agrees to the contract."

But not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, began employment for Tesla several years ago. He claims that wages & work terms were often dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was denied an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to be turned down for increased compensation due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company had approximately 130 technicians working when the strike was initiated. IF Metall says that today approximately 70 of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation there is not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, which is crucial to understand. But it goes against all established norms. But the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive that as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for interview via correspondence citing "record vehicle shipments".

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

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it benefited the organization more not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with the team and give them optimal terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make our own such choices," he said.

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

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Norway & neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; rubbish is not collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and newly built charging stations remain linked to the grid across the nation.

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

"There's another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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