Swedish Auto Technicians Participate in Prolonged Labor Dispute With Automotive Giant Tesla

In Sweden, around 70 car mechanics continue to challenge among the world's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike at the American automaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has currently entered its second anniversary, and there is little sign for a settlement.

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

"It's a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a colleague, positioned near a Tesla service center on a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, supplies shelter in the form of a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages and light meals.

But it's operations continue normally across the road, where the workshop appears to operate at full capacity.

The strike concerns an issue that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to bargain for wages & conditions representing their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today some 70% of Scandinavia's employees are members of a trade union, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the ability to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything which creates a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners at an event in 2023. "I think the unions attempt to create negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"But they did not reply," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "We formed the belief that they tried to avoid or evade discussing this with us."

She says the organization ultimately saw no alternative except to call industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Typically it's enough to make a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused a salary increase because he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be turned down for a pay rise due to having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out on strike. The company employed approximately one hundred thirty technicians working when the strike was initiated. The union says that today approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted these with replacement staff, a situation there is not occurred since the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," says German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, this being important to recognize. However it goes against all established norms. Yet the company shows no concern for conventions.

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

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for comment via correspondence citing "record vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has granted only one press discussion during the entire period since the strike started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the company better to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and provide workers optimal conditions".

The executive denied that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "We have authorization to take independent such choices," he said.

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

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while newly built charging stations remain linked to the grid in the country.

Exists one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station six miles from this location," he says. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union risks setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that this could expand," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode