🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, around 70 automotive technicians continue to challenge one of the globe's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike at the US carmaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has currently entered its second anniversary, with minimal sign of a settlement.

One striking worker has remained at the Tesla protest line since 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 with a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla garage within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation in the form of a mobile builders' van, plus hot beverages & light meals.

However it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the workshop seems to operate at full capacity.

The strike involves an issue that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for wages and working terms representing their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, while ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the ability to negotiate directly with the unions and sign collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has said he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I just disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners at an event in 2023. "In my view labor groups attempt to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years sought to secure a labor contract with the company.

"But they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to hide away or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She states the union ultimately found no other option except to announce a strike, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to issue a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually agrees to the contract."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay & conditions frequently subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been rejected for increased compensation because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty technicians employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says currently around seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, for which there is no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," states German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, which is important to understand. But it goes against all established practices. But Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when somebody informs them, hey, you are violating a standard, they perceive this as praise."

The company's local division refused attempts for interview in an email citing "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the company has granted only one media interview in the two years after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, told a business paper that it suited the company better not to have a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and give them optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision not to enter a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "We have authorization to make our own such decisions," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to handle Teslas; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points remain connected to power networks in the country.

There is an example close to the capital's airport, at which 20 charging units remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that that would spread," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode