🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics persist to confront one of the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has currently entered two years of duration, and there is little indication for a settlement.

One striking worker has been at the electric car company's protest line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a tough period," states the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's chilly winter weather arrives, it is expected to grow more challenging.

Janis devotes each Monday with a fellow worker, standing outside a Tesla service center within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages & light meals.

However it's business as usual nearby, where the workshop appears to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay & working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers belong of a trade union, and 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is a system supported by all parties. "We favor the right to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However Tesla has disrupted established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just don't like anything which creates a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience in New York last year. "In my view labor groups attempt to create negativity in a company."

Tesla entered Sweden back in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has long sought to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they did not reply," says the union president, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to avoid or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the organization eventually found no other option except to call industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," says the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

But not in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that pay and conditions frequently subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls a performance review at which he says he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to have been rejected for increased compensation because having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out on strike. The company had some one hundred thirty technicians employed at the time the strike was called. The union states currently approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

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

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to understand. But it goes against all traditional practices. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be norm breakers. So if somebody informs them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they perceive that as a compliment."

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

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

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the organization better to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers optimal conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was one made by US leadership in the US. "We have a mandate to take independent such decisions," he stated.

The union is not entirely alone in its fight. The strike has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed charging stations remain connected to power networks in the country.

There is one such facility close to the capital's airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

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

With stakes significant for all parties, it is difficult to envision an end to the deadlock. The union risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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