🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, around 70 car mechanics persist to challenge among the globe's richest corporations – Tesla. This industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has now entered its second anniversary, with minimal indication of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the Tesla picket line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to become more challenging.

Janis devotes every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, standing near a Tesla garage within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides shelter in the form of a portable construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

But it's operations continue normally across the road, at which the service facility appears to operate in full swing.

The strike involves a matter that goes to the heart of Swedish labor traditions – the right of trade unions to negotiate wages and conditions representing their members. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently some seventy percent of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is a system supported across the board. "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 disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told listeners in New York in 2023. "In my view labor groups attempt to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla entered Sweden back in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to secure a labor contract with the company.

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

She says the organization eventually saw no alternative except to call industrial action, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to make a warning," says the union leader. "The company typically signs the agreement."

However not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that wages and conditions were often subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was reported to be turned down for a pay rise due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. The company employed some one hundred thirty mechanics employed when the strike was initiated. IF Metall states currently approximately 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

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

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, this being crucial to recognize. However it goes against all established practices. Yet Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when anyone informs them, listen, you are violating a standard, they see that as praise."

The automaker's local division declined attempts for comment in an email mentioning "record deliveries".

In fact, the company has granted only one media interview in the two years since the strike began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it benefited the company more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and provide workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have a mandate to take independent such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in this conflict. The strike has been supported by a number of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway & neighboring states, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed power points are not being linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station 10km from here," he says. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it is difficult to envision an end to the deadlock. IF Metall risks setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is that this could expand," states Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode