🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, approximately 70 car technicians persist to challenge one of the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently reached its second anniversary, with little sign of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been at the electric car company's picket line since October 2023.

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

The mechanic spends each Monday with a colleague, standing outside an electric vehicle service center on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies accommodation in the form of a portable builders' van, as well as coffee & light meals.

But it's operations continue normally nearby, at which the workshop appears to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages & working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently some 70% of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is a system welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But Tesla has upset established practices. Vocal CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the idea 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 last year. "I think the unions try to create conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden starting in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"But they wouldn't reply," states the union president, the union's president. "And we got the belief that they tried to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She states the organization ultimately saw no other option except to announce industrial action, which started in late October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla several years ago. He asserts that pay and work terms were often subject to the whim of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was denied an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty technicians working when the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently around seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted these with replacement staff, for which there is not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

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

"They aim to be convention challengers. So if anyone tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they see that as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for interview via correspondence citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has given just a single press discussion in the two years since the strike began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it benefited the organization more not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and give workers the best possible terms".

Mr Stark denied that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have authorization to make our own such choices," he said.

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

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & Finland, are refusing to handle Teslas; rubbish is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed charging stations remain connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty charging units remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

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

With consequences high on both sides, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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