Swedish Car Technicians Engage in Prolonged Industrial Action Against Automotive Giant Tesla

Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics persist to challenge one of the globe's richest corporations – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the US automaker's 10 Swedish service centers has now reached its second anniversary, and there is minimal indication for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the Tesla protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult time," remarks the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a colleague, positioned outside an electric vehicle service center on an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation via a mobile construction vehicle, as well as coffee & light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the workshop appears to be at full capacity.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the heart of Swedish labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to negotiate pay & conditions on behalf of their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish employees are members to labor organizations, while 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of anything which creates a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told listeners at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups try to generate conflict within businesses."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, while IF Metall has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they did not respond," states Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "We formed the impression that they tried to hide away or not discuss this with our representatives."

She says the union eventually found no alternative except to call a strike, beginning in late October, last year. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," says the union leader. "The company typically signs the agreement."

However not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that pay & work terms were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review at which he says he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds he was "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be turned down for increased compensation because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company had some one hundred thirty mechanics working at the time the strike was initiated. IF Metall states currently around seventy of its members are participating in the action.

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

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to recognize. However it violates all established practices. But Tesla doesn't care about norms.

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

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for comment in an email citing "record deliveries".

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

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the organization more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers the best possible conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such choices," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported by a number of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; waste is not removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built charging stations remain linked to the grid across the nation.

There is one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from here," he says. "And we can still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it's hard to envision a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that that would spread," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode