🔗 Share this article

Across Sweden, around 70 car mechanics persist to challenge among the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action at the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has now entered its second anniversary, and there is 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," remarks the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to become more challenging.

Janis devotes every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, positioned outside an electric vehicle garage within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee and light meals.

However it remains operations continue normally nearby, at which the workshop appears to be at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay & working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics across the nation for nearly a century.

Currently some seventy percent of Swedish employees belong of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

This is a system supported by all parties. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I just disapprove of any arrangement which creates a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he told an audience at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups attempt to create negativity within businesses."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, and IF Metall has long sought to secure a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they did not respond," states the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the belief that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with our representatives."

She says the union ultimately found no alternative except to call a strike, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to issue a warning," comments the union leader. "The company typically signs the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla several years ago. He claims that wages & work terms were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he states he was denied a salary increase on grounds that he "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a colleague was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out on strike. Tesla had some one hundred thirty mechanics working when the industrial action was called. IF Metall states currently around 70 of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted the striking workers with new workers, for which there is no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is crucial to recognize. However it violates all traditional practices. But the company shows no concern about norms.

"They want to be convention challengers. Thus when somebody tells them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they see that as a compliment."

The company's local division refused attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has granted only one press discussion in the two years since the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the organization more to avoid a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and provide them the best possible terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, decline to process Teslas; waste is no longer removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to the grid in the country.

There is one such facility near the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from this location," 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 significant on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the deadlock. IF Metall risks setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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