🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, approximately seventy car technicians continue to challenge among the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike targeting the US carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has now entered two years of duration, and there is little sign of a resolution.

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

"It's a tough period," states the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to become even tougher.

The mechanic spends each Monday with a colleague, standing near an electric vehicle service center on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, supplies accommodation via a mobile builders' van, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it remains operations continue normally nearby, where the service facility appears to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that goes to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for wages & working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Currently some 70% of Swedish employees are members of a trade union, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

This is an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the ability to bargain freely with the unions and sign labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything which creates a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners in New York in 2023. "In my view the unions try to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden starting in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to secure a labor contract with the automaker.

"But they did not reply," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "We formed the belief that they tried to avoid or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She states the organization eventually saw no other option except to call a strike, which started in late October, last year. "Usually it's enough to make a warning," comments the union leader. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

However not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay and work terms frequently subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review at which he states he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a colleague was reported to be turned down for increased compensation due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company had some one hundred thirty technicians working when the industrial action was called. IF Metall says currently approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted these with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, this being crucial to recognize. But it goes against all established norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are violating a standard, they perceive this as praise."

The automaker's local division refused requests for interview via correspondence mentioning "record deliveries".

In fact, the company has granted just a single media interview 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 company more to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with the team and provide them optimal terms".

Mr Stark denied that the choice not to enter a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "We have a mandate to make independent such decisions," he said.

The union is not entirely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries and Finland, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to power networks in the country.

There is an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from here," he says. "And we can still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it's hard to envision an end to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is that that would spread," states Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode