Swedish Car Mechanics Participate in Extended Industrial Action Against Carmaker Tesla

Across Sweden, around 70 car technicians persist to confront one of the globe's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the US automaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently reached its second anniversary, and there is little indication for a settlement.

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

"It has been a difficult time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to become even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, standing near an electric vehicle garage on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation in the form of a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages and light meals.

However it's business as usual nearby, at which the service facility appears to be at full capacity.

The strike concerns an issue that reaches to the core of Swedish labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for wages and conditions on behalf of their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations across the nation for almost a century.

Today approximately 70% of Swedish workers are members to labor organizations, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement supported by all parties. "We favor the right to bargain freely with the unions and establish collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But Tesla has upset the apple cart. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of anything which creates a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners at an event last year. "In my view labor groups attempt to create negativity within businesses."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," says the union president, the organization's president. "We formed the impression that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with our representatives."

She states the union ultimately found no other option than to call a strike, which started on 27 October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

However this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla several years ago. He asserts that wages & conditions were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was denied a salary increase on grounds that he "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been rejected for increased compensation because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company had approximately one hundred thirty mechanics working when the industrial action was called. IF Metall states currently approximately seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has not occurred since the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to understand. However it goes against all traditional norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when anyone informs them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they perceive that as praise."

The company's local division declined requests for comment via correspondence citing "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the company has given just a single press discussion during the entire period after the strike started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, the executive, told a business paper that it benefited the organization more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to work closely with the team and give them optimal terms".

Mr Stark denied that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have authorization to make our own such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is not collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations are not being connected to power networks in the country.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, at which 20 chargers remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

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

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

"The worry is that that would spread," says Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode