🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, around seventy car technicians persist to challenge among the globe's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action at the American carmaker's 10 Swedish service centers has currently entered its second anniversary, with little sign of a resolution.

One striking worker has been on the Tesla protest line since October 2023.

"It's a difficult period," states the 39-year-old. With Sweden's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to grow more challenging.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a fellow worker, positioned near an electric vehicle garage on an industrial park in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter via a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages and light meals.

However it's operations continue normally across the road, at which the service facility seems to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns an issue that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay & conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently approximately 70% of Scandinavia's employees are members of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is an arrangement supported across the board. "We prefer the ability to bargain directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I just disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he told an audience at an event last year. "In my view the unions try to create conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden back in 2014, and IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a labor contract with the automaker.

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

She says the organization ultimately saw no alternative than to announce industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually agrees to the agreement."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that pay and conditions frequently dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review at which he states he was denied an annual pay rise because that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be turned down for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers went out in the industrial action. The company had approximately one hundred thirty technicians employed when the industrial action was initiated. The union states that today approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since replaced the striking workers with new workers, a situation there is no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not illegal, which is important to recognize. However it goes against all traditional practices. But the company doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to become convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see that as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for interview via correspondence mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has granted only one press discussion in the two years after the industrial action began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it benefited the organization better not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and give them the best possible conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take our own such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has been supported by a number of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to process Teslas; waste is no longer removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed power points are not being linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the deadlock. The union risks setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is that this could expand," states the researcher, "and ultimately {erode