Scandinavian Car Technicians Participate in Prolonged Labor Dispute With Carmaker Tesla

Across Sweden, around 70 automotive technicians continue to confront one of the world's wealthiest companies – Tesla. The labor strike targeting the US automaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has now entered its second anniversary, and there is minimal indication for a resolution.

One striking worker has been at the electric car company's picket line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a tough time," states the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to grow even tougher.

Janis devotes each Monday with a fellow worker, standing outside a Tesla service center within a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, supplies shelter in the form of a portable construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

However it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the service facility appears to operate at full capacity.

The strike involves a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right of trade unions to bargain for wages and working terms on behalf of their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today some 70% of Scandinavia's workers belong to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's a system supported by all parties. "We favor the right to negotiate freely with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However the electric car company has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I just don't like anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he informed listeners in New York last year. "I think labor groups try to generate negativity in a company."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years wanted to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they did not respond," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to avoid or not discuss the matter with us."

She states the union eventually saw no alternative than to announce a strike, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the contract."

But not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, began employment for Tesla several years ago. He asserts that pay and work terms were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused a salary increase because he was "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a colleague was said to have been rejected for increased compensation due to having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla had approximately 130 technicians employed at the time the industrial action was called. The union says that today around seventy of its members are on strike.

Tesla has long since replaced these with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," states German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

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

"They want to become norm breakers. Thus when somebody informs them, listen, you are violating a norm, they perceive that as a compliment."

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

In fact, the company has granted just a single press discussion during the entire period after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it benefited the company better not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and provide them the best possible terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to make our own such decisions," he said.

The union is not entirely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while newly built charging stations remain connected to the grid in the country.

Exists one such facility close to the capital's airport, where twenty chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

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

With consequences significant for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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