🔗 Share this article

Across Sweden, approximately 70 car technicians persist to confront among the globe's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the American automaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now reached its second anniversary, and there is minimal indication for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been on the Tesla protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a tough time," remarks the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it is expected to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a colleague, standing near an electric vehicle service center within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a portable builders' van, plus hot beverages and light meals.

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

The strike involves an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for wages and working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported industrial relations across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Today some 70% of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, while ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's a system supported across the board. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just don't like anything that establishes a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners in New York in 2023. "I think the unions attempt to create negativity within businesses."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has long sought to establish a labor contract with the automaker.

"But they wouldn't respond," states the union president, the organization's president. "And we got the impression that they tried to avoid or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She says the organization eventually found no alternative than to call a strike, which started in late October, last year. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," says the union leader. "Employers usually signs the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay & work terms frequently subject to the discretion of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was denied an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was reported to have been rejected for increased compensation because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone went out in the industrial action. Tesla had approximately 130 technicians employed when the strike was initiated. IF Metall states that today approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since replaced the striking workers with new workers, for which there is not occurred since the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

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

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are violating a norm, they see that as a compliment."

The automaker's local division refused attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has given only one press discussion in the two years after the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it suited the company more not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with the team and provide workers optimal conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was determined by US leadership in the US. "We have authorization to take our own such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely alone in this conflict. The strike has been supported by a number of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway and Finland, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and newly built charging stations are not being linked to the grid in the country.

Exists one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 charging units stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from here," he says. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it is difficult to envision an end to the deadlock. The union risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

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