🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, around 70 automotive technicians continue to confront one of the world's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the US automaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has currently entered its second anniversary, with little sign of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been on the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

"It's a tough period," states the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to grow even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla garage on a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter in the form of a portable builders' van, plus hot beverages & sandwiches.

But it's business as usual across the road, at which the service facility appears to operate in full swing.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay & conditions representing their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, while ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement supported across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with the unions and establish labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement which creates a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told listeners at an event last year. "In my view the unions try to create conflict within businesses."

Tesla entered Sweden back in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"But they wouldn't reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "And we got the belief that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She says the union ultimately saw no alternative except to announce industrial action, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to issue a warning," says the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, started working with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay & conditions were often dependent on the whim of managers.

He recalls a performance review where he says he was denied a salary increase because that he "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated on strike. The company had some 130 mechanics employed when the strike was called. The union states currently around seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation there is not occurred since the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," says German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to recognize. But it goes against all traditional norms. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they see this as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "record deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has given only one media interview in the two years since the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a business paper that it benefited the organization better not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the choice to avoid a labor contract was determined by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to take independent such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to process Teslas; waste is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations remain linked to power networks in the country.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it's hard to see an end to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

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