🔗 Share this article

Across Sweden, around 70 car technicians continue to challenge among the globe's richest companies – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the American automaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now entered its second anniversary, with little sign for a settlement.

One striking worker has been at the electric car company's protest line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a tough period," remarks the 39-year-old. With Sweden's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to become more challenging.

Janis devotes each Monday with a colleague, positioned near an electric vehicle service center on a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a portable construction vehicle, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

However it remains business as usual across the road, at which the service facility seems to operate at full capacity.

The strike involves a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to bargain for wages and conditions on behalf of their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly a century.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Swedish employees are members of a trade union, and ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's a system supported by all parties. "We favor the right to bargain directly with the unions and establish labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However the electric car company has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything which creates a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups try to create conflict within businesses."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market back in 2014, while IF Metall has long sought to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they did not reply," states Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "And we got the belief that they attempted to hide away or not discuss the matter with us."

She states the organization eventually found no alternative than to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to make a warning," says the union leader. "The company usually agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that wages and work terms frequently dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review where he states he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone participated in the industrial action. The company had some one hundred thirty mechanics employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says currently approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has since substituted the striking workers with new workers, for which there is not occurred since the 1930s.

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

"It is not illegal, this being important to understand. But it violates all traditional norms. But the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They want to be convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, listen, you are violating a norm, they see that as a compliment."

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

In fact, the automaker has given just a single press discussion during the entire period after the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it benefited the organization more to avoid a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and provide them the best possible conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take our own such decisions," he stated.

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

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway and Finland, are refusing to process Teslas; rubbish is no longer removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to power networks in the country.

Exists an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 charging units stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station 10km from here," he says. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that this could expand," says Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode