🔗 Share this article

Across Sweden, approximately 70 car mechanics persist to challenge one of the globe's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike at the US automaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has currently entered two years of duration, and there is little sign for a resolution.

One striking worker has remained at the electric car company's picket line since October 2023.

"It has been a tough period," states the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, standing outside a Tesla service center within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation via a mobile builders' van, as well as hot beverages and light meals.

However it remains business as usual nearby, where the workshop appears to be in full swing.

The strike involves an issue that reaches to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to bargain for pay and conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today some 70% of Swedish employees belong of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is an arrangement supported across the board. "We favor the right to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply don't like any arrangement which creates a kind of hierarchical situation," he told an audience at an event last year. "In my view labor groups try to create conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden starting in 2014, and IF Metall has long wanted to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "And we got the belief that they tried to hide away or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the organization ultimately saw no other option than to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically signs the agreement."

However not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that pay & work terms frequently subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused a salary increase because he was "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed some 130 technicians employed when the strike was initiated. The union states that today approximately seventy of its members are on strike.

The automaker has since substituted these with new workers, for which there is no precedent since the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is important to understand. But it goes against all traditional practices. Yet Tesla doesn't care about norms.

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

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for comment in an email citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has granted only one press discussion in the two years since the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it benefited the organization more to avoid a union contract, and instead "to work closely with the team and give workers optimal terms".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such decisions," he stated.

The union is not entirely alone in its fight. This industrial action has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & neighboring states, decline to process Teslas; waste is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built charging stations remain linked to power networks in the country.

There is one such facility near the capital's airport, at which 20 charging units stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station six miles from this location," he says. "And we can still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that this could expand," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode