Swedish Car Mechanics Participate in Extended Labor Dispute Against Carmaker Tesla

In Sweden, around seventy automotive technicians continue to confront one of the world's wealthiest companies – Tesla. The labor strike targeting the American carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has now entered its second anniversary, with little sign for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been on the Tesla picket line starting from October 2023.

"It's a difficult period," states the 39-year-old. And as the nation's cold winter weather arrives, it's likely to grow more challenging.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a fellow worker, standing near a Tesla garage on a business district in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, plus hot beverages & light meals.

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

This industrial action involves an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to bargain for wages and working terms representing their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations across the nation for nearly a century.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish employees belong to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's a system welcomed across the board. "We prefer the ability to bargain freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed listeners in New York last year. "I think labor groups attempt to create negativity within businesses."

The automaker came to Sweden back in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," says Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or not discuss the matter with us."

She states the union ultimately saw no alternative than to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," comments the union leader. "Employers usually signs the contract."

But not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, started working with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay & work terms frequently subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was denied an annual pay rise because he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been rejected for increased compensation due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out on strike. The company had approximately one hundred thirty technicians employed when the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says that today approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since replaced these with replacement staff, for which there is no precedent since the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

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

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive this as a compliment."

The automaker's local division declined requests for comment in an email citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has granted just a single media interview in the two years after the strike began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, told a business paper that it suited the organization better not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with the team and give them optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such decisions," he stated.

The union is not entirely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway & Finland, decline to process Teslas; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed power points remain linked to power networks across the nation.

There is an example near the capital's airport, where 20 chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

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

With consequences significant on both sides, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the deadlock. The union risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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