🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, around 70 automotive technicians persist to confront among the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action at the US automaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now reached its second anniversary, with little indication for a resolution.

One striking worker has been on the Tesla picket line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," states the 39-year-old. 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 colleague, positioned outside an electric vehicle service center within a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation in the form of a portable builders' van, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

But it's business as usual nearby, at which the workshop seems to operate at full capacity.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay & working terms representing their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I just disapprove of any arrangement which creates a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told an audience at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups try to generate conflict within businesses."

The automaker entered Sweden back in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has for years sought to secure a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they did not respond," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "We formed the impression that they attempted to hide away or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the organization ultimately found no other option except to call a strike, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to make the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually agrees to the contract."

However not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla several years ago. He claims that pay & conditions frequently dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds he was "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be rejected for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers went out on strike. Tesla had some one hundred thirty technicians working when the strike was initiated. IF Metall states currently around 70 of its members are on strike.

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

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

"It's not against the law, this being important to understand. But it violates all established practices. But Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are violating a standard, they perceive this as praise."

The company's local division declined requests for comment in an email mentioning "record deliveries".

In fact, the company has given just a single press discussion in the two years after the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, the executive, told a business paper that it suited the organization more to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and give them optimal terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was determined by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to take independent such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in its fight. This industrial action has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed power points remain linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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