🔗 Share this article

Across Sweden, around seventy car technicians persist to confront among the world's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This industrial action targeting the American carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently reached two years of duration, and there is minimal sign of a settlement.

One striking worker has remained on the electric car company's picket line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to become more challenging.

The mechanic devotes each Monday with a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla garage within a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation via a mobile construction vehicle, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

However it's business as usual across the road, where the workshop appears to operate at full capacity.

The strike concerns a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay and working terms on behalf of their members. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees belong of a trade union, and 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

This is a system supported across the board. "We favor the right to negotiate directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York last year. "I think the unions attempt to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years sought to secure a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they did not respond," says the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the impression that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She says the organization eventually saw no alternative except to call a strike, which started on 27 October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

However not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He claims that wages and work terms frequently subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for a pay rise because having the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone participated in the industrial action. The company employed approximately 130 technicians employed at the time the strike was initiated. The union states that today approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since substituted these with new workers, a situation there is not occurred since the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, this being crucial to understand. However it goes against all established norms. Yet the company doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to be norm breakers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are violating a standard, they see that as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for comment in an email mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has given just a single media interview during the entire period since the strike started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, informed a financial publication that it benefited the organization more not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and give them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while newly built charging stations are not being linked to the grid in the country.

There is an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from here," he says. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the deadlock. The union risks setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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