Swedish Car Mechanics Participate in Extended Industrial Action With Carmaker Tesla

In Sweden, approximately 70 car mechanics persist to challenge one of the world's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. This labor strike at the American automaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has now reached two years of duration, with minimal sign of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the electric car company's picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

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

Janis spends each Monday alongside a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla service center within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter via a mobile construction vehicle, plus coffee & sandwiches.

But it's business as usual across the road, at which the workshop 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 pay and conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for almost a century.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish workers are members to labor organizations, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just don't like anything which creates a kind of hierarchical situation," he informed an audience at an event in 2023. "In my view the unions attempt to generate negativity in a company."

The automaker entered Sweden starting in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has long sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"But they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the impression that they tried to avoid or not discuss the matter with us."

She says the union ultimately found no other option except to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make a warning," says the union leader. "The company typically agrees to the agreement."

But not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that wages & conditions were often dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he states he was refused a salary increase because he was "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to be turned down for a pay rise because having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out on strike. Tesla employed approximately 130 mechanics employed at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall states that today around seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," states German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is important to recognize. However it violates all established practices. Yet Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. Thus when somebody informs them, hey, you are violating a standard, they see this as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for interview in an email mentioning "record deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has given just a single media interview during the entire period after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the organization better to avoid a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and provide them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to take independent such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and Finland, are refusing to handle Teslas; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to power networks in the country.

There is an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty chargers remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall risks setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is how that would spread," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode