🔗 Share this article

Across Sweden, approximately 70 car technicians continue to challenge one of the globe's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the US automaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has now entered two years of duration, and there is minimal sign of a resolution.

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

"It has been a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it is expected to become even tougher.

Janis spends each Monday alongside a colleague, standing near a Tesla garage on a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages and light meals.

However it remains operations continue normally across the road, at which the service facility seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to negotiate wages & working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish workers belong to labor organizations, and ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

It's a system welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like any arrangement which creates a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience at an event last year. "In my view the unions try to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market back in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has long sought to secure a labor contract with the company.

"But they did not respond," states the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the belief that they tried to hide away or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She states the union ultimately saw no other option than to call a strike, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that wages and conditions frequently subject to the discretion of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was denied an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for increased compensation due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed approximately 130 mechanics working when the industrial action was called. The union states that today around 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced these with new workers, for which there is no precedent since the Great Depression.

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

"It's not illegal, this being important to recognize. However it violates all established norms. Yet the company doesn't care about norms.

"They want to be convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, hey, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "record deliveries".

In fact, the company has granted only one press discussion during the entire period since the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a business paper that it suited the company better not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers optimal terms".

The executive denied that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported from several of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway & neighboring states, are refusing to process Teslas; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while newly built charging stations remain connected to the grid across the nation.

There is one such facility close to the capital's airport, where twenty charging units stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is how that would spread," says Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode