Swedish Auto Mechanics Engage in Extended Industrial Action With Automotive Giant Tesla

Across Sweden, around 70 automotive technicians persist to confront among the globe's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the American carmaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has currently entered its second anniversary, and there is minimal indication for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been on the Tesla protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a tough time," states the 39-year-old. And as the nation's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to become more challenging.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, positioned near an electric vehicle service center on an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides shelter via a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it's business as usual across the road, where the service facility appears to operate 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 working terms representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish workers are members to labor organizations, while ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is an arrangement supported by all parties. "We favor the right to bargain freely with the unions and establish collective agreements," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But Tesla has upset the apple cart. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told listeners at an event last year. "In my view the unions try to create negativity in a company."

Tesla entered Sweden back in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"But they wouldn't reply," says the union president, the union's leader. "And we got the impression that they attempted to hide away or not discuss this with our representatives."

She says the organization ultimately found no alternative than to call industrial action, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically signs the agreement."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that wages and conditions were often dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a colleague was said to have been turned down for increased compensation due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated in the industrial action. The company employed some 130 technicians employed at the time the industrial action was called. The union states that today approximately 70 of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since replaced the striking workers with new workers, for which there is not occurred since the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, which is important to understand. However it goes against all traditional practices. Yet the company doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to be convention challengers. So if anyone tells them, hey, you are violating a norm, they see this as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for comment via correspondence citing "record vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has given only one press discussion in the two years since the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the organization better not to have a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and provide workers optimal terms".

The executive denied that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was one made by US leadership in the US. "We have a mandate to make independent such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely alone in this conflict. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to process 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 across the nation.

There is one such facility close to the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can power our cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it's hard to envision an end to the stand-off. IF Metall risks setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is that this could expand," says Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode