🔗 Share this article

Across Sweden, approximately seventy automotive mechanics persist to challenge one of the globe's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike at the American automaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has currently entered its second anniversary, and there is little indication of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the electric car company's picket line starting from October 2023.

"It's a tough time," states the 39-year-old. With Sweden's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

Janis devotes each Monday with a fellow worker, standing outside an electric vehicle service center within a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee and sandwiches.

However it's business as usual nearby, at which the workshop appears to be in full swing.

The strike concerns a matter that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate wages and working terms representing their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics across the nation for nearly a century.

Today some 70% of Scandinavia's employees belong to labor organizations, while ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement supported by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a sort of hierarchical situation," he told an audience at an event in 2023. "In my view the unions attempt to create conflict within businesses."

Tesla entered Sweden starting in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"But they did not reply," says the union president, the union's president. "We formed the belief that they tried to hide away or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She says the organization eventually saw no other option except to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to make the threat," says the union leader. "Employers usually agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay & work terms frequently subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he says he was refused an annual pay rise because that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to be rejected for increased compensation due to having the "wrong attitude".

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

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

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," says German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, which is crucial to recognize. But it violates all traditional practices. Yet Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. So if somebody tells them, hey, you are violating a norm, they perceive that as praise."

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

Indeed, the company has given only one press discussion in the two years since the industrial action began.

In March 2024, 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 the team and provide workers the best possible terms".

The executive rejected that the decision not to enter a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to take our own such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has been supported by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations remain linked to the grid across the nation.

There is an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 charging units remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is how this could expand," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode