🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, approximately 70 automotive technicians persist to challenge among the globe's richest corporations – Tesla. This industrial action at the American automaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has currently reached two years of duration, with little sign for a resolution.

One striking worker has been on the Tesla picket line since October 2023.

"It has been a tough time," states the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's cold winter weather arrives, it's likely to grow more challenging.

The mechanic spends every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla garage within an industrial park in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a mobile builders' van, plus hot beverages & sandwiches.

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

This industrial action concerns a matter that goes to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages & conditions on behalf of their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for almost a century.

Currently some seventy percent of Swedish workers belong to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

This is a system supported by all parties. "We prefer the ability to negotiate freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just don't like anything which creates a kind of hierarchical situation," he told listeners in New York last year. "I think labor groups try to create negativity within businesses."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, and IF Metall has long wanted to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to avoid or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She says the union ultimately saw no other option except to announce industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," comments the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay and conditions were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review where he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds 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".

However, not everyone went out on strike. Tesla employed some 130 technicians working when the industrial action was initiated. The union states that today around seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has not occurred since the 1930s.

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

"It's not against the law, which is crucial to recognize. But it violates all established norms. But the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are violating a norm, they see that as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused requests for comment via correspondence mentioning "record deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has given only one press discussion in the two years 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 more to avoid a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and give workers the best possible terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have authorization to make our own such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries and Finland, decline to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points remain connected to the grid in the country.

There is an example near the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

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

With consequences significant for all parties, it is difficult to envision an end to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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