🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, around 70 automotive technicians continue to challenge among the globe's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the US automaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now reached its second anniversary, with minimal indication for a resolution.

One striking worker has remained at the electric car company's protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to grow more challenging.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a colleague, standing outside an electric vehicle garage within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a portable construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it's business as usual across the road, where the workshop appears to operate in full swing.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the core of Swedish labor traditions – the right of trade unions to bargain for wages & working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for nearly a century.

Currently some seventy percent of Swedish employees belong to labor organizations, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However Tesla has upset the apple cart. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I simply don't like anything which creates a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience at an event last year. "In my view labor groups attempt to create conflict in a company."

Tesla came to Sweden back in 2014, and IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they did not respond," states Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "And we got the belief that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She states the union eventually saw no other option than to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, last year. "Typically it's enough to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually agrees to the contract."

But not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay & work terms frequently dependent on the discretion of managers.

He recalls a performance review at which he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to have been rejected for increased compensation because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated on strike. Tesla employed approximately 130 mechanics employed when the strike was called. IF Metall says currently approximately 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced these with new workers, for which there is not occurred since the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," says German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is important to recognize. However it goes against all traditional norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to be convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see this as praise."

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

Indeed, the company has given only one media interview in the two years after the strike began.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, the executive, told a business paper that it suited the organization more not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with the team and provide workers optimal conditions".

The executive denied that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "We have authorization to take our own such choices," he said.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to process Teslas; rubbish is not removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points are not being connected to power networks across the nation.

There is an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station six miles from here," he says. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can power our cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it's hard to envision a resolution to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is how this could expand," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode