🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics persist to confront among the globe's richest corporations – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the American automaker's 10 Swedish service centers has now entered two years of duration, and there is little sign of a settlement.

One striking worker has remained at the Tesla protest line starting from October 2023.

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

The mechanic devotes every start of the week alongside a colleague, standing outside a Tesla garage on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, as well as coffee and light meals.

However it remains business as usual across the road, where the workshop seems to be in full swing.

The strike involves a matter that reaches to the heart of Swedish labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay & working terms representing their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for almost one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish employees are members to labor organizations, while ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

It's a system welcomed by all parties. "We favor the ability to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants situation," he informed an audience at an event last year. "In my view labor groups try to create conflict in a company."

The automaker came to Sweden starting in 2014, while IF Metall has long sought to establish a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they did not reply," states the union president, the union's leader. "And we got the impression that they tried to hide away or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She states the organization ultimately saw no other option than to call industrial action, beginning in late October, last year. "Typically it's enough to issue a warning," says the union leader. "The company typically agrees to the agreement."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions were often subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he says he was denied a salary increase on grounds he was "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be rejected for increased compensation because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers went out on strike. The company employed approximately 130 technicians employed at the time the industrial action was called. The union says that today approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since replaced these with new workers, a situation that has not occurred since the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, this being important to recognize. But it goes against all traditional practices. Yet the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They want to be convention challengers. Thus when somebody informs them, listen, you are violating a standard, they perceive this as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for interview in an email citing "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has granted only one press discussion in the two years after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and give them optimal terms".

The executive denied that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to process the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points are not being linked to the grid in the country.

There is one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty charging units remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can still buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it is difficult to see a resolution to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is how this could expand," states the researcher, "and ultimately {erode