Swedish Auto Mechanics Participate in Extended Labor Dispute With Automotive Giant Tesla

In Sweden, around 70 car mechanics persist to challenge among the world's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. The labor strike targeting the US automaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has currently entered two years of duration, and there is little sign for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been on the electric car company's picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it's likely to become more challenging.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a colleague, positioned near a Tesla service center on an industrial park in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a portable builders' van, plus coffee & light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, at which the workshop appears to be at full capacity.

The strike concerns a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay & conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly a century.

Today some 70% of Swedish employees are members to labor organizations, while ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

This is a system welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to bargain directly with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of anything which creates a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners in New York in 2023. "In my view labor groups attempt to create negativity in a company."

The automaker came to Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they wouldn't respond," states Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to hide away or not discuss this with us."

She says the union ultimately found no alternative except to announce a strike, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that pay & work terms were often dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review at which he states he was denied an annual pay rise because he was "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to be turned down for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla had some 130 mechanics working at the time the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says currently approximately seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with new workers, a situation that has no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

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

"They aim to become convention challengers. So if somebody tells them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they see that as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for comment via correspondence mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the company has given only one press discussion during the entire period after the strike began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the organization better to avoid a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and provide workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision not to enter a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such choices," he stated.

The union is not entirely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway and Finland, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is not collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed power points remain linked to power networks across the nation.

There is one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from here," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the deadlock. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

"The concern is that this could expand," says Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode