Scandinavian Auto Technicians Engage in Prolonged Labor Dispute With Automotive Giant Tesla

Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics persist to confront among the globe's richest companies – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the US automaker's ten Swedish service centers has now reached two years of duration, with little sign for a resolution.

One striking worker has remained on the Tesla protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult time," remarks the 39-year-old. And as the nation's chilly winter weather sets in, it's likely to become more challenging.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, standing outside an electric vehicle service center on a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, supplies accommodation via a portable construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages & sandwiches.

But it's business as usual across the road, where the service facility seems to be at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns a matter that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to bargain for wages and working terms on behalf of their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has supported industrial relations across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers belong of a trade union, and 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's a system welcomed across the board. "We prefer the ability to negotiate directly with the unions and establish collective agreements," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But Tesla has upset the apple cart. Outspoken CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a kind of hierarchical situation," he informed listeners in New York in 2023. "I think the unions try to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla entered Sweden back in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they wouldn't reply," says the union president, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to hide away or not discuss the matter with us."

She says the organization eventually found no alternative than to call industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

But this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that wages & conditions frequently subject to the whim of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review at which he states he was denied a salary increase because that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been rejected for increased compensation due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. Tesla employed some 130 mechanics employed when the strike was initiated. The union says that today around 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which there is no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, this being important to understand. But it violates all established practices. Yet Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They want to become convention challengers. Thus when somebody tells them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they see that as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

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

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a business paper that it suited the company more not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "We have a mandate to take independent such choices," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and Finland, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to power networks in the country.

Exists one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is that this could expand," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode