Swedish Car Mechanics Participate in Prolonged Industrial Action Against Automotive Giant Tesla

Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront among the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached two years of duration, with little indication of a resolution.

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

"It has been a tough time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to grow even tougher.

Janis spends each Monday alongside a colleague, standing near a Tesla garage on a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation via a portable builders' van, plus coffee & sandwiches.

However it remains operations continue normally nearby, at which the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to negotiate pay & working terms on behalf of their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics across the nation for almost a century.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, while ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We favor the right to bargain freely with the unions and establish labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However Tesla has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I just disapprove of any arrangement which creates a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told an audience in New York in 2023. "In my view labor groups try to create negativity in a company."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has for years sought to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"But they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the impression that they attempted to hide away or not discuss this with our representatives."

She says the union ultimately found no other option than to call industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to make the threat," comments the union leader. "The company usually signs the contract."

However not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions frequently subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he states he was denied a salary increase on grounds he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be rejected for a pay rise because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed approximately one hundred thirty mechanics working at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently around 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, this being important to recognize. But it violates all established norms. But the company doesn't care about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. Thus when anyone informs them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they perceive this as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for comment in an email citing "record vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has given just a single press discussion in the two years after the strike started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the organization more to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with the team and give workers the best possible conditions".

The executive denied that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make our own such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, are refusing to process Teslas; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed power points are not being linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists one such facility near the capital's airport, where twenty chargers stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it's hard to envision an end to the stand-off. The union risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is how this could expand," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode