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

In Sweden, around seventy car technicians continue to challenge among the globe's richest corporations – Tesla. This industrial action targeting the American automaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached its second anniversary, with minimal indication for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been at the electric car company's picket line starting from October 2023.

"It's a tough time," remarks the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to grow more challenging.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla garage within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter via a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee and light meals.

But it's business as usual nearby, at which the service facility seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay & conditions on behalf of their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees belong of a trade union, while 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

This is a system welcomed by all parties. "We favor the ability to negotiate freely with the unions and establish labor contracts," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a sort of hierarchical situation," he informed listeners in New York last year. "I think the unions attempt to create conflict within businesses."

The automaker came to Sweden back in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they did not reply," says the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to hide away or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the organization ultimately found no other option except to call industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," comments the union leader. "The company usually signs the agreement."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay and conditions frequently dependent on the whim of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused an annual pay rise because that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been turned down for a pay rise because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers went out on strike. Tesla employed approximately one hundred thirty mechanics employed at the time the strike was called. The union says that today around 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation there is not occurred since the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is crucial to understand. However it violates all traditional practices. But the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to become norm breakers. So if anyone informs them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they see that as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for comment in an email citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

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

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it benefited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and give them the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to make our own such decisions," he stated.

The union is not completely alone in this conflict. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & Finland, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is not removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed power points remain linked to the grid across the nation.

There is an example close to the capital's airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is that that would spread," says Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode