Scandinavian Car Mechanics Engage in Extended Labor Dispute Against Carmaker Tesla

Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics persist to challenge among the globe's richest corporations – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the US automaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has now reached two years of duration, and there is minimal indication for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been on the electric car company's picket line since October 2023.

"It has been a tough period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's chilly winter weather sets in, it's likely to become more challenging.

Janis spends each Monday alongside a colleague, positioned near a Tesla service center on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages & sandwiches.

But it remains business as usual nearby, at which the workshop seems to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns a matter that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages and conditions representing their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly a century.

Today approximately 70% of Scandinavia's employees belong to labor organizations, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is an arrangement supported by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with the unions and establish labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However the electric car company has upset established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told listeners at an event in 2023. "In my view labor groups attempt to create negativity in a company."

Tesla entered Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has long wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"But they wouldn't reply," states the union president, the union's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to hide away or evade discussing the matter with us."

She says the union eventually found no alternative than to call a strike, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," says the union leader. "Employers usually agrees to the agreement."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla several years ago. He claims that wages and work terms frequently subject to the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated on strike. Tesla employed approximately one hundred thirty technicians working at the time the strike was initiated. The union states that today around seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced these with new workers, for which there is not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," says German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, which is crucial to understand. However it violates all traditional norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to be norm breakers. Thus when anyone tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as praise."

The company's local division refused attempts for comment in an email mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has granted only one press discussion in the two years since the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a business paper that it benefited the organization better not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and give them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such decisions," he stated.

The union is not entirely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Norway and neighboring states, decline to process Teslas; rubbish is no longer collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed power points remain connected to the grid in the country.

There is one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 charging units remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station 10km from here," he says. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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