🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, around seventy automotive technicians persist to challenge one of the world's richest corporations – Tesla. This industrial action at the US automaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has now reached two years of duration, with little sign for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the Tesla protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult time," states the 39-year-old. And as the nation's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to become more challenging.

Janis devotes each Monday with a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla garage within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation via a portable construction vehicle, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

But it's business as usual across the road, where the workshop seems to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action involves an issue that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for wages & conditions representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Currently some seventy percent of Swedish workers belong to labor organizations, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

This is an arrangement supported by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just don't like any arrangement which creates a sort of lords and peasants situation," he told listeners at an event last year. "In my view the unions attempt to create negativity in a company."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market back in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has long wanted to secure a labor contract with the company.

"But they wouldn't respond," says Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "And we got the belief that they tried to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She states the organization eventually found no other option except to announce industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to issue the threat," says the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

However this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that pay and work terms frequently dependent on the discretion of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was refused a salary increase because he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a coworker was reported to be turned down for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers participated on strike. The company employed approximately 130 technicians working when the industrial action was initiated. The union states currently approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

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

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," says German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is important to recognize. But it goes against all established norms. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when anyone informs them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they see this as praise."

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

In fact, the automaker has granted just a single media interview during the entire period after the industrial action started.

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

Mr Stark denied that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway & Finland, decline to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while newly built charging stations remain connected to the grid in the country.

Exists an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station 10km from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it's hard to see an end to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

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