Scandinavian Car Technicians Participate in Prolonged Industrial Action Against Automotive Giant Tesla

Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the US automaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has now reached its second anniversary, with little indication for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been at the electric car company's protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to become more challenging.

The mechanic devotes each Monday with a colleague, standing outside a Tesla service center on a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, supplies accommodation in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, plus hot beverages & light meals.

However it remains operations continue normally nearby, at which the workshop appears to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action involves a matter that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate wages & conditions on behalf of their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly a century.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's employees belong to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement supported across the board. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Vocal CEO the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement which creates a sort of lords and peasants situation," he informed listeners in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups attempt to create negativity in a company."

Tesla came to Sweden starting in 2014, while IF Metall has for years sought to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they did not reply," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She says the organization eventually saw no alternative except to call industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to make the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the contract."

However not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay and conditions were often dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review where he says he was refused an annual pay rise because he was "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a colleague was reported to be turned down for a pay rise because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers participated on strike. Tesla had approximately one hundred thirty technicians employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union says that today approximately 70 of its members are on strike.

Tesla has long since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation there is not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not illegal, this being important to understand. But it violates all traditional practices. But Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to become norm breakers. Thus when anyone tells them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they see this as praise."

The automaker's local division declined attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has given just a single press discussion in the two years after the strike began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it suited the organization better to avoid a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and provide workers optimal conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the decision to avoid a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have a mandate to make independent such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in its fight. The strike has been supported by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and Finland, decline to handle Teslas; rubbish is no longer collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed power points remain connected to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, where twenty charging units stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

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

With stakes significant on both sides, it is difficult to see a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

"The concern is that that would spread," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode