🔗 Share this article

In Sweden, approximately 70 car mechanics continue to confront one of the globe's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike at the US carmaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has currently reached two years of duration, and there is little sign for a settlement.

One striking worker has remained at the electric car company's protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to grow more challenging.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a colleague, positioned near a Tesla garage on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a mobile builders' van, as well as hot beverages & sandwiches.

But it's operations continue normally nearby, at which the workshop appears to be at full capacity.

The strike concerns an issue that goes to the core of Swedish labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages and conditions on behalf of 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 employees are members to labor organizations, while ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement supported by all parties. "We prefer the ability to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But Tesla has upset the apple cart. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told an audience in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups try to create conflict in a company."

The automaker entered Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," states Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to avoid or not discuss the matter with us."

She says the union eventually found no alternative than to call industrial action, which started in late October, last year. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company typically agrees to the agreement."

However not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay & conditions frequently subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he states he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out on strike. The company employed some 130 technicians working when the strike was initiated. IF Metall states that today around 70 of its members are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted these with replacement staff, a situation there is not occurred since the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, which is important to recognize. However it goes against all traditional norms. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to be convention challengers. Thus when anyone informs them, listen, you are violating a norm, they see this as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for comment via correspondence citing "record deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has given only one press discussion in the two years since the strike began.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the organization more not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with employees and provide workers the best possible terms".

The executive rejected that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have a mandate to take independent such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & Finland, are refusing to handle Teslas; rubbish is no longer collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built charging stations remain connected to the grid in the country.

There is one such facility near the capital's airport, where 20 charging units stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from this location," he says. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. The union risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is that that would spread," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode