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

In Sweden, approximately seventy car mechanics persist to challenge among the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has now entered two years of duration, and there is little indication for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the Tesla picket line starting from October 2023.

"It's a tough period," remarks the 39-year-old. With the nation's chilly winter weather sets in, it is expected to become more challenging.

The mechanic devotes each Monday with a fellow worker, positioned near an electric vehicle garage on an industrial park in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation via a mobile construction vehicle, plus coffee and sandwiches.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, at which the workshop seems to be in full swing.

The strike involves an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay and conditions representing their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish employees belong to labor organizations, while 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement supported by all parties. "We prefer the ability to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants situation," he informed listeners at an event last year. "In my view labor groups attempt to generate negativity in a company."

Tesla entered Sweden starting in 2014, while IF Metall has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the union's leader. "And we got the impression that they attempted to avoid or not discuss the matter with us."

She states the organization eventually found no alternative than to call industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," comments the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

But not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay and work terms were often subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he states he was refused an annual pay rise because he was "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out in the industrial action. The company employed some 130 technicians employed when the strike was initiated. The union says that today approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

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

"It's not illegal, this being important to recognize. But it violates all established practices. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see this as a compliment."

The company's local division declined attempts for interview via correspondence citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has granted only one press discussion during the entire period after the industrial action began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", the executive, informed a financial publication that it suited the company better not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers optimal conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was one made by US leadership overseas. "We have a mandate to make our own such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing by a number of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway & Finland, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; waste is not removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations remain connected to power networks in the country.

Exists one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 chargers remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from here," he says. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it's hard to see a resolution to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

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