Swedish Auto Mechanics Participate in Extended Industrial Action Against Automotive Giant Tesla

Across Sweden, approximately 70 automotive mechanics persist to challenge among the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike targeting the American carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has now entered two years of duration, with minimal indication for a resolution.

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

"It has been a difficult period," states the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's chilly winter weather sets in, it is expected to grow more challenging.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned outside an electric vehicle service center within a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, supplies accommodation in the form of a portable builders' van, plus coffee & sandwiches.

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

This industrial action concerns a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for pay & conditions representing their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Today approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, and 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the ability to bargain directly with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of anything which creates a sort of lords and peasants situation," he informed an audience in New York last year. "In my view labor groups try to create negativity within businesses."

The automaker came to Sweden starting in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has long sought to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they wouldn't reply," says the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the impression that they tried to avoid or evade discussing this with us."

She says the organization ultimately saw no other option than to call a strike, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically agrees to the contract."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages and conditions were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused a salary increase because he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to have been turned down for increased compensation because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed approximately 130 mechanics working when the industrial action was called. The union says currently around 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

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

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," states German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, this being crucial to recognize. But it goes against all traditional norms. But Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to become convention challengers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see that as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for interview via correspondence mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has given just a single media interview in the two years after the strike started.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, the executive, told a business paper that it suited the organization better not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and provide workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was determined by US leadership in the US. "We have a mandate to take independent such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely alone in this conflict. The strike has received backing by a number of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, decline to process Teslas; waste is not collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to power networks in the country.

There is an example close to the capital's airport, at which 20 charging units stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the deadlock. The union risks setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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