The striking Swedish workers taking on carmaker Tesla

In Sweden 70 automobile mechanics are persevering with to tackle one of many world’s richest firms – Tesla. The strike on the US carmaker’s 10 Swedish service centres has now reached its second anniversary, and there’s little prospect of a decision.

Janis Kuzma has been on the Tesla picket line since October 2023.

“It is a powerful time,” says the 39-year-old. And as Sweden’s chilly winter climate units in, it is prone to grow to be more durable.

Janis spends every Monday with a colleague, standing exterior a Tesla storage on an industrial park in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, gives lodging within the type of a cellular builders’ van, in addition to espresso and sandwiches.

However it’s enterprise as common throughout the highway, the place the workshop seems to be in full swing.

The strike considerations a problem that goes to the center of Swedish industrial tradition – the precise of commerce unions to barter pay and situations on behalf of their members. This idea of collective settlement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for practically a century.

At present some 70% of Swedish employees are members of a commerce union, and 90% are coated by a collective settlement. Strikes in Sweden are uncommon.

It is an association welcomed throughout the board. “We want the precise to barter freely with the unions and signal collective agreements,” says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise enterprise organisation.

However Tesla has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief government Elon Musk has stated he “disagrees” with the concept of unions. “I simply do not like something which creates a form of lords and peasants kind of factor,” he advised an viewers in New York in 2023. “I believe the unions attempt to create negativity in an organization.”

Tesla got here to Sweden again in 2014, and IF Metall has lengthy wished to safe a collective settlement with the corporate.

“However they would not reply,” says Marie Nilsson, the union’s president. “And we obtained the impression that they tried to cover away or not focus on this with us.”

She says the union finally noticed no different choice than to announce a strike, which began on 27 October, 2023. “Normally it is sufficient to make the menace,” says Ms Nilsson. “The corporate normally indicators the settlement.”

However not on this case.

Janis Kuzma, who’s initially from Latvia, began working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay and situations had been usually depending on the whim of managers.

He recollects a efficiency evaluate at which he says he was refused an annual pay rise as a result of he was “not reaching Tesla’s objectives”. In the meantime, a colleague was stated to have been turned down for a pay rise as a result of he had the “improper perspective”.

Nonetheless, not everybody went out on strike. Tesla had some 130 mechanics working on the time the commercial motion was referred to as. IF Metall says that immediately round 70 of its members are on strike.

Tesla has lengthy since changed these with new employees, for which there isn’t a precedent for the reason that Thirties.

“Tesla has executed it [found replacement staff] overtly and systematically,” says German Bender, a researcher at Enviornment Idé, a assume tank financed by Swedish commerce unions.

“It is not unlawful, which is necessary to grasp. However it goes towards all established norms. However Tesla does not care about norms.

“They wish to be norm breakers. So if someone tells them, hey, you’re breaking a norm, they see that as a praise.”

The BBC requested to talk to Tesla’s subsidiary, TM Sweden, however the request was declined in an e-mail citing “all-time excessive deliveries”.

Certainly, the corporate has given just one media interview within the two years for the reason that strike started.

In March 2024, TM Sweden’s “nation lead”, Jens Stark, advised the enterprise paper Dagens Industri that it suited the corporate higher to not have a collective settlement, and as an alternative “to work carefully with the workforce and provides them the very best situations”.

Mr Stark denied that the choice to not enter a collective settlement was one made at Tesla headquarter within the US. “We have now a mandate to make our personal such choices,” he stated.

IF Metall just isn’t completely alone in its struggle. The strike has been supported by numerous different unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway and Finland, are refusing to deal with Teslas; garbage is not collected from Tesla’s Swedish services; and newly constructed charging stations aren’t being linked to the grid within the nation.

There may be one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, the place 20 chargers stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of lovers group Tesla Membership Sweden, says Tesla homeowners are unaffected by the strike.

“There’s one other charging station 10km (six miles) from right here,” he says. “And we will nonetheless purchase our automobiles, we will service our automobiles, we will cost our automobiles.”

With stakes excessive on either side, it is exhausting to see an finish to the stand-off. IF Metall dangers setting a precedent if it concedes the precept of collective settlement.

“The priority is that that may unfold,” says Mr Bender, “and finally erode the sturdy help for the labour market mannequin that we now have amongst employers as nicely”.

Tesla, alternatively, could really feel that conceding this struggle in Sweden would strengthen the hand of those that wish to unionise Tesla at its manufacturing services within the US and Germany, the place it employs tens of 1000’s of employees.

Mr Bender detects another excuse for the place Tesla has taken. “I believe it is necessary to grasp that Elon Musk does not wish to be kind of advised how you can do issues,” he says.

“And I believe he does not view the commercial motion that the union has taken as an invite to barter, however slightly as an ultimatum to signal a dotted line that he does not wish to signal.”

Mr Blomhäll of Tesla Membership Sweden additionally says he sees no fast resolution. “This shall be one other Korean Warfare,” he says. “A battle that simply drags on.”