Tesla ended the longest labor conflict in modern Swedish history without signing a collective agreement. The Swedish union IF Metall announced Thursday that it will call off its strike against the electric-car maker on August 19. The walkout reached day 1,021 this week.
According to a report by Yahoo Finance, Tesla offered severance packages to every remaining striking member, and enough of them accepted that IF Metall had no striking members left to represent. The strike began on October 27, 2023, with about 130 Tesla mechanics across seven workshops demanding the collective agreement that covers most Swedish workers.
The conflict had spread well beyond Sweden's borders. Dockworkers blocked Sweden-bound Tesla cars in Denmark, Norway, and Finland. The postal service stopped delivering license plates for new Teslas. Electricians refused Tesla work. All of those sympathy actions end with the strike.
Tesla has no factory in Sweden. The dispute covered only mechanics who service its cars, meaning the direct cost of meeting the union's demands would have been small. The company nonetheless spent nearly three years resisting, rerouting cars around port blockades and pursuing legal challenges where it could. Tesla has never signed a collective agreement with IF Metall, and conceding one in Sweden could have handed organizers elsewhere in Europe a working template.
Neither side has disclosed what the buyout packages cost. Whatever the total, it is a small number relative to the company's scale. Tesla generated $28.2 billion in revenue in the second quarter of 2026 alone.
The company's financial position has changed considerably since the strike began. Revenue in the second quarter rose 26% year over year to $28.2 billion, and Tesla delivered a second-quarter record of 480,126 vehicles, up 25%. But its operating margin collapsed to 1.4% from 4.1% a year earlier, as operating expenses jumped 47% year over year and lower average selling prices pulled profitability down. Net income fell 5% to $1.11 billion. Free cash flow swung to negative $1.1 billion.
Capital expenditures soared 142% to $5.79 billion, part of a plan to spend more than $25 billion this year on artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The union acknowledged in ending the fight that its core issue remains unresolved. Tesla did not sign a collective agreement, which was the original demand when mechanics walked off the job in the fall of 2023. IF Metall called off the strike after its membership among striking workers was reduced to zero through the buyout offers.