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In Sweden, around 70 car mechanics persist to challenge among the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike at the US automaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently reached its second anniversary, and there is minimal sign of a resolution.

One striking worker has remained on the electric car company's picket line since October 2023.

"It has been a tough time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, standing outside a Tesla service center on a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter via a mobile construction vehicle, plus hot beverages & sandwiches.

However it's business as usual nearby, at which the workshop appears to be in full swing.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages and working terms representing their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations across the nation for almost a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Scandinavia's workers belong to labor organizations, and ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However Tesla has upset the apple cart. Outspoken CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just don't like anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told an audience in New York last year. "In my view labor groups attempt to create conflict in a company."

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

"Yet they wouldn't respond," states the union president, the union's president. "And we got the impression that they tried to avoid or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She states the organization eventually saw no other option except to announce industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company typically agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that wages and conditions were often subject to the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he says he was denied a salary increase on grounds he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation due to having the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone participated on strike. Tesla had approximately 130 technicians employed at the time the strike was called. IF Metall states currently around 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since substituted these with new workers, for which there is no precedent since the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, this being crucial to understand. However it goes against all established practices. But Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to be norm breakers. Thus when anyone tells them, listen, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for comment in an email mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has granted only one media interview in the two years since the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", the executive, informed a business paper that it suited the company better not to have a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such choices," he said.

The union is not completely alone in this conflict. The strike has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed charging stations are not being connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it is difficult to envision an end to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is how this could expand," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode