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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive technicians persist to confront one of the world's richest companies – Tesla. This industrial action at the US automaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently reached two years of duration, and there is little indication of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the Tesla protest line since October 2023.

"It's a tough time," states the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it is expected to become more challenging.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a colleague, positioned near a Tesla service center within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter in the form of a portable builders' van, as well as coffee and light meals.

However it remains operations continue normally nearby, at which the service facility appears to operate in full swing.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to bargain for wages and working terms on behalf of their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Scandinavia's employees belong to labor organizations, and ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain directly with the unions and establish labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience in New York last year. "I think the unions attempt to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to establish a labor contract with the company.

"But they wouldn't reply," states the union president, the organization's leader. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She states the union eventually found no alternative except to announce a strike, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue a warning," comments the union leader. "The company typically agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment for Tesla several years ago. He asserts that wages and conditions frequently subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he says he was denied an annual pay rise because he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated on strike. The company had approximately one hundred thirty mechanics employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently approximately seventy of its members are on strike.

Tesla has since substituted these with new workers, a situation that has no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, which is crucial to understand. But it goes against all traditional norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They want to be convention challengers. Thus when somebody informs them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they see this as a compliment."

The automaker's local division declined attempts for interview via correspondence citing "record vehicle shipments".

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

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a financial publication that it suited the company better to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide them optimal terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such decisions," he stated.

The union is not completely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & neighboring states, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to the grid across the nation.

There is one such facility near the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it's hard to envision an end to the stand-off. The union risks setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is how that would spread," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode