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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront one of the world's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. This industrial action targeting the US carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached two years of duration, with little indication for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been at the Tesla protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," remarks the 39-year-old. With Sweden's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday with a colleague, positioned outside an electric vehicle service center on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation via a mobile construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it's operations continue normally across the road, at which the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to bargain for wages and working terms on behalf of their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics across the nation for nearly a century.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's workers belong to labor organizations, while ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is a system supported across the board. "We favor the right to bargain directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told an audience in New York last year. "I think the unions attempt to create conflict in a company."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has long sought to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they did not respond," states the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to hide away or not discuss this with us."

She says the organization eventually found no alternative than to announce a strike, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to make a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

But this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla several years ago. He claims that wages and conditions frequently dependent on the discretion of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he says he was denied a salary increase because he was "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to be turned down for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed some 130 technicians employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union states currently around 70 of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has since replaced these with new workers, a situation that has not occurred since the 1930s.

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

"It is not against the law, this being important to recognize. But it violates all established practices. But the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive this as a compliment."

The company's local division refused attempts for interview via correspondence mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has given just a single press discussion during the entire period since the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it suited the company more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to work closely with employees and give workers the best possible terms".

The executive denied that the choice to avoid a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to take independent such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and Finland, decline to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is not collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while newly built charging stations remain connected to the grid in the country.

Exists an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 chargers stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can power our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall risks setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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