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In Sweden, around seventy car mechanics persist to confront among the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the American automaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached two years of duration, and there is minimal indication of a settlement.

One striking worker has remained on the electric car company's picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," states the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

Janis spends every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla garage on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, plus hot beverages & sandwiches.

But it remains operations continue normally nearby, where the service facility seems to be at full capacity.

This industrial action involves a matter that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate wages and conditions representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for almost a century.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, and ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's a system supported across the board. "We prefer the right to negotiate freely with the unions and sign labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants situation," he informed listeners in New York last year. "I think the unions attempt to create conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden back in 2014, while IF Metall has for years sought to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they did not reply," says Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "And we got the belief that they attempted to avoid or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She states the union eventually saw no other option than to call industrial action, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Usually it's enough to issue the threat," says the union leader. "Employers usually agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay and conditions frequently dependent on the whim of managers.

He recalls a performance review where he states he was denied an annual pay rise because he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to have been rejected for a pay rise due to having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. The company employed approximately 130 technicians working when the strike was initiated. The union says that today approximately 70 of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with new workers, for which that has no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, this being important to understand. But it goes against all established norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They aim to be convention challengers. So if somebody tells them, hey, you are violating a norm, they see this as praise."

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

In fact, the company has granted only one media interview during the entire period since the strike started.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", the executive, informed a financial publication that it benefited the organization better to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with the team and provide them the best possible terms".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have authorization to make independent such decisions," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway and Finland, decline to process Teslas; rubbish is not collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and newly built charging stations remain linked to power networks in the country.

There is an example near the capital's airport, at which 20 chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from here," he comments. "And we can still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

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