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In Sweden, around seventy car mechanics continue to challenge among the globe's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This labor strike at the US carmaker's 10 Swedish service centers has currently entered two years of duration, with little sign of a resolution.

One striking worker has remained at the electric car company's picket line starting from October 2023.

"It's a difficult period," states the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to become even tougher.

The mechanic spends each Monday with a fellow worker, positioned outside an electric vehicle garage within a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides accommodation via a mobile construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it's business as usual nearby, where the service facility seems to operate at full capacity.

The strike concerns a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay & working terms representing their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported industrial relations across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently some 70% of Swedish workers belong to labor organizations, and ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the ability to negotiate directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However Tesla has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he informed listeners in New York in 2023. "In my view the unions try to generate conflict in a company."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has long wanted to establish a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they did not reply," says Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "And we got the impression that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She states the union eventually found no alternative than to call industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," comments the union leader. "The company usually agrees to the agreement."

But not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, started working with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that pay & conditions were often dependent on the discretion of managers.

He recalls a performance review where he says he was refused an annual pay rise because he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to have been rejected for increased compensation due to having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. The company had approximately one hundred thirty technicians employed when the strike was initiated. IF Metall states currently around seventy of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since replaced these with replacement staff, for which that has not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," states German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, this being important to understand. However it violates all established practices. Yet Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when somebody tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as a compliment."

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

Indeed, the automaker has granted just a single media interview in the two years after the strike began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the company better not to have a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and provide workers optimal terms".

The executive rejected that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was determined by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely alone in its fight. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, are refusing to handle Teslas; waste is no longer removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and newly built charging stations remain linked to the grid across the nation.

There is one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 chargers stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station 10km from here," he comments. "And we can still buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. IF Metall risks setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that that would spread," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode