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Across Sweden, approximately seventy automotive technicians continue to confront among the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the American automaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently reached its second anniversary, and there is little sign of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the Tesla protest line starting from October 2023.

"It's a tough time," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's chilly winter weather arrives, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla service center on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation in the form of a portable builders' van, plus hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it's business as usual across the road, at which the workshop seems to be in full swing.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right of trade unions to negotiate wages and conditions on behalf of their members. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Today approximately 70% of Swedish workers are members to labor organizations, while ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the ability to bargain directly with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However Tesla has upset established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants situation," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "In my view labor groups attempt to generate negativity in a company."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market back in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has long sought to secure a labor contract with the company.

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

She states the organization ultimately found no other option than to call a strike, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to make a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually agrees to the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla several years ago. He claims that pay & conditions were often dependent on the whim of managers.

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

However, not everyone went out on strike. Tesla had some one hundred thirty mechanics employed at the time the strike was called. IF Metall says currently approximately 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced these with new workers, for which there is not occurred since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, which is important to understand. But it goes against all established norms. Yet the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They want to be convention challengers. So if anyone tells them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they perceive this as praise."

The company's local division refused requests for comment in an email mentioning "record deliveries".

Indeed, the company has given only one media interview in the two years since the strike started.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, the executive, told a financial publication that it suited the company better not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with employees and give workers the best possible terms".

Mr Stark denied that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have a mandate to take independent such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & Finland, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed power points are not being connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station 10km from here," he says. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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