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Across Sweden, around seventy car technicians persist to challenge one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. The labor strike targeting the US automaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached two years of duration, and there is little indication of 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 winter weather sets in, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic spends every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, positioned near an electric vehicle garage on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation via a mobile builders' van, plus hot beverages & light meals.

But it's business as usual nearby, where the service facility seems to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that goes to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate wages & working terms representing their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees belong to labor organizations, while ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

This is an arrangement supported by all parties. "We favor the ability to bargain directly with the unions and establish collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just don't like anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told an audience at an event last year. "I think the unions attempt to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they did not respond," states the union president, the union's president. "And we got the impression that they tried to hide away or not discuss this with our representatives."

She states the organization eventually saw no other option except to call a strike, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company usually agrees to the contract."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that pay & work terms frequently dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review at which he states he was denied a salary increase on grounds he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a colleague was reported to be turned down for increased compensation because he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated on strike. Tesla had some 130 mechanics employed at the time the strike was called. IF Metall states currently approximately seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since replaced the striking workers with new workers, for which that has not occurred since the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," states German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, this being crucial to recognize. However it goes against all traditional norms. But the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to be norm breakers. So if anyone informs them, hey, you are violating a norm, they see that as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for comment via correspondence citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has granted only one press discussion in the two years after the strike started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it benefited the organization more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and give them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have a mandate to take independent such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported from several of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Norway & neighboring states, decline to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points remain connected to power networks in the country.

Exists an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it is difficult to see a resolution to the stand-off. The union risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

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