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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive technicians continue to challenge one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. The labor strike targeting the US automaker's ten Swedish service centers has now entered two years of duration, with minimal sign for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the electric car company's picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday with a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla garage on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation in the form of a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages & sandwiches.

However it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the service facility appears to operate at full capacity.

The strike involves a matter that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for wages & conditions representing their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for almost a century.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees are members of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

It's an arrangement supported across the board. "We prefer the right to bargain freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of anything which creates a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York last year. "I think the unions attempt to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla entered Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to hide away or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the union eventually saw no other option than to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," says the union leader. "Employers usually agrees to the contract."

But not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, started working with the automaker in 2021. He claims that wages and conditions frequently dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been rejected for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated on strike. Tesla had some 130 mechanics working when the strike was called. The union states that today around seventy of its members are on strike.

The automaker has since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

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

"They want to be norm breakers. So if somebody tells them, listen, you are violating a norm, they see this as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for comment in an email citing "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the company has given only one media interview in the two years after the industrial action began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", the executive, told a business paper that it benefited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with employees and give workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the choice not to enter a labor contract was determined by US leadership in the US. "We have authorization to make independent such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing by a number of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, are refusing to process Teslas; rubbish is not collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and newly built charging stations remain linked to the grid in the country.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, where twenty chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from here," he comments. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it's hard to envision a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is how this could expand," states the researcher, "and ultimately {erode