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Across Sweden, approximately 70 automotive technicians continue to challenge one of the globe's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the American carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has now reached two years of duration, with minimal sign for a settlement.

One striking worker has been at the Tesla picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," states the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to grow more challenging.

The mechanic devotes each Monday with a colleague, standing outside a Tesla service center within a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies accommodation in the form of a mobile builders' van, as well as coffee and sandwiches.

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

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to bargain for pay & working terms representing their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for almost a century.

Today some 70% of Swedish employees belong to labor organizations, while 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's a system supported by all parties. "We prefer the ability to bargain freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told listeners at an event last year. "In my view labor groups attempt to generate conflict in a company."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they did not respond," states the union president, the union's leader. "And we got the belief that they attempted to hide away or not discuss the matter with us."

She says the union ultimately found no alternative than to announce a strike, which started on 27 October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to make the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually signs the contract."

However not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay and conditions frequently subject to the whim of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was refused a salary increase because he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been turned down for a pay rise because having the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone went out in the industrial action. Tesla employed approximately one hundred thirty mechanics working when the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently approximately seventy of its members are on strike.

The automaker has since replaced these with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," says German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, this being crucial to recognize. However it violates all established norms. But Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when anyone tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they see that as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for interview in an email mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

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

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a financial publication that it suited the organization better to avoid a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and provide workers optimal terms".

The executive denied that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was one made by US leadership overseas. "We have authorization to make our own such choices," he stated.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to handle Teslas; waste is no longer removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations remain connected to power networks in the country.

There is an example near the capital's airport, at which 20 charging units stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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