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Across Sweden, approximately seventy automotive technicians persist to challenge among the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike targeting the American automaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently reached two years of duration, and there is little indication of a settlement.

One striking worker has been at the Tesla picket line since October 2023.

"It has been a tough time," states the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's cold winter weather sets in, it is expected to grow more challenging.

Janis devotes every start of the week with a colleague, positioned outside an electric vehicle service center on an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter in the form of a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee & sandwiches.

But it's business as usual across the road, at which the workshop appears to operate in full swing.

This industrial action concerns a matter that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to bargain for wages and working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with the unions and establish collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told an audience at an event last year. "I think labor groups try to create negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they did not respond," states the union president, the organization's president. "And we got the belief that they tried to avoid or evade discussing the matter with us."

She states the organization ultimately saw no other option except to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," says the union leader. "The company usually agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

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

He remembers a performance review at which he states he was denied an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was said to have been rejected for increased compensation because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers went out in the industrial action. The company employed approximately 130 technicians employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union says that today around 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since substituted these with new workers, for which there is not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," states German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, which is crucial to recognize. However it violates all established practices. Yet the company shows no concern about norms.

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

The company's local division declined requests for interview via correspondence citing "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the company has given just a single media interview in the two years since the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the organization better not to have a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and provide them optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have authorization to take independent such decisions," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in its fight. The strike has been supported from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & neighboring states, decline to process Teslas; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed power points are not being connected to the grid in the country.

There is an example close to the capital's airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the stand-off. IF Metall risks setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is how this could expand," says Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode