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Across Sweden, approximately seventy car mechanics persist to confront one of the globe's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This industrial action targeting the US automaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has now reached its second anniversary, with minimal sign for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been at the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

"It's a tough period," states the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

Janis spends every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla garage within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation via a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages & light meals.

But it remains business as usual across the road, at which the workshop seems to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns an issue that goes to the core of Swedish labor traditions – the right of trade unions to negotiate pay and conditions representing their members. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's employees belong to labor organizations, while 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is a system welcomed by all parties. "We favor the right to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken CEO the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just disapprove of any arrangement which creates a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience at an event in 2023. "I think the unions try to generate negativity in a company."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market back in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has long wanted to establish a labor contract with the automaker.

"But they did not reply," states the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to hide away or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She says the union ultimately saw no alternative than to call a strike, beginning in late October, last year. "Usually it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually agrees to the contract."

However not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that pay and conditions frequently dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he says he was denied a salary increase on grounds he was "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a colleague was reported to be rejected for increased compensation due to having the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company had approximately 130 mechanics employed when the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently approximately 70 of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted these with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not illegal, this being crucial to recognize. But it goes against all established norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they perceive that as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for comment via correspondence citing "record vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has granted just a single press discussion during the entire period after the industrial action began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", the executive, informed a financial publication that it benefited the company better to avoid a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and provide them the best possible conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to take independent such choices," he stated.

The union is not completely alone in its fight. This industrial action has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed charging stations are not being connected to power networks in the country.

There is one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 chargers remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our cars, we can power our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it's hard to envision a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is that that would spread," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode