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In Sweden, approximately seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront one of the globe's richest corporations – Tesla. This industrial action at the US carmaker's 10 Swedish service centers has now reached two years of duration, and there is little indication for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been on the Tesla picket line since October 2023.

"It has been a tough period," states the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold winter weather arrives, it's likely to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, standing near a Tesla garage on an industrial park in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, plus hot beverages & sandwiches.

But it remains business as usual nearby, at which the service facility seems to be in full swing.

The strike concerns an issue that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right of trade unions to negotiate pay and conditions representing their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Today approximately seventy percent of Swedish employees are members to labor organizations, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is a system welcomed by all parties. "We favor the right to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I simply don't like any arrangement which creates a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told an audience in New York last year. "I think the unions try to generate conflict within businesses."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market back in 2014, while IF Metall has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"But they did not reply," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to hide away or not discuss this with us."

She says the organization eventually found no alternative except to announce a strike, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to make a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the contract."

However not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay and conditions frequently subject to the whim of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was denied a salary increase because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was reported to be rejected for a pay rise because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone participated on strike. Tesla had some 130 technicians employed at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall states currently approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has since substituted the striking workers with new workers, a situation that has not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not illegal, which is important to recognize. But it goes against all established norms. Yet the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, listen, you are violating a standard, they see this as praise."

The company's local division refused requests for comment in an email citing "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has granted only one media interview during the entire period since the industrial action began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the company better to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide workers optimal conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was one made by US leadership in the US. "We have a mandate to make independent such choices," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. The strike has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed power points are not being connected to power networks across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from this location," he says. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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