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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics continue to challenge one of the world's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike at the US automaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached its second anniversary, and there is little indication of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the Tesla picket line starting from October 2023.

"It's a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to become more challenging.

Janis devotes each Monday with a colleague, positioned near a Tesla garage within a business district in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter via a mobile builders' van, plus hot beverages & light meals.

However it's operations continue normally nearby, where the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for pay & conditions representing their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for almost a century.

Currently some 70% of Swedish employees belong of a trade union, and 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's a system welcomed across the board. "We prefer the ability to negotiate directly with the unions and establish collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But Tesla has upset established practices. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything which creates a kind of hierarchical situation," he told listeners at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups attempt to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden starting in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has long sought to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," states the union president, the union's president. "And we got the belief that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She says the organization eventually saw no other option than to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," comments the union leader. "The company typically agrees to the agreement."

But not in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay & conditions were often dependent on the discretion of managers.

He recalls a performance review where he states he was denied a salary increase because he was "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be rejected for increased compensation because having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated in the industrial action. Tesla had some one hundred thirty technicians working at the time the strike was initiated. The union says that today around seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced these with new workers, for which that has not occurred since the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, this being important to recognize. However it violates all traditional practices. Yet Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. Thus when somebody tells them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they perceive that as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for comment in an email mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

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

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a business paper that it suited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide them the best possible conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have authorization to make our own such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely alone in this conflict. The strike has received backing by a number of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and Finland, are refusing to handle Teslas; waste is no longer removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed charging stations remain connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty chargers stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station six miles from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it is difficult to envision an end to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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