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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive technicians continue to challenge one of the world's richest corporations – Tesla. This labor strike at the US automaker's 10 Swedish service centers has now reached its second anniversary, with minimal indication of a resolution.

One striking worker has been at the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," states the 39-year-old. And as the nation's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to grow even tougher.

Janis spends each Monday with a colleague, positioned outside an electric vehicle service center within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides accommodation via a portable builders' van, as well as coffee & light meals.

However it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the workshop appears to operate at full capacity.

The strike involves a matter that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to bargain for pay & working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Today approximately 70% of Swedish workers belong of a trade union, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is a system supported by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However Tesla has upset established practices. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just disapprove of any arrangement which creates a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "In my view labor groups try to create conflict in a company."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years sought to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," states the union president, the organization's president. "And we got the impression that they attempted to hide away or not discuss this with our representatives."

She states the organization ultimately saw no alternative except to announce a strike, which started on 27 October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make a warning," comments the union leader. "Employers usually agrees to the agreement."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that wages & work terms were often dependent on the discretion of managers.

He recalls a performance review at which he says he was denied a salary increase because he was "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone participated on strike. Tesla had approximately one hundred thirty mechanics working at the time the strike was called. IF Metall says currently around 70 of its members are on strike.

Tesla has long since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation that has no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not illegal, which is important to understand. But it violates all traditional norms. But the company shows no concern about norms.

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see that as a compliment."

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

Indeed, the automaker has granted just a single media interview in the two years since the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, the executive, told a financial publication that it suited the organization more to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with the team and provide workers optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was one made by US leadership in the US. "We have a mandate to make independent such decisions," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing by a number of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway & neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; rubbish is not removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points are not being linked to power networks in the country.

There is one such facility near the capital's airport, where twenty charging units stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from this location," he says. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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