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In Sweden, around seventy automotive technicians persist to confront among the world's richest companies – Tesla. This industrial action targeting the American automaker's ten Swedish service centers has now reached its second anniversary, with minimal indication for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been at the electric car company's protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult time," remarks the 39-year-old. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to grow more challenging.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla garage within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

But it's business as usual nearby, at which the workshop seems to be at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns a matter that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay & working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for almost a century.

Currently some 70% of Swedish employees are members to labor organizations, while 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's a system supported across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of anything that establishes a sort of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience in New York in 2023. "I think the unions try to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, while IF Metall has long sought to establish a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they did not reply," states the union president, the union's president. "We formed the belief that they tried to avoid or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the union eventually saw no other option except to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Typically it's enough to make a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that wages and work terms frequently dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he states he was refused an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to be turned down for a pay rise because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated in the industrial action. The company employed some 130 mechanics working at the time the strike was initiated. The union says currently around 70 of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since substituted these with new workers, for which that has not occurred since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," states German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not illegal, this being crucial to recognize. But it violates all established practices. But Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if anyone tells them, listen, you are violating a norm, they perceive this as a compliment."

The automaker's local division refused attempts for interview via correspondence mentioning "record deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has granted just a single media interview during the entire period after the industrial action began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the company more not to have a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and give them optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision not to enter a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have a mandate to make our own such decisions," he said.

The union is not entirely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to process the company's vehicles; waste is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations remain linked to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty chargers remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain 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 service our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the stand-off. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is how that would spread," states the researcher, "and ultimately {erode