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Across Sweden, approximately seventy car mechanics continue to confront among the globe's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike at the US automaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently entered its second anniversary, and there is minimal sign for a resolution.

One striking worker has remained at the Tesla protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult period," remarks the 39-year-old. And as the nation's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to become more challenging.

Janis spends each Monday with a fellow worker, standing outside an electric vehicle service center within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a mobile construction vehicle, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

But it's operations continue normally nearby, at which the service facility appears to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay & working terms representing their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for almost a century.

Currently some 70% of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, while 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

It's a system welcomed by all parties. "We favor the right to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just disapprove of anything that establishes a sort of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience in New York last year. "I think the unions try to create negativity in a company."

Tesla came to Sweden back in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to establish a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they did not respond," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "We formed the impression that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing this with us."

She says the organization eventually found no alternative except to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue the threat," comments the union leader. "The company typically signs the agreement."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that wages and conditions were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he says he was denied a salary increase because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was reported to have been turned down for a pay rise due to having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated on strike. Tesla employed some 130 mechanics working at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall says that today approximately seventy of its members are on strike.

Tesla has long since replaced these with replacement staff, for which that has not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, this being important to understand. However it violates all established practices. But the company doesn't care for conventions.

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

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

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

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it benefited the organization more to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and provide them optimal terms".

The executive denied that the decision not to enter a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "We have authorization to make our own such choices," he stated.

The union is not entirely alone in this conflict. The strike has been supported by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; rubbish is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed power points remain connected to the grid in the country.

There is one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty charging units stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station 10km from here," he comments. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it is difficult to see an end to the deadlock. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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