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Across Sweden, approximately seventy automotive mechanics persist to challenge one of the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike targeting the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has now reached two years of duration, with minimal indication of a resolution.

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

"It's a tough period," remarks the 39-year-old. And as the nation's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week with a colleague, positioned outside a Tesla garage on an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter via a mobile builders' van, plus coffee and light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally nearby, where the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

The strike involves a matter that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for wages and working terms on behalf of their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Today approximately 70% of Scandinavia's employees are members of a trade union, and 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with the unions and sign collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants situation," he informed an audience at an event last year. "I think labor groups attempt to create negativity in a company."

The automaker entered Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has long wanted to establish a labor contract with the automaker.

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

She says the union eventually saw no alternative than to announce industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to make the threat," says the union leader. "The company usually signs the agreement."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay and work terms frequently subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he says he was denied a salary increase on grounds he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated in the industrial action. The company had approximately one hundred thirty technicians employed when the strike was called. IF Metall states that today around seventy of its members are on strike.

The automaker has since replaced these with new workers, for which that has not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," states German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, this being important to understand. But it goes against all traditional norms. But Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. So if somebody informs them, hey, you are violating a norm, they see that as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused requests for comment via correspondence mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

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

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", the executive, informed a financial publication that it suited the organization more not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and provide workers the best possible terms".

The executive denied that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was one made by US leadership overseas. "We have authorization to take our own such decisions," he said.

The union is not completely alone in this conflict. The strike has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Norway & neighboring states, decline to process the company's vehicles; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points remain linked to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 chargers remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station 10km from here," he says. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the deadlock. The union risks setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The concern is that this could expand," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode