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Across Sweden, around seventy car mechanics persist to challenge among the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the US carmaker's 10 Swedish service centers has now entered its second anniversary, and there is minimal indication for a settlement.

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

"It has been a tough time," remarks the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's chilly winter weather sets in, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a colleague, positioned near a Tesla service center within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation in the form of a portable construction vehicle, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

But it's business as usual nearby, at which the service facility seems to operate at full capacity.

The strike involves an issue that reaches to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for wages & working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly a century.

Today some 70% of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

It's a system welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain directly with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I just disapprove of any arrangement which creates a sort of hierarchical situation," he informed an audience at an event last year. "In my view labor groups try to create negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market back in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has long sought to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"But they wouldn't respond," states the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to avoid or not discuss this with our representatives."

She says the organization eventually saw no other option except to announce a strike, which started in late October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to make the threat," comments the union leader. "The company typically agrees to the agreement."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He claims that wages and work terms were often subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review at which he states he was refused a salary increase because he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a colleague was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise due to having the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed approximately 130 mechanics working when the industrial action was initiated. The union states that today approximately 70 of its members are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted these with new workers, for which there is no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, this being crucial to recognize. However it violates all established practices. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they see that as praise."

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

In fact, the automaker has given just a single press discussion in the two years since the strike began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, told a business paper that it suited the company better to avoid a union contract, and instead "to work closely with the team and give them the best possible conditions".

The executive denied that the choice not to enter a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely alone in this conflict. The strike has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & Finland, decline to handle Teslas; waste is not collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed power points remain linked to power networks in the country.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from this location," he says. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it's hard to envision an end to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The concern is how that would spread," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode