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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront among the globe's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the US automaker's ten Swedish service centers has now entered two years of duration, and there is minimal indication for a resolution.

One striking worker has remained at the electric car company's protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's cold winter weather sets in, it is expected to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla garage on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides shelter in the form of a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

But it remains business as usual across the road, at which the workshop appears to be at full capacity.

The strike involves an issue that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right of trade unions to negotiate pay & conditions representing their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

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

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience in New York in 2023. "I think the unions attempt to create conflict within businesses."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market back in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they did not respond," states the union president, the union's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to avoid or not discuss the matter with us."

She says the organization ultimately found no alternative except to call a strike, beginning in late October, last year. "Typically it's enough to make the threat," comments the union leader. "The company usually agrees to the agreement."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla several years ago. He asserts that pay & conditions were often dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to be turned down for increased compensation due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla had approximately one hundred thirty mechanics employed when the industrial action was called. The union says that today approximately 70 of its members are on strike.

Tesla has since replaced the striking workers with new workers, a situation that has not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

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

"They want to become convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they perceive that as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for interview via correspondence citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has given just a single press discussion during the entire period after the industrial action began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a financial publication that it suited the organization more to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with the team and give workers optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make our own such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing from several of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Norway and neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; waste is not collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations are not being connected to the grid in the country.

Exists one such facility near the capital's airport, at which 20 chargers remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from this location," he says. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the stand-off. The union risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is how this could expand," states the researcher, "and ultimately {erode