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Across Sweden, around seventy car technicians persist to challenge one of the globe's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the US automaker's ten Swedish service centers has now entered two years of duration, and there is little sign of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been at the Tesla protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to grow more challenging.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a colleague, standing near an electric vehicle garage on a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages & sandwiches.

But it's operations continue normally across the road, at which the workshop appears to be at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages and conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics across the nation for nearly a century.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees belong to labor organizations, while ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to bargain freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience in New York last year. "I think labor groups attempt to generate conflict within businesses."

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

"But they did not reply," says the union president, the organization's president. "And we got the impression that they tried to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She states the union ultimately saw no alternative than to announce a strike, beginning in late October, last year. "Typically it's enough to make the threat," says the union leader. "Employers usually agrees to the agreement."

However not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He claims that wages & work terms frequently dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review where he says he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for increased compensation due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated in the industrial action. The company employed some one hundred thirty mechanics employed when the industrial action was called. IF Metall states currently around 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has long since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, which is important to recognize. But it violates all established practices. Yet Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be norm breakers. Thus when somebody informs them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they see this as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has granted only one media interview in the two years since the strike began.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with the team and give workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such choices," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway & neighboring states, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is not removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while newly built charging stations remain connected to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from here," he says. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that this could expand," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode