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In Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics persist to challenge among the globe's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. This industrial action at the US automaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently entered two years of duration, with little sign for a resolution.

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

"It has been a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

Janis spends every start of the week with a colleague, standing outside a Tesla garage on a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides shelter in the form of a portable construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

But it remains business as usual nearby, at which the workshop seems to operate at full capacity.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right of trade unions to negotiate pay and working terms on behalf of their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Today approximately 70% of Swedish workers belong to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement supported by all parties. "We favor the ability to bargain directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like any arrangement which creates a sort of hierarchical situation," he told listeners in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups try to create negativity within businesses."

The automaker entered Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years sought to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," states the union president, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to hide away or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She states the organization ultimately found no other option except to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually agrees to the agreement."

But not in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay & conditions were often subject to the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused a salary increase because he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a colleague was said to be turned down for increased compensation because having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. Tesla had approximately 130 technicians working when the industrial action was called. IF Metall says that today around seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has since replaced these with new workers, a situation that has not occurred since the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

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

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when anyone informs them, listen, you are violating a norm, they see that as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for interview via correspondence citing "record deliveries".

In fact, the company has granted just a single media interview during the entire period after the strike began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it benefited the organization more not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide them the best possible terms".

Mr Stark denied that the choice not to enter a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have a mandate to make independent such decisions," he said.

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

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and Finland, decline to handle Teslas; rubbish is not collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while newly built power points are not being connected to the grid in the country.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, where twenty chargers stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

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

With consequences high for all parties, it's hard to envision an end to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is how this could expand," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode