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Across Sweden, around 70 car technicians persist to challenge one of the world's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the US carmaker's 10 Swedish service centers has currently reached its second anniversary, with little sign for a settlement.

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

"It's a tough time," states the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it is expected to become more challenging.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a colleague, positioned near an electric vehicle service center within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter via a mobile construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

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

This industrial action concerns a matter that goes to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for wages & working terms representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers belong of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is an arrangement supported across the board. "We favor the right to bargain directly with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just don't like any arrangement which creates a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience in New York in 2023. "I think the unions try to create conflict within businesses."

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

"Yet they wouldn't respond," states the union president, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they attempted to avoid or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She states the organization eventually saw no alternative except to announce industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to issue a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the contract."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that wages and work terms frequently subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review at which he states he was denied a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to be rejected for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated on strike. The company had some 130 technicians working at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union says that today around seventy of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, for which there is not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, this being important to recognize. But it goes against all traditional norms. But Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if somebody tells them, listen, you are violating a norm, they perceive that as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for comment via correspondence citing "record deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has granted just a single media interview in the two years since the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a business paper that it benefited the organization better to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with employees and give workers the best possible conditions".

The executive denied that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & neighboring states, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while newly built power points remain connected to the grid in the country.

There is one such facility near the capital's airport, at which 20 chargers remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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