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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive technicians persist to confront among the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the American automaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached two years of duration, with minimal indication for a resolution.

One striking worker has been at the Tesla picket line since October 2023.

"It's a tough period," states the 39-year-old. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to become even tougher.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a colleague, standing near an electric vehicle service center within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation in the form of a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally nearby, where the workshop appears to be in full swing.

The strike involves a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages & working terms representing their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish employees are members of a trade union, while ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We favor the right to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just don't like anything which creates a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups try to create conflict in a company."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years sought to secure a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they did not reply," says Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She states the union ultimately found no other option than to announce industrial action, which started in late October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review where he says he was refused a salary increase because that he "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a colleague was said to have been turned down for increased compensation due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone went out on strike. Tesla had some one hundred thirty technicians employed when the strike was initiated. The union says currently approximately 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since replaced these with new workers, for which there is no precedent since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, this being crucial to understand. But it violates all established practices. But Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

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

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "record deliveries".

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

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it suited the company more not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with employees and provide 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 make independent such decisions," he stated.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations remain connected to power networks in the country.

There is one such facility near the capital's airport, at which 20 charging units stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

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

With consequences significant on both sides, it's hard to envision an end to the stand-off. IF Metall risks setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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