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Across Sweden, approximately seventy car technicians persist to challenge one of the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike at the American automaker's ten Swedish service centers has now reached two years of duration, and there is minimal sign for a resolution.

One striking worker has remained on the Tesla protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to become even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla garage within a business district in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, as well as coffee and sandwiches.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the service facility appears to operate in full swing.

This industrial action concerns an issue that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay & conditions representing their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today approximately seventy percent of Swedish employees are members of a trade union, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement supported across the board. "We prefer the ability to negotiate freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Outspoken CEO the company leader has said he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York last year. "In my view the unions try to generate negativity within businesses."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market back in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has long wanted to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "And we got the belief that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing the matter with us."

She states the union eventually found no alternative than to call a strike, beginning in late October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to make a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the agreement."

However not in this case.

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

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be turned down for increased compensation due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated in the industrial action. The company employed some one hundred thirty technicians employed when the industrial action was called. IF Metall states that today approximately seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has since substituted these with new workers, a situation there is no precedent since the 1930s.

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

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to understand. However it violates all established practices. But the company doesn't care about norms.

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

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused requests for interview in an email mentioning "record deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has granted just a single press discussion during the entire period since the strike started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it suited the company better not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with the team and provide workers optimal conditions".

The executive denied that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such decisions," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. The strike has been supported from several of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & Finland, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations are not being connected to power networks in the country.

There is one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station 10km from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it's hard to envision an end to the stand-off. The union risks setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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