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In Sweden, approximately 70 car technicians persist to confront among the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike at the American automaker's 10 Swedish service centers has now reached two years of duration, and there is minimal sign of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the Tesla protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," states the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to become more challenging.

Janis devotes each Monday with a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla service center within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a mobile construction vehicle, plus hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it remains business as usual across the road, at which the workshop seems to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that goes to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay & conditions representing their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for almost one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish employees belong to labor organizations, and 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's a system supported by all parties. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with the unions and establish labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners at an event in 2023. "In my view the unions try to create negativity in a company."

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

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

She says the organization eventually found no alternative than to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to make a warning," says the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay and work terms frequently subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to be turned down for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone participated on strike. The company employed some 130 technicians employed when the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says that today approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced these with replacement staff, for which there is no precedent since the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, which is crucial to understand. However it goes against all established norms. Yet Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to be convention challengers. Thus when anyone informs them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive that as a compliment."

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

In fact, the company has given only one press discussion during the entire period after the strike started.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", the executive, 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 give workers the best possible conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was determined by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to take independent such decisions," he stated.

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

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Norway and neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; waste is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed power points are not being linked to power networks in the country.

There is an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty chargers remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from this location," he says. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it's hard to see an end to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is that that would spread," says Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode