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In Sweden, approximately seventy car technicians continue to confront among the globe's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the US carmaker's 10 Swedish service centers has now entered its second anniversary, with little indication of a settlement.

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

"It has been a difficult time," states the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic spends each Monday with a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla garage on a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages & sandwiches.

However it remains business as usual nearby, at which the service facility seems to operate at full capacity.

The strike involves an issue that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for wages and conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Today some 70% of Scandinavia's workers belong to labor organizations, while 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement supported across the board. "We prefer the ability to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement which creates a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed listeners in New York in 2023. "I think the unions attempt to create negativity in a company."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, and IF Metall has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they did not reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "And we got the belief that they attempted to hide away or not discuss the matter with us."

She states the organization eventually found no other option except to call industrial action, which started in late October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually agrees to the agreement."

However this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, started working with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was denied an annual pay rise because that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation because having the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone went out on strike. The company employed some 130 technicians employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says that today around 70 of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has since replaced these with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, this being important to understand. But it violates all traditional practices. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. So if anyone informs them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see that as a compliment."

The company's local division refused attempts for interview via correspondence citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has given just a single press discussion in the two years after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it benefited the company more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to work closely with the team and give workers optimal conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make our own such choices," he stated.

The union is not completely alone in this conflict. The strike has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; waste is not removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed power points are not being linked to power networks in the country.

There is one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty charging units stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station 10km from this location," he says. "And we can still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it's hard to see an end to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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