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In Sweden, approximately 70 automotive mechanics continue to challenge one of the world's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the American automaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has now reached two years of duration, and there is minimal indication for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the electric car company's picket line since October 2023.

"It's a tough time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's chilly winter weather sets in, it's likely to grow more challenging.

The mechanic devotes each Monday with a colleague, standing near a Tesla garage on a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, supplies accommodation in the form of a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it's business as usual nearby, at which the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

The strike concerns an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate wages and conditions representing their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Currently some seventy percent of Swedish employees are members of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We favor the right to bargain directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed listeners in New York last year. "I think labor groups attempt to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market back in 2014, while IF Metall has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the organization's president. "We formed the belief that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She says the union ultimately found no other option than to call industrial action, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the contract."

But not in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that wages & conditions were often subject to the discretion of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to have been rejected for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers went out in the industrial action. Tesla employed approximately 130 technicians working when the strike was initiated. IF Metall says currently around 70 of its members are on strike.

Tesla has since replaced these with new workers, a situation that has not occurred since the Great Depression.

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

"It's not illegal, this being crucial to understand. However it violates all traditional practices. But Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

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

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused requests for interview via correspondence mentioning "record deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has granted only one press discussion during the entire period since the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a business paper that it suited the company better not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with the team and give them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to take independent such decisions," he stated.

The union is not entirely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & Finland, are refusing to process Teslas; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations are not being connected to power networks in the country.

Exists one such facility near the capital's airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station 10km from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can charge our cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it is difficult to envision an end to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is that that would spread," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode