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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive technicians persist to challenge one of the globe's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike at the American automaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has now entered its second anniversary, with minimal sign of a resolution.

One striking worker has been on the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

"It's a tough time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to grow even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, standing outside a Tesla service center within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a mobile construction vehicle, plus coffee and sandwiches.

However it remains operations continue normally nearby, where the service facility appears to be in full swing.

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay and working terms representing their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Currently some seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees belong of a trade union, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement supported across the board. "We prefer the ability to bargain directly with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has upset established practices. Vocal CEO the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York last year. "I think labor groups attempt to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market back in 2014, while IF Metall has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," says the union president, the union's president. "And we got the impression that they attempted to avoid or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the organization eventually found no alternative except to call industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to issue the threat," says the union leader. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

However not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, began employment for Tesla several years ago. He claims that pay & work terms were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he says he was denied an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise due to having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated on strike. Tesla had approximately 130 mechanics employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted these with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," states 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 recognize. However it violates all traditional practices. But Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. So if anyone informs them, hey, you are violating a standard, they see this as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for interview in an email citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has granted only one press discussion during the entire period after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it benefited the organization better not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with employees and give workers optimal conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to take independent such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in its fight. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points are not being linked to the grid in the country.

There is one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 charging units remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners remain 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 cars, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it's hard to see a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall risks setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is how that would spread," states the researcher, "and ultimately {erode