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Across Sweden, approximately 70 car technicians continue to confront one of the world's richest corporations – Tesla. The industrial action at the US automaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently entered two years of duration, with minimal indication for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been at the electric car company's protest line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a tough time," states the 39-year-old. With Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it's likely to grow more challenging.

Janis spends each Monday alongside a fellow worker, standing near a Tesla garage on a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies accommodation via a mobile builders' van, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

However it's operations continue normally nearby, at which the service facility appears to be at full capacity.

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay & conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Today some 70% of Scandinavia's employees are members of a trade union, and 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

This is a system supported across the board. "We prefer the ability to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants situation," he told listeners in New York in 2023. "I think the unions attempt to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has long sought to secure a collective agreement with the company.

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

She says the organization eventually found no other option than to call industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He claims that wages & work terms were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was denied a salary increase because he was "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone went out on strike. The company had approximately 130 technicians working when the strike was called. IF Metall states that today around seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since substituted these with replacement staff, a situation there is not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," states German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, which is crucial to understand. However it violates all established practices. But Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they see that as praise."

The company's local division declined attempts for interview in an email citing "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has granted just a single media interview in the two years since the strike began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a business paper that it benefited the organization better not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide them the best possible terms".

Mr Stark denied that the decision not to enter a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have a mandate to take independent such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and Finland, are refusing to process Teslas; rubbish is not removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and newly built charging stations are not being linked to the grid across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to the capital's airport, where twenty charging units stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it's hard to see a resolution to the stand-off. The union risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is how this could expand," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode