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In Sweden, approximately 70 automotive technicians persist to challenge one of the globe's richest corporations – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the American automaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has now entered its second anniversary, with little indication for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the electric car company's protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's chilly winter weather sets in, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday with a colleague, standing outside an electric vehicle service center within a business district in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation in the form of a portable builders' van, plus hot beverages & light meals.

But it's business as usual nearby, where the service facility seems to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages and working terms on behalf of their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's a system supported across the board. "We favor the right to bargain freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But Tesla has upset the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader 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 an audience at an event in 2023. "I think the unions attempt to create negativity within businesses."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has long wanted to establish a labor contract with the company.

"But they did not reply," says the union president, the organization's president. "We formed the impression that they tried to avoid or evade discussing the matter with us."

She states the union eventually found no other option than to announce a strike, which started in late October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make a warning," says the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions were often dependent on the discretion of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he states he was refused an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a colleague was said to be turned down for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated in the industrial action. The company had some one hundred thirty technicians working when the strike was called. The union states that today around seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation that has no precedent since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to understand. However it violates all traditional practices. But the company doesn't care about norms.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see this as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for interview via correspondence mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has granted just a single press discussion in the two years after the strike began.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the company more not to have a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers optimal conditions".

The executive denied that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "We have authorization to make our own such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely alone in its fight. This industrial action has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, are refusing to handle Teslas; waste is not collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations are not being connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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