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Across Sweden, approximately seventy automotive technicians continue to confront among the globe's richest corporations – Tesla. The labor strike at the US carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently reached its second anniversary, with little indication of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been at the Tesla picket line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," remarks the 39-year-old. With Sweden's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to become more challenging.

Janis spends every start of the week with a fellow worker, standing outside a Tesla service center within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides accommodation in the form of a mobile builders' van, plus hot beverages & light meals.

But it's business as usual nearby, at which the workshop seems to be at full capacity.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for wages and working terms representing their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations across the nation for nearly a century.

Today some 70% of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's a system supported across the board. "We favor the right to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of hierarchical situation," he told an audience at an event last year. "In my view labor groups attempt to generate conflict in a company."

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

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing this with us."

She states the union eventually found no alternative than to announce industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to make a warning," comments the union leader. "Employers typically signs the agreement."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that wages and conditions were often dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he states he was refused a salary increase because he was "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to have been rejected for increased compensation because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed some 130 technicians working at the time the strike was called. IF Metall says currently around 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, which is important to understand. But it violates all traditional practices. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. Thus when anyone informs them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they see that as praise."

The company's local division declined requests for interview via correspondence citing "record deliveries".

Indeed, the company has given only one press discussion during the entire period after the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, told a business paper that it suited the company more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and give them the best possible conditions".

The executive denied that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was one made by US leadership overseas. "We have a mandate to make our own such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway & Finland, decline to process Teslas; waste is not collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points remain connected to the grid in the country.

There is one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from here," he comments. "And we can still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is that this could expand," says Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode