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In Sweden, approximately seventy automotive mechanics continue to challenge one of the world's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike at the US carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has now reached its second anniversary, with little sign of a resolution.

One striking worker has remained at the electric car company's picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to become more challenging.

Janis devotes every start of the week alongside a colleague, positioned outside a Tesla garage within a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter in the form of a portable construction vehicle, as well as coffee and sandwiches.

However it's business as usual across the road, where the workshop appears to be at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns a matter that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for wages & working terms representing their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish workers belong of a trade union, while 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We favor the right to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience in New York in 2023. "In my view the unions try to generate conflict within businesses."

The automaker entered Sweden starting in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they did not respond," states the union president, the organization's president. "We formed the impression that they attempted to hide away or not discuss this with our representatives."

She states the union ultimately found no alternative than to announce a strike, beginning in late October, last year. "Typically it's enough to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company usually signs the contract."

However this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages and conditions were often dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review at which he states he was denied a salary increase on grounds he was "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out on strike. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty technicians working when the strike was initiated. IF Metall says that today approximately seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation there is not occurred since the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, this being important to understand. However it goes against all traditional practices. Yet the company doesn't care about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. Thus when somebody informs them, hey, you are violating a norm, they see this as a compliment."

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

Indeed, the company has granted only one press discussion in the two years since the strike began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it benefited the company more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to work closely with employees and provide them the best possible terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was determined by US leadership in the US. "We have authorization to make independent such decisions," he stated.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built charging stations are not being linked to the grid across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 charging units remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from here," he says. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our cars, we can power our cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the deadlock. IF Metall risks setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The concern is that this could expand," states Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode