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In Sweden, approximately seventy car mechanics continue to confront among the world's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has now entered its second anniversary, with little indication for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

"It's a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to become more challenging.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla garage on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation via a portable construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, at which the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to bargain for pay and conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Currently approximately 70% of Scandinavia's employees belong of a trade union, and 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

It's a system supported by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I simply don't like any arrangement which creates a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told an audience at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups attempt to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden back in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has long wanted to secure a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," says the union president, the union's president. "And we got the belief that they attempted to hide away or not discuss the matter with us."

She says the union ultimately saw no other option except to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, last year. "Typically it's enough to make a warning," comments the union leader. "The company typically signs the contract."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages and 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 he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a colleague was said to have been turned down for increased compensation because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers participated on strike. Tesla had approximately one hundred thirty mechanics employed when the strike was called. The union says currently around seventy of its members are on strike.

The automaker has since replaced the striking workers with new workers, for which that has no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," says German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is crucial to understand. However it goes against all established practices. But Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They aim to become convention challengers. Thus when anyone informs them, hey, you are violating a norm, they see this as praise."

The company's local division declined requests for comment in an email mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has granted just a single media interview during the entire period since the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it benefited the organization better to avoid a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and give them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such decisions," he said.

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

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations remain linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 chargers stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes 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 fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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