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Across Sweden, approximately seventy car technicians persist to challenge among the globe's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the American automaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has now entered two years of duration, and there is minimal sign of a settlement.

One striking worker has been at the Tesla protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a tough time," states the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it's likely to become more challenging.

Janis devotes each Monday with a colleague, standing near a Tesla service center within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides accommodation via a mobile construction vehicle, as well as coffee and sandwiches.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, at which the service facility appears to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns an issue that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay and conditions representing their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for almost a century.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's employees belong of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's a system supported across the board. "We favor the right to bargain freely with the unions and establish collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But the electric car company has upset established practices. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I just disapprove of any arrangement which creates a sort of hierarchical situation," he informed an audience at an event last year. "In my view labor groups try to create conflict in a company."

The automaker entered Sweden back in 2014, while IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

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

She states the union ultimately found no alternative than to call industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," says the union leader. "The company usually signs the agreement."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay & work terms frequently dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he states he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to be turned down for a pay rise due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla had approximately 130 technicians employed when the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall states that today approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has since substituted these with new workers, a situation there is no precedent since the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," says German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, which is crucial to understand. However it violates all traditional practices. Yet Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to become norm breakers. So if somebody tells them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they see this as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for comment in an email citing "record deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has given just a single media interview during the entire period after the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it suited the company more not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and give workers the best possible conditions".

The executive denied that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in this conflict. The strike has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to power networks across the nation.

There is an example near the capital's airport, at which twenty charging units remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from here," he says. "And we can still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall risks setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that this could expand," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode