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In Sweden, approximately 70 automotive mechanics persist to confront one of the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike at the American carmaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has now reached two years of duration, and there is little indication for a settlement.

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

"It's a tough time," remarks the 39-year-old. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to become more challenging.

Janis devotes each Monday alongside a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla service center within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides shelter via a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee & light meals.

However it remains business as usual across the road, at which the workshop seems to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns a matter that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay and working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly a century.

Today approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

This is a system supported by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he told an audience at an event in 2023. "In my view the unions try to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla entered Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"But they wouldn't respond," states the union president, the union's president. "We formed the impression that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing the matter with us."

She says the organization eventually found no alternative than to call a strike, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make a warning," says the union leader. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, began employment for Tesla several years ago. He claims that wages and work terms frequently subject to the whim of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he states he was refused a salary increase because that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was reported to be turned down for increased compensation because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone went out on strike. The company employed some one hundred thirty mechanics working when the strike was initiated. The union states that today approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has long since replaced these with replacement staff, for which that has not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not illegal, this being important to recognize. But it goes against all traditional practices. But Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. Thus when somebody informs them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they perceive this as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for comment via correspondence citing "all-time high deliveries".

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

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, informed a business paper that it suited the company more not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and give them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters 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 been supported from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & Finland, are refusing to process Teslas; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to power networks in the country.

There is an example close to the capital's airport, at which twenty charging units stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station six miles from here," he says. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric 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 principle of collective agreement.

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