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In Sweden, approximately seventy car technicians continue to challenge one of the globe's richest corporations – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the US carmaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has now reached its second anniversary, and there is little indication for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been on the Tesla picket line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a tough time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's chilly winter weather sets in, it's likely to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a fellow worker, standing outside an electric vehicle garage on a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee and light meals.

However it remains operations continue normally across the road, at which the service facility seems to be at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns an issue that goes to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay and conditions representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's employees belong of a trade union, while ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's a system supported by all parties. "We prefer the ability to negotiate directly with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners at an event in 2023. "I think the unions try to generate negativity within businesses."

The automaker entered Sweden back in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has long wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they did not respond," states the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the belief that they tried to avoid or not discuss this with our representatives."

She says the organization ultimately saw no alternative except to announce a strike, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that wages and conditions were often subject to the whim of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he states he was refused a salary increase because that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to be turned down for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone participated on strike. Tesla had some 130 mechanics employed when the industrial action was called. IF Metall states currently approximately 70 of its members are on strike.

Tesla has since substituted these with replacement staff, for which that has not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

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

"They want to be convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, listen, you are violating a norm, they perceive that as praise."

The company's local division refused attempts for interview in an email mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

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

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it benefited the organization more not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and give them optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in this conflict. The strike has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed power points remain linked to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, at which 20 chargers remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station six miles from here," he says. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is how that would spread," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode