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In Sweden, approximately seventy car mechanics continue to confront among the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike at the American carmaker's 10 Swedish service centers has currently entered its second anniversary, and there is little indication of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the electric car company's picket line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a tough period," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic spends each Monday with a fellow worker, standing near a Tesla service center within a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies accommodation in the form of a portable construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally nearby, where the workshop appears to operate in full swing.

This industrial action concerns a matter that reaches to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to bargain for pay and conditions on behalf of their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for almost a century.

Today approximately seventy percent of Swedish employees belong of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation are rare.

It's a system welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the ability to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However Tesla has upset the apple cart. Outspoken CEO the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just don't like anything that establishes a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups attempt to create negativity within businesses."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has long sought to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the organization's president. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She states the union eventually saw no other option than to announce a strike, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Usually it's enough to make a warning," says the union leader. "The company typically agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that wages and conditions were often subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to be turned down for a pay rise because having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. Tesla had approximately one hundred thirty mechanics working at the time the strike was initiated. IF Metall states currently around 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

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

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," says German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, this being important to understand. But it violates all established norms. Yet the company shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become convention challengers. Thus when anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they see that as praise."

The company's local division refused requests for comment via correspondence citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has given only one press discussion in the two years after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it suited the company better not to have a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and give them the best possible conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid 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 entirely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has been supported by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & neighboring states, decline to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is not collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed power points are not being linked to the grid in the country.

Exists one such facility near the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it's hard to envision an end to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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