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In Sweden, approximately seventy car technicians persist to challenge among the world's richest companies – Tesla. This industrial action at the US carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached its second anniversary, and there is minimal sign of a resolution.

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

"It has been a tough period," remarks the 39-year-old. With the nation's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to grow even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla service center on a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it remains business as usual across the road, where the service facility seems to be at full capacity.

The strike concerns an issue that goes to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate wages & conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Currently some seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees belong of a trade union, while 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's a system welcomed by all parties. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of anything that establishes a sort of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience at an event last year. "I think the unions attempt to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," says Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing the matter with us."

She states the union ultimately found no alternative than to call a strike, beginning in late October, last year. "Typically it's enough to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that wages and conditions were often dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused a salary increase because that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was said to have been turned down for a pay rise due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company had some 130 mechanics working at the time the strike was called. The union says that today approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation there is 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 policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, which is crucial to recognize. However it goes against all established practices. But the company doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to become convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, hey, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as praise."

The company's local division declined requests for comment via correspondence mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has given just a single media interview in the two years since the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it suited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and provide them optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was determined by US leadership overseas. "We have authorization to make our own such decisions," he stated.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and neighboring states, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed power points remain connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists one such facility near the capital's airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station 10km from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

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