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Across Sweden, approximately seventy automotive mechanics persist to confront one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike at the US carmaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has currently entered two years of duration, and there is minimal sign of a resolution.

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

"It's a difficult time," remarks the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold winter weather arrives, it's likely to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a colleague, standing outside an electric vehicle garage within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides shelter via a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages & sandwiches.

However it remains operations continue normally nearby, at which the workshop seems to be in full swing.

This industrial action concerns a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to bargain for pay & conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation are rare.

It's an arrangement supported by all parties. "We prefer the ability to bargain freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement which creates a sort of lords and peasants situation," he informed an audience at an event last year. "I think the unions try to create conflict within businesses."

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

"But they did not reply," says the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the belief that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing this with us."

She states the union ultimately found no other option except to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to issue a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the contract."

But not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages & work terms frequently dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he states he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was said to be turned down for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers participated on strike. The company had some 130 mechanics working at the time the strike was called. IF Metall says currently around 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation there is no precedent since the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," says German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, which is important to understand. However it goes against all traditional norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when anyone tells them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they see that as a compliment."

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

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

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the company better not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide them the best possible terms".

Mr Stark denied that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such decisions," he said.

The union is not completely alone in its fight. The strike has received backing by a number of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and Finland, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations remain linked to the grid across the nation.

There is one such facility close to the capital's airport, where 20 charging units stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

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

With stakes 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 negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is how that would spread," says Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode