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In Sweden, approximately seventy automotive technicians continue to challenge one of the world's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the American automaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently reached two years of duration, and there is little indication of a settlement.

One striking worker has remained at the electric car company's picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to become more challenging.

The mechanic spends every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla service center on an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a portable construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages & sandwiches.

However it remains operations continue normally nearby, where the workshop seems to be at full capacity.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the core of Swedish labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate wages and working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for nearly a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish employees belong to labor organizations, and 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is an arrangement supported by all parties. "We prefer the ability to bargain freely with the unions and sign labor contracts," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners in New York last year. "I think labor groups attempt to generate negativity in a company."

The automaker entered Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," states Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "And we got the impression that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She says the union eventually found no alternative than to announce industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to make a warning," says the union leader. "The company typically signs the contract."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that pay & conditions frequently dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was said to have been rejected for a pay rise because having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. Tesla employed some 130 technicians employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says currently approximately seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted these with new workers, for which that has no precedent since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

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

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when somebody informs them, hey, you are violating a standard, they see that as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for interview via correspondence mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has granted only one press discussion in the two years since the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the company more not to have a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and give workers the best possible conditions".

The executive denied that the choice not to enter a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, are refusing to process Teslas; waste is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points are not being connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, at which 20 charging units stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from here," he says. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is how that would spread," says Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode