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In Sweden, approximately 70 automotive mechanics persist to confront one of the globe's richest companies – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has currently reached two years of duration, with minimal indication of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the Tesla protest 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.

Janis devotes each Monday alongside a colleague, standing near an electric vehicle garage on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation in the form of a portable builders' van, plus coffee & sandwiches.

However it's operations continue normally nearby, where the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the heart of Swedish labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay & conditions on behalf of their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for almost one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We favor the ability to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But Tesla has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of any arrangement which creates a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience at an event in 2023. "In my view labor groups try to create conflict in a company."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to secure a labor contract with the automaker.

"But they did not reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "And we got the impression that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She says the union ultimately found no other option except to call a strike, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to make a warning," says the union leader. "Employers typically signs the agreement."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that wages and conditions were often subject to the discretion of managers.

He remembers a performance review at which he says he was denied an annual pay rise because he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to have been rejected for increased compensation because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers went out in the industrial action. The company employed some one hundred thirty mechanics working when the strike was called. IF Metall says that today approximately 70 of its members are on strike.

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

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, which is crucial to recognize. But it goes against all established practices. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when somebody informs them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they perceive that as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for comment via correspondence citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

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

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with the team and provide workers optimal terms".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was determined by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make our own such decisions," he stated.

The union is not entirely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed power points remain linked to the grid across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to the capital's airport, where 20 chargers remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from this location," he says. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our cars, we can power our cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is how this could expand," says Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode