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Across Sweden, approximately seventy automotive mechanics persist to challenge one of the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike targeting the American carmaker's 10 Swedish service centers has currently entered its second anniversary, with little sign of a resolution.

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

"It's a tough time," remarks the 39-year-old. With Sweden's chilly winter weather arrives, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic spends each Monday with a fellow worker, standing outside a Tesla service center within a business district in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a portable construction vehicle, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

But it remains business as usual across the road, where the service facility appears to operate in full swing.

This industrial action concerns a matter that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay and conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for almost a century.

Currently some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement supported by all parties. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told an audience at an event in 2023. "I think the unions attempt to create conflict in a company."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market back in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has long sought to secure a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they did not respond," says Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to avoid or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the union ultimately found no other option except to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company usually signs the contract."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that pay & work terms were often subject to the discretion of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was refused a salary increase because that he "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been turned down for a pay rise because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out on strike. The company had approximately one hundred thirty mechanics employed at the time the strike was initiated. IF Metall states currently around 70 of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted these with new workers, a situation that has no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," says German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, this being important to recognize. However it goes against all established practices. Yet the company shows no concern about norms.

"They aim to be norm breakers. So if anyone tells them, listen, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as a compliment."

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

Indeed, the automaker has granted only one media interview in the two years after the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it suited the organization better to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and give workers the best possible terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision not to enter a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "We have authorization to make our own such choices," he stated.

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

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to handle Teslas; waste is no longer collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to the grid across the nation.

There is an example near the capital's airport, at which 20 chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the deadlock. The union risks setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is that this could expand," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode