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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics persist to confront among the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the American carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently reached its second anniversary, and there is minimal indication of a settlement.

One striking worker has been on the electric car company's protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a tough time," remarks the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's chilly winter weather sets in, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a colleague, standing near a Tesla service center on an industrial park in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, supplies accommodation in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, plus hot beverages and light meals.

However it's operations continue normally across the road, where the service facility seems to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to bargain for wages & working terms representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement supported across the board. "We favor the ability to bargain directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups try to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla entered Sweden starting in 2014, and IF Metall has long wanted to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the belief that they tried to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She says the organization ultimately saw no other option except to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically signs the contract."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He claims that wages & work terms frequently subject to the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he says he was denied a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to be rejected for a pay rise because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated on strike. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty mechanics working at the time the strike was called. IF Metall says currently approximately 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with new workers, a situation there is not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," states German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, this being important to recognize. But it violates all established norms. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to become norm breakers. Thus when somebody informs them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they perceive this as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for interview via correspondence mentioning "record deliveries".

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

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a business paper that it suited the organization better to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with the team and provide workers optimal conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed charging stations remain connected to power networks across the nation.

There is one such facility near the capital's airport, at which twenty charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it's hard to envision an end to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is that that would spread," states Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode