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In Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics persist to confront one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. The industrial action at the American carmaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has currently reached two years of duration, and there is little sign of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been on the Tesla picket line since October 2023.

"It's a tough period," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become more challenging.

Janis devotes each Monday alongside a colleague, positioned outside an electric vehicle service center within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter via a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

But it's business as usual nearby, at which the workshop appears to be at full capacity.

The strike concerns an issue that goes to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages and working terms representing their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We favor the right to negotiate directly with the unions and sign collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has upset established practices. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I simply don't like any arrangement which creates a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "I think the unions try to create negativity in a company."

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

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the organization's president. "We formed the impression that they tried to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She says the union eventually saw no other option except to announce a strike, which started in late October, last year. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually agrees to the agreement."

But this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions frequently subject to the whim of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he states he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was reported to be rejected for increased compensation due to having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla had approximately 130 mechanics employed when the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says currently around 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation there is no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, this being crucial to understand. However it goes against all established practices. Yet Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be norm breakers. So if anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see this as praise."

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

In fact, the automaker has given just a single media interview in the two years after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a business paper that it benefited the company more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers optimal conditions".

The executive denied that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such choices," he said.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has been supported by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway and Finland, decline to process the company's vehicles; waste is not removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while newly built charging stations remain linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to the capital's airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station six miles from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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