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In Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics continue to confront one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike targeting the American carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently entered its second anniversary, and there is little sign of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the electric car company's protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a tough period," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic spends each Monday with a colleague, standing outside an electric vehicle garage within a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, supplies accommodation via a mobile builders' van, as well as coffee and light meals.

But it's business as usual across the road, at which the workshop seems to be at full capacity.

The strike concerns a matter that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right of trade unions to negotiate pay and working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported industrial relations across the nation for nearly a century.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

It's a system supported across the board. "We prefer the right to bargain freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement which creates a sort of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience at an event in 2023. "In my view labor groups try to create negativity in a company."

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

"Yet they did not reply," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the organization eventually found no other option than to call a strike, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to make a warning," says the union leader. "The company typically signs the agreement."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He claims that wages & work terms were often subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he says he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers participated on strike. The company had approximately 130 mechanics working at the time the strike was initiated. The union says currently approximately 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has since replaced the striking workers with new workers, for which there is no precedent since the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, this being important to recognize. However it goes against all established norms. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if somebody tells them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they perceive that as praise."

The automaker's local division refused attempts for interview via correspondence citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has granted only one press discussion in the two years since the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, the executive, told a financial publication that it suited the organization more not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with employees and provide them optimal terms".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a labor contract was determined by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to make our own such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and Finland, decline to handle Teslas; waste is not collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points are not being connected to power networks across the nation.

There is an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it is difficult to envision an end to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is that that would spread," says Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode