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In Sweden, around 70 automotive technicians persist to challenge one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action at the American automaker's 10 Swedish service centers has now reached two years of duration, with little sign for a resolution.

One striking worker has remained at the electric car company's protest line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a tough time," states the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to grow even tougher.

Janis devotes each Monday with a colleague, positioned outside an electric vehicle garage within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies shelter in the form of a portable builders' van, plus hot beverages and light meals.

However it remains business as usual across the road, at which the service facility seems to operate in full swing.

The strike involves a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for pay & working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today approximately seventy percent of Swedish employees are members to labor organizations, while 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's a system supported across the board. "We prefer the ability to bargain directly with the unions and establish collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement which creates a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "In my view labor groups attempt to create negativity within businesses."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, and IF Metall has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "And we got the impression that they tried to avoid or evade discussing the matter with us."

She states the organization ultimately saw no alternative than to announce a strike, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to make a warning," comments the union leader. "Employers usually signs the contract."

But not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla several years ago. He asserts that pay and conditions frequently dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused an annual pay rise because he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been rejected for increased compensation because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone went out on strike. The company had some one hundred thirty technicians working when the industrial action was called. IF Metall says that today approximately 70 of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since replaced these with new workers, a situation that has not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," states German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not illegal, this being important to understand. However it violates all traditional practices. Yet the company shows no concern about norms.

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

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for interview in an email mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has granted only one media interview in the two years after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the company more to avoid a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide workers the best possible terms".

The executive denied that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to take independent such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in its fight. This industrial action has received backing by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway and Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed charging stations remain linked to power networks in the country.

Exists one such facility close to the capital's airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from here," he says. "And we can still buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it's hard to envision an end to the stand-off. IF Metall risks setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is how this could expand," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode