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In Sweden, approximately 70 car technicians persist to confront one of the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike targeting the American carmaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has currently reached its second anniversary, with little sign for a settlement.

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

"It's a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to grow more challenging.

The mechanic spends every start of the week with a colleague, standing near a Tesla garage within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, as well as hot beverages & sandwiches.

However it remains operations continue normally nearby, at which the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

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

Currently some 70% of Swedish employees are members to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

This is a system welcomed across the board. "We favor the right to negotiate directly with the unions and establish collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I simply don't like any arrangement that establishes a sort of hierarchical situation," he told an audience in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups try to create conflict within businesses."

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

"Yet they wouldn't reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "And we got the impression that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She says the organization ultimately saw no alternative except to call industrial action, which started in late October, last year. "Usually it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually signs the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, started working for Tesla several years ago. He claims that wages & conditions were often dependent on the discretion of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he states he was denied an annual pay rise because that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for increased compensation due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated on strike. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty mechanics working at the time the strike was initiated. The union states that today around 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since replaced these with replacement staff, for which that has not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to understand. But it goes against all established norms. Yet Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see that as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for comment in an email citing "record deliveries".

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

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the company better not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and give workers the best possible conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such decisions," he stated.

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

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while newly built charging stations remain connected to the grid in the country.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is how this could expand," states Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode