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In Sweden, around seventy automotive technicians persist to confront one of the world's richest corporations – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the American automaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has currently entered two years of duration, with minimal sign for a resolution.

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

"It's a tough time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to become more challenging.

Janis spends every start of the week with a colleague, positioned outside a Tesla service center on an industrial park in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter via a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it's business as usual nearby, at which the workshop appears to be in full swing.

The strike involves a matter that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay and conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for almost a century.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish workers are members to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We favor the right to bargain freely with the unions and sign labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But the electric car company has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just don't like anything which creates a sort of hierarchical situation," he told listeners in New York last year. "I think labor groups attempt to generate negativity within businesses."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market back in 2014, and IF Metall has long sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," states the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She says the union eventually found no other option except to call industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

However this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He claims that wages & conditions were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds he was "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a colleague was reported to be rejected for increased compensation because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated on strike. The company employed some one hundred thirty technicians employed when the strike was initiated. IF Metall states currently approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which there is not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," states German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, this being important to understand. But it goes against all traditional practices. But the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, hey, you are violating a norm, they see this as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for comment in an email citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has given just a single press discussion during the entire period since the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it benefited the company better not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with the team and give workers optimal terms".

The executive rejected that the decision not to enter a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, decline to process Teslas; rubbish is no longer collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points remain connected to the grid in the country.

There is an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 charging units stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station six miles from this location," he says. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it is difficult to see a resolution to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

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