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Across Sweden, around seventy car technicians persist to confront among the world's richest companies – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the American automaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has now reached two years of duration, with little indication of a resolution.

One striking worker has been on the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," remarks the 39-year-old. And as the nation's chilly winter weather sets in, it's likely to become more challenging.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a colleague, positioned near an electric vehicle garage on a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, plus hot beverages & sandwiches.

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

This industrial action involves an issue that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right of trade unions to negotiate pay & working terms representing their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Swedish employees are members to labor organizations, while 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain directly with the unions and establish labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I simply disapprove of anything which creates a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "I think the unions try to create negativity within businesses."

The automaker came to Sweden back in 2014, while IF Metall has long wanted to establish a labor contract with the company.

"But they wouldn't reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "And we got the belief that they tried to avoid or not discuss the matter with us."

She states the organization eventually found no other option except to call a strike, beginning in late October, last year. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the contract."

However not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, started working with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that pay & work terms were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review at which he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to have been rejected for a pay rise because having the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone participated on strike. Tesla had approximately 130 technicians working when the strike was initiated. IF Metall says that today around seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since replaced these with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is important to recognize. However it goes against all traditional practices. Yet Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive this as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for comment in an email citing "record vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has given only one media interview during the entire period since the industrial action began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, informed a financial publication that it benefited the company better not to have a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and give workers optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was determined by US leadership overseas. "We have a mandate to make independent such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & Finland, are refusing to handle Teslas; waste is no longer removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed power points remain linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty charging units remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station 10km from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it's hard to see a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is that this could expand," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode