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Across Sweden, around 70 car technicians persist to confront one of the world's richest companies – Tesla. This labor strike at the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has currently entered its second anniversary, and there is minimal sign for a resolution.

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

"It's a difficult period," remarks the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla service center within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a mobile builders' van, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the service facility appears to operate in full swing.

The strike concerns an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to bargain for wages & conditions on behalf of their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for nearly a century.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish employees are members of a trade union, and ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement supported across the board. "We prefer the ability to negotiate freely with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However the electric car company has upset established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply don't like any arrangement which creates a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience at an event last year. "In my view the unions try to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla entered Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has long wanted to secure a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," states the union president, the organization's president. "And we got the belief that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing this with us."

She states the organization ultimately found no other option except to call industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

But not in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He claims that wages & work terms were often dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to be rejected for a pay rise due to he had the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone participated on strike. Tesla employed some 130 technicians working at the time the strike was called. The union says that today around 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

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

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to recognize. But it goes against all established practices. But the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to be norm breakers. So if somebody informs them, hey, you are violating a norm, they perceive that as praise."

The company's local division declined attempts for interview via correspondence mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has granted only one press discussion during the entire period since the strike began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it suited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported by a number of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, are refusing to handle Teslas; waste is no longer collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points remain connected to the grid across the nation.

There is one such facility near the capital's airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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