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In Sweden, around 70 car technicians continue to challenge among the world's richest corporations – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has now entered two years of duration, with little sign for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been at the electric car company's picket line since October 2023.

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

Janis devotes every start of the week with a colleague, standing outside a Tesla service center on an industrial park in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

But it remains business as usual nearby, at which the service facility appears to operate in full swing.

The strike concerns a matter that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay & conditions representing their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, and 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is an arrangement supported by all parties. "We prefer the ability to bargain directly with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of anything which creates a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners in New York in 2023. "In my view labor groups try to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden back in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to secure a labor contract with the company.

"But they did not reply," states the union president, the organization's president. "We formed the impression that they tried to hide away or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the union eventually found no other option than to announce industrial action, which started in late October, last year. "Usually it's enough to make the threat," comments the union leader. "The company typically agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that wages & work terms frequently dependent on the discretion of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he says he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a coworker was reported to be turned down for increased compensation due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. The company employed some one hundred thirty technicians working at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently around 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has since replaced the striking workers with new workers, for which that has no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to recognize. However it goes against all traditional practices. Yet the company shows no concern about norms.

"They want to be norm breakers. So if somebody informs them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they perceive that as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for interview via correspondence citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has granted just a single media interview during the entire period after the strike started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a financial publication that it benefited the organization more not to have a union contract, and instead "to work closely with the team and give workers the best possible conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to make our own such choices," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & neighboring states, are refusing to handle Teslas; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed power points remain linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty chargers remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from here," he says. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is that this could expand," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode