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In Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics persist to challenge among the globe's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike at the US carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has now reached two years of duration, with minimal indication for a resolution.

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

"It has been a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to grow even tougher.

Janis devotes each Monday with a colleague, standing near an electric vehicle garage on a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, as well as hot beverages and light meals.

But it's business as usual nearby, at which the service facility seems to be in full swing.

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages and working terms on behalf of their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today approximately seventy percent of Swedish employees belong to labor organizations, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is a system welcomed by all parties. "We favor the right to bargain freely with the unions and establish collective agreements," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken CEO the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience in New York last year. "I think the unions try to create conflict within businesses."

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

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

She states the union eventually saw no alternative except to announce a strike, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically signs the agreement."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions were often subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls a performance review at which he says he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for increased compensation because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone went out in the industrial action. The company employed approximately 130 mechanics working when the strike was initiated. The union says currently around 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since substituted these with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, this being crucial to understand. But it violates all established practices. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They aim to be norm breakers. Thus when somebody informs them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they see that as a compliment."

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

Indeed, the company has granted only one media interview during the entire period since the strike started.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it benefited the company better not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with employees and give workers the best possible terms".

Mr Stark denied that the choice not to enter a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to take our own such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Norway & neighboring states, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; waste is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and newly built charging stations are not being connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station six miles from here," he says. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. The union risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

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