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In Sweden, approximately seventy automotive mechanics continue to challenge one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the American automaker's 10 Swedish service centers has now reached two years of duration, and there is little sign of a settlement.

One striking worker has remained at the electric car company's picket line starting from October 2023.

"It's a tough time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's cold winter weather arrives, it's likely to become more challenging.

Janis spends every start of the week with a colleague, standing near a Tesla service center on a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

However it remains operations continue normally nearby, at which the service facility seems to be at full capacity.

The strike involves an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for wages and working terms representing their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for almost a century.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Swedish workers belong to labor organizations, and 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the ability to negotiate freely with the unions and sign labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However Tesla has upset established practices. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just don't like anything which creates a kind of hierarchical situation," he informed listeners in New York in 2023. "I think the unions attempt to generate negativity in a company."

Tesla entered Sweden starting in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has long wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they did not respond," states the union president, the organization's president. "And we got the belief that they tried to avoid or evade discussing the matter with us."

She says the union ultimately found no other option except to call industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to make a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically signs the contract."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He claims that wages & conditions frequently dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was denied a salary increase on grounds he was "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to be turned down for increased compensation because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated in the industrial action. The company employed approximately one hundred thirty mechanics working at the time the strike was initiated. The union says that today around 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation there is not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, this being crucial to recognize. However it goes against all established norms. But the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when anyone informs them, listen, you are violating a norm, they perceive that as praise."

The automaker's local division declined requests for interview in an email citing "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has given just a single media interview in the two years after the strike started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it benefited the organization better not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with the team and give them optimal terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have authorization to make independent such decisions," he stated.

The union is not completely alone in this conflict. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway and Finland, decline to process Teslas; rubbish is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points are not being connected to power networks in the country.

There is an example near the capital's airport, where 20 charging units stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from here," he says. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is how this could expand," states Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode