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Across Sweden, approximately 70 automotive technicians persist to confront among the globe's richest corporations – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the US automaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has now entered its second anniversary, and there is minimal indication for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the Tesla protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult time," remarks the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it is expected to become even tougher.

Janis spends every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, positioned near an electric vehicle service center on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter via a mobile construction vehicle, plus coffee & light meals.

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

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the core of Swedish labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to bargain for wages and conditions representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's employees are members to labor organizations, and ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We favor the right to negotiate directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has upset established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners in New York last year. "I think the unions try to create conflict in a company."

The automaker entered Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years sought to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they did not reply," says the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the impression that they attempted to hide away or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She states the union ultimately found no alternative except to call industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to issue a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay and conditions were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he states he was refused a salary increase because that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to have been turned down for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla had approximately 130 technicians working when the industrial action was called. The union says currently around seventy of its members are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not illegal, which is important to recognize. However it violates all traditional norms. But Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become convention challengers. Thus when somebody informs them, listen, you are violating a standard, they perceive this as a compliment."

The automaker's local division refused requests for comment via correspondence citing "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the company has given only one press discussion in the two years after the strike started.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it benefited the organization better not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with employees and provide them optimal conditions".

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

The union is not completely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; waste is not removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed power points are not being connected to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from this location," he says. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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