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Across Sweden, approximately seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront one of the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the American carmaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has now entered two years of duration, with little indication for a resolution.

One striking worker has been at the Tesla protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to grow more challenging.

The mechanic spends each Monday with a colleague, positioned near a Tesla garage on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides accommodation in the form of a portable construction vehicle, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

But it remains business as usual across the road, at which the workshop seems to be at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to negotiate pay and conditions representing their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish workers are members to labor organizations, while ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to bargain freely with the unions and establish labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of hierarchical situation," he told listeners in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups attempt to create negativity in a company."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has long wanted to establish a labor contract with the company.

"But they wouldn't reply," says the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the belief that they tried to avoid or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She says the organization eventually found no other option than to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to issue a warning," says the union leader. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that pay & work terms frequently subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he states he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to have been turned down for a pay rise due to having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. The company employed some 130 mechanics working at the time the industrial action was called. The union says that today approximately 70 of its members are on strike.

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

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, which is important to recognize. But it violates all established practices. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become convention challengers. Thus when anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they see that as a compliment."

The company's local division refused attempts for interview via correspondence mentioning "record deliveries".

Indeed, the company has granted only one press discussion in the two years since the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it suited the organization better not to have a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and give them the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice to avoid a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have authorization to make independent such choices," he said.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway & neighboring states, decline to process Teslas; waste is not collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed charging stations are not being connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to the capital's airport, at which 20 charging units stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from here," he says. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it is difficult to envision an end to the stand-off. The union risks setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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