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In Sweden, around seventy car technicians persist to challenge among the globe's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the US automaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now reached its second anniversary, with little indication for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the Tesla picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a tough period," states the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's cold winter weather sets in, it is expected to grow more challenging.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned outside an electric vehicle service center on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a mobile builders' van, as well as hot beverages and light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, at which the service facility appears to be at full capacity.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority of trade unions 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 approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's a system supported across the board. "We favor the right to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I simply disapprove of anything which creates a kind of hierarchical situation," he told an audience at an event last year. "I think the unions attempt to create conflict in a company."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"But they did not respond," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "And we got the impression that they attempted to hide away or not discuss this with us."

She says the union ultimately found no other option except to announce industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to make a warning," comments the union leader. "The company usually signs the contract."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions were often dependent on the whim of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to have been rejected for a pay rise because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed some 130 mechanics employed at the time the industrial action was called. The union says that today approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

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

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not illegal, this being important to understand. However it goes against all established practices. Yet Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. Thus when somebody informs them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they see this as praise."

The company's local division refused attempts for interview in an email mentioning "record deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has given just a single media interview during the entire period since the strike started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the company better to avoid a union contract, and rather "to work closely with employees and give them the best possible terms".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have a mandate to make independent such decisions," he said.

The union is not entirely alone in this conflict. The strike has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & neighboring states, decline to process Teslas; waste is not removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed charging stations remain linked to power networks in the country.

There is an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

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

With stakes high on both sides, it's hard to envision an end to the stand-off. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is that that would spread," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode