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In Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics continue to confront one of the world's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. The labor strike targeting the American carmaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has now entered its second anniversary, with minimal indication for a resolution.

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

"It's a tough period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to grow more challenging.

The mechanic spends every start of the week with a colleague, standing outside a Tesla garage within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter via a mobile builders' van, plus coffee & sandwiches.

But it remains business as usual across the road, where the service facility seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that goes to the core of Swedish labor traditions – the right of trade unions to negotiate wages & working terms representing their members. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees belong of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement supported by all parties. "We prefer the ability to negotiate freely with the unions and establish labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However the electric car company has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told listeners at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups try to create negativity in a company."

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

"But they wouldn't reply," says the union president, the union's president. "And we got the impression that they tried to hide away or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the union eventually found no other option except to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, last year. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the contract."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that wages and conditions were often subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review where he says he was denied a salary increase because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was said to be rejected for a pay rise because having the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone participated on strike. The company had some 130 technicians working at the time the strike was called. The union states currently approximately 70 of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted these with replacement staff, for which that has not occurred since the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is crucial to understand. However it goes against all traditional practices. But Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

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

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

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

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it suited the organization more to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers the best possible terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was determined by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to make our own such choices," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, are refusing to process Teslas; rubbish is no longer removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and newly built charging stations remain linked to the grid across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is that this could expand," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode