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In Sweden, around seventy automotive technicians persist to confront among the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action at the US automaker's 10 Swedish service centers has currently entered its second anniversary, and there is little sign for a settlement.

One striking worker has remained at the Tesla protest line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a tough time," states the 39-year-old. With Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to grow more challenging.

Janis devotes every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla service center on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides accommodation via a mobile construction vehicle, plus coffee & light meals.

But it's business as usual across the road, where the service facility appears to be at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay and working terms representing their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We favor the right to negotiate freely with the unions and establish collective agreements," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However Tesla has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners in New York in 2023. "In my view the unions try to generate conflict in a company."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "We formed the belief that they tried to avoid or not discuss the matter with us."

She states the union eventually found no alternative except to call a strike, which started on 27 October, last year. "Usually it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that pay and work terms were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review where he says he was denied a salary increase because that he "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to be rejected for increased compensation because having the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone participated on strike. The company employed some 130 mechanics employed when the strike was initiated. The union states that today around 70 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 era of the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," says German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to understand. But it goes against all traditional norms. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to become norm breakers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they see that as praise."

The automaker's local division declined requests for interview via correspondence mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has given just a single media interview during the entire period after the strike began.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the organization more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to work closely with employees and give them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the decision not to enter a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "We have a mandate to take our own such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & Finland, are refusing to handle Teslas; waste is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed charging stations remain linked to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty charging units stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is how that would spread," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode