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Across Sweden, approximately seventy car mechanics persist to challenge among the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the American automaker's 10 Swedish service centers has currently entered two years of duration, with minimal indication of a settlement.

One striking worker has remained at the electric car company's picket line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a tough time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a fellow worker, standing outside an electric vehicle garage within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, as well as coffee & light meals.

However it remains business as usual across the road, at which the service facility seems to operate at full capacity.

The strike concerns an issue that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for wages and working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently some 70% of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate freely with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just don't like anything that establishes a sort of lords and peasants situation," he informed listeners in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups attempt to create negativity in a company."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, and IF Metall has for years sought to secure a labor contract with the automaker.

"But they wouldn't reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to avoid or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She says the organization ultimately saw no other option than to call a strike, beginning in late October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the contract."

However not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay & conditions were often dependent on the discretion of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he states he was denied an annual pay rise because he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out on strike. The company employed approximately one hundred thirty technicians employed when the strike was initiated. The union says currently approximately 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has long since replaced these with new workers, a situation there is not occurred since the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, this being important to understand. However it violates all established norms. Yet Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to become norm breakers. So if anyone informs them, listen, you are violating a norm, they see this as a compliment."

The company's local division refused requests for comment in an email citing "record deliveries".

In fact, the company has given only one press discussion during the entire period since the strike began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it suited the company more not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with the team and give workers optimal terms".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to make independent such choices," he said.

IF Metall is not completely alone in its fight. This industrial action has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and Finland, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed power points remain linked to power networks in the country.

There is an example near the capital's airport, at which 20 charging units stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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