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Across Sweden, approximately 70 car mechanics persist to confront one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently reached two years of duration, with little sign for a settlement.

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

"It's a difficult time," remarks the 39-year-old. And as the nation's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become more challenging.

The mechanic spends each Monday with a fellow worker, standing outside a Tesla garage within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee & light meals.

However it remains business as usual nearby, where the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

The strike involves an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right of trade unions to negotiate wages & working terms representing their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today approximately 70% of Swedish employees are members to labor organizations, while 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We favor the ability to bargain directly with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But the electric car company has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just don't like anything that establishes a kind of hierarchical situation," he told listeners at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups try to create negativity within businesses."

The automaker entered Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the organization's president. "And we got the impression that they tried to avoid or not discuss the matter with us."

She says the organization eventually saw no alternative than to call industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue the threat," comments the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, began employment for Tesla several years ago. He asserts that pay & conditions were often subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused a salary increase on grounds he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to have been turned down for a pay rise because having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out in the industrial action. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty technicians employed when the industrial action was called. IF Metall says currently around 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since replaced these with new workers, for which there is no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, which is important to understand. But it violates all traditional norms. But the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. So if anyone tells them, listen, you are violating a norm, they perceive this as praise."

The automaker's local division refused requests for comment via correspondence citing "record deliveries".

Indeed, the company has given just a single media interview during the entire period since the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the organization better to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with the team and provide workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have a mandate to take independent such decisions," he said.

The union is not entirely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway & Finland, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; waste is not removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations remain linked to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

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