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Across Sweden, around seventy car mechanics continue to challenge among the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action at the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently reached its second anniversary, with little sign of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been at the electric car company's protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult period," states the 39-year-old. And as the nation's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to grow more challenging.

The mechanic devotes each Monday with a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla garage on a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a portable construction vehicle, as well as coffee and light meals.

But it's operations continue normally nearby, at which the workshop seems to be in full swing.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate wages & conditions representing their members. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Currently some seventy percent of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, and 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation are rare.

It's a system welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain freely with the unions and establish labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I just don't like anything which creates a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners at an event in 2023. "I think the unions try to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to secure a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," states the union president, the organization's leader. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or not discuss this with our representatives."

She says the union ultimately found no other option except to call industrial action, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Usually it's enough to make a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

However not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that wages & conditions were often subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review at which he says he was denied an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers participated on strike. The company had some 130 mechanics working at the time the industrial action was called. The union says that today approximately seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since replaced these with new workers, for which that has not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," says German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, this being crucial to understand. However it violates all established practices. But Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to become convention challengers. Thus when anyone tells them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they perceive that as a compliment."

The automaker's local division declined attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has given only one press discussion in the two years after the strike began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the organization more not to have a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and give them optimal terms".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to make our own such choices," he stated.

The union is not entirely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway & neighboring states, decline to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is not removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed power points remain linked to power networks in the country.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, where twenty chargers remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station 10km from here," he says. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

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