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In Sweden, around seventy car technicians persist to challenge among the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently entered two years of duration, and there is minimal indication for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been on the electric car company's picket line starting from October 2023.

"It's a tough time," states the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla service center within a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, provides accommodation via a mobile builders' van, as well as hot beverages & sandwiches.

However it's operations continue normally nearby, where the service facility seems to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves a matter that reaches to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for pay and conditions representing their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for almost a century.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish workers are members to labor organizations, and 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is a system welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate freely with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I just disapprove of anything which creates a sort of hierarchical situation," he informed listeners in New York last year. "I think the unions attempt to generate conflict in a company."

The automaker entered Sweden starting in 2014, and IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a labor contract with the company.

"But they wouldn't respond," says Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "We formed the impression that they tried to avoid or evade discussing this with us."

She states the union ultimately saw no alternative except to announce a strike, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to make the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay & work terms were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was refused a salary increase because that he "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a colleague was said to be rejected for increased compensation because he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. Tesla had approximately one hundred thirty mechanics working at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall says that today approximately 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation there is not occurred since the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to understand. However it goes against all traditional norms. But the company shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. So if somebody tells them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive that as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for interview via correspondence citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has granted just a single press discussion in the two years since the strike started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with employees and give them optimal terms".

The executive denied that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to take independent such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in its fight. The strike has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Norway & Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is not removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, where 20 charging units stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from here," he says. "And we can still buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it is difficult to see a resolution to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

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