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In Sweden, around 70 car technicians persist to challenge among the world's richest companies – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the American automaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently entered two years of duration, and there is little indication for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been on the electric car company's protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a tough time," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a colleague, positioned near a Tesla service center within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, as well as coffee and light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally nearby, at which the service facility appears to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for pay and working terms representing their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Today some 70% of Swedish employees belong of a trade union, and 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with the unions and establish labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of hierarchical situation," he told an audience at an event last year. "I think the unions attempt to create conflict within businesses."

The automaker entered Sweden back in 2014, while IF Metall has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"But they did not reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "We formed the belief that they tried to hide away or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She says the organization ultimately found no alternative than to call a strike, which started in late October, last year. "Usually it's enough to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically signs the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions were often subject to the whim of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review at which he states he was denied a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to be rejected for increased compensation due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out in the industrial action. Tesla had approximately 130 mechanics working at the time the strike was initiated. IF Metall says currently approximately 70 of its members are on strike.

The automaker has since substituted these with new workers, for which there is not occurred since the 1930s.

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

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to recognize. But it goes against all traditional practices. Yet Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They want to be convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, hey, you are violating a norm, they see that as praise."

The automaker's local division refused attempts for comment via correspondence citing "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the company has given only one press discussion during the entire period since the strike started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, told a business paper that it benefited the organization more not to have a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and give them optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely alone in its fight. The strike has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Norway and neighboring states, are refusing to process Teslas; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed power points are not being linked to the grid across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 charging units remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our cars, we can power our cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it's hard to see an end to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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