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In Sweden, around 70 automotive technicians continue to confront one of the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike 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 at the electric car company's protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's chilly winter weather arrives, it's likely to become even tougher.

Janis spends every start of the week with a colleague, positioned near an electric vehicle service center on an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a portable builders' van, plus coffee and sandwiches.

But it's operations continue normally across the road, where the workshop seems to be in full swing.

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for pay and working terms representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's employees are members to labor organizations, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is a system welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of anything that establishes a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he told an audience in New York in 2023. "In my view labor groups attempt to create conflict within businesses."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market back in 2014, and IF Metall has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"But they did not respond," states the union president, the organization's president. "And we got the belief that they attempted to avoid or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the union eventually found no alternative than to announce industrial action, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to make the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically agrees to the contract."

But not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay and conditions were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was refused an annual pay rise because that he "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been rejected for increased compensation due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company employed approximately one hundred thirty technicians employed when the strike was called. IF Metall states that today around seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has not occurred since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," states German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, this being crucial to understand. However it goes against all traditional norms. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be norm breakers. So if somebody informs them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive that as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for interview in an email citing "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has granted only one media interview during the entire period since the strike started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and provide them optimal conditions".

The executive denied that the choice not to enter a labor contract was determined by US leadership in the US. "We have a mandate to take independent such choices," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing by a number of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway & neighboring states, decline to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is not collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while newly built charging stations are not being connected to power networks across the nation.

There is an example near the capital's airport, where twenty charging units stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, 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. "And we can still buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it's hard to envision a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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