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In Sweden, approximately seventy automotive technicians persist to challenge one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike targeting the US automaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now entered two years of duration, and there is little sign for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the Tesla picket line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a tough period," remarks the 39-year-old. With Sweden's chilly winter weather arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

The mechanic spends every start of the week with a colleague, positioned near a Tesla garage within a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation via a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee & sandwiches.

However it's business as usual across the road, at which the service facility appears to be at full capacity.

The strike involves a matter that reaches to the heart of Swedish labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay and working terms representing their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Currently some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

This is an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to negotiate freely with the unions and establish labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything which creates a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York last year. "In my view labor groups try to create conflict in a company."

Tesla came to Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"But they did not respond," says the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to hide away or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She states the union ultimately found no alternative except to announce a strike, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to make a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually agrees to the contract."

However not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, started working with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay and conditions frequently dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review at which he says he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be turned down for a pay rise due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated on strike. Tesla employed approximately 130 technicians employed when the industrial action was initiated. The union states currently around seventy of its members are on strike.

The automaker has long since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, this being crucial to recognize. But it violates all traditional norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when somebody informs them, listen, you are violating a norm, they see this as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused requests for interview in an email mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has given only one media interview in the two years since the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, informed a financial publication that it benefited the organization more not to have a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers the best possible conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make our own such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in its fight. This industrial action has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed charging stations are not being connected to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

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

With stakes high on both sides, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is how that would spread," states Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode