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Across Sweden, around seventy car mechanics persist to challenge among the globe's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the US carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has now reached two years of duration, and there is minimal indication for a settlement.

One striking worker has remained at the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

"It's a difficult time," remarks the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's chilly winter weather arrives, it's likely to become more challenging.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a colleague, positioned outside a Tesla service center on a business district in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter in the form of a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee and light meals.

But it's operations continue normally across the road, at which the workshop appears to operate at full capacity.

The strike involves an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for pay & working terms on behalf of their members. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for almost one hundred years.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers belong of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

This is a system welcomed across the board. "We prefer the ability to bargain directly with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he informed an audience at an event in 2023. "I think the unions try to create negativity in a company."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has long sought to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they wouldn't reply," states the union president, the union's president. "And we got the belief that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She states the union eventually saw no other option except to call industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Typically it's enough to make a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company typically agrees to the agreement."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that pay & work terms were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to have been rejected for a pay rise because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone went out in the industrial action. Tesla employed approximately 130 mechanics employed when the industrial action was called. The union says currently approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation that has no precedent since the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to recognize. However it violates all traditional practices. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. Thus when somebody tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they perceive this as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for comment via correspondence citing "all-time high deliveries".

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

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it suited the organization more to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with the team and provide them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "We have a mandate to make our own such choices," he said.

The union is not completely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported by a number of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to process Teslas; waste is no longer removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations are not being connected to the grid in the country.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, where twenty chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station 10km from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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