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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront one of the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action at the American carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently reached two years of duration, and there is little sign of a settlement.

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

"It's a difficult period," remarks the 39-year-old. With the nation's chilly winter weather arrives, it's likely to grow even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week alongside a colleague, standing outside an electric vehicle garage within a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, supplies accommodation via a mobile construction vehicle, plus coffee & light meals.

However it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the workshop appears to operate in full swing.

The strike involves a matter that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for wages & working terms on behalf of their members. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees are members to labor organizations, while 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

This is a system welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken CEO the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I just disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "In my view the unions attempt to create negativity within businesses."

The automaker came to Sweden back in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to secure a labor contract with the company.

"But they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the organization's president. "And we got the impression that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She states the organization eventually found no other option than to announce industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to make the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the contract."

But not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages & conditions frequently dependent on the discretion of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was denied a salary increase because he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was reported to be turned down for increased compensation due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers participated on strike. The company had approximately 130 technicians employed when the industrial action was called. The union says currently approximately seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced these with new workers, for which that has not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," states German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, this being important to understand. However it goes against all established practices. But Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to be convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, hey, you are violating a norm, they perceive that as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for interview via correspondence mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has given just a single press discussion in the two years after the strike began.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", the executive, told a business paper that it benefited the organization better not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide them optimal terms".

The executive rejected that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was determined by US leadership overseas. "We have authorization to make independent such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway & Finland, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations are not being connected to power networks in the country.

Exists an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from this location," he says. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. The union risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is how this could expand," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode