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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently reached its second anniversary, with minimal sign for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been on the Tesla picket line since October 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla service center within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, provides accommodation in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

But it's business as usual nearby, where the service facility seems to operate at full capacity.

The strike concerns an issue that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to bargain for pay & working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for almost a century.

Today approximately seventy percent of Swedish employees belong of a trade union, and ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is a system supported across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate freely with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But the electric car company has upset established practices. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just don't like anything which creates a sort of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups try to generate conflict within businesses."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "And we got the impression that they tried to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She states the union ultimately found no other option except to announce a strike, beginning in late October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages and work terms frequently subject to the whim of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he says he was denied an annual pay rise because he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to be turned down for increased compensation because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty technicians employed at the time the industrial action was called. The union says that today around seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since replaced these with new workers, a situation that has no precedent since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," states German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, which is crucial to understand. However it goes against all traditional norms. But the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to become norm breakers. So if anyone informs them, listen, you are violating a norm, they perceive that as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused requests for interview in an email mentioning "record deliveries".

In fact, the company has granted only one media interview during the entire period since the strike began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it suited the company more not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers optimal terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to take independent such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported from several of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & Finland, decline to process Teslas; rubbish is no longer removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed power points are not being connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, at which 20 chargers stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it's hard to envision an end to the deadlock. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is how this could expand," states Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode