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Across Sweden, approximately seventy car technicians persist to confront among the world's richest companies – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the US carmaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now reached two years of duration, with little indication for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the electric car company's picket line since October 2023.

"It's a tough period," remarks the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it is expected to grow more challenging.

Janis spends every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla service center on an industrial park in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter via a mobile builders' van, plus hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it's business as usual nearby, at which the workshop seems to be at full capacity.

This industrial action involves an issue that reaches to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay & working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Today some 70% of Swedish employees belong of a trade union, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is an arrangement supported by all parties. "We favor the right to bargain directly with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he informed an audience at an event in 2023. "In my view the unions attempt to generate conflict in a company."

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

"Yet they did not respond," says the union president, the union's president. "And we got the impression that they tried to avoid or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She says the union eventually saw no alternative than to call a strike, which started in late October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to make a warning," comments the union leader. "Employers typically signs the contract."

But not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment for Tesla several years ago. He claims that wages & conditions frequently dependent on the discretion of managers.

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". At the same time, a coworker was said to be turned down for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated on strike. The company employed approximately 130 technicians working when the industrial action was called. The union says that today approximately seventy of its members are on strike.

The automaker has since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation there is no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, this being important to recognize. However it violates all established norms. But the company shows no concern for conventions.

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

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

In fact, the company has granted just a single press discussion during the entire period since the strike started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the organization more not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with the team and give them the best possible terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have authorization to make our own such decisions," he stated.

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

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while newly built charging stations are not being connected to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station 10km from here," he says. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it's hard to envision an end to the deadlock. The union risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

"The concern is that this could expand," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode