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Across Sweden, approximately 70 car mechanics continue to challenge one of the world's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the American automaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has now reached its second anniversary, with little sign for a settlement.

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

"It's a difficult time," remarks the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to become more challenging.

Janis spends every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, standing 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 & sandwiches.

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

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for wages and conditions on behalf of their members. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish employees are members to labor organizations, while 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with the unions and establish collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I just don't like anything which creates a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups try to create negativity in a company."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, and IF Metall has long wanted to establish a labor contract with the automaker.

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

She states the union ultimately saw no other option except to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make a warning," says the union leader. "The company usually agrees to the agreement."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that wages and work terms frequently dependent on the whim of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused a salary increase because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be turned down for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated on strike. Tesla employed some 130 mechanics employed at the time the strike was initiated. The union says that today around 70 of its members are on strike.

Tesla has long since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, this being crucial to understand. But it violates all traditional practices. But Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when anyone informs them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they see this as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused requests for comment via correspondence mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has granted just a single press discussion in the two years after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the organization more not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with employees and give workers optimal terms".

The executive rejected that the decision not to enter a labor contract was determined by US leadership in the US. "We have authorization to make our own such decisions," he stated.

The union is not entirely alone in this conflict. The strike has been supported by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and newly built charging stations remain connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can charge our cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the stand-off. IF Metall risks setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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