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In Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront among the globe's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action at the American automaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has now reached its second anniversary, and there is little indication of a resolution.

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

"It has been a tough period," states the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's chilly winter weather arrives, it is expected to become more challenging.

Janis devotes every start of the week with a colleague, positioned outside an electric vehicle service center on a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation in the form of a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

However it's operations continue normally across the road, where the service facility appears to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay & working terms representing their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Currently some seventy percent of Swedish employees belong to labor organizations, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's a system supported by all parties. "We favor the ability to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told listeners at an event in 2023. "I think the unions try to generate negativity in a company."

Tesla entered Sweden starting in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"But they wouldn't reply," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She states the union eventually saw no other option except to call a strike, beginning in late October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to make a warning," says the union leader. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

But not in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, started working with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay and work terms frequently subject to the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he states he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds he was "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a coworker was reported to be turned down for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone went out in the industrial action. The company had approximately 130 mechanics working at the time the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall states that today approximately 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced the striking workers with new workers, for which there is no precedent since the Great Depression.

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

"It's not illegal, this being important to understand. However it goes against all established norms. But the company doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to be convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, listen, you are violating a standard, they see that as a compliment."

The automaker's local division refused attempts for comment in an email mentioning "record deliveries".

Indeed, the company has granted just a single media interview during the entire period since the industrial action started.

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 union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and give workers the best possible terms".

The executive denied that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to make independent such decisions," he said.

The union is not entirely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & neighboring states, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while newly built charging stations are not being linked to power networks in the country.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

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

"The worry is how that would spread," says Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode