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Across Sweden, approximately seventy car mechanics continue to challenge one of the globe's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action at the American automaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has currently entered two years of duration, with minimal indication of a resolution.

One striking worker has remained on the Tesla protest line since October 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's chilly winter weather arrives, it's likely to grow more challenging.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a colleague, positioned near an electric vehicle service center on a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, supplies accommodation via a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it's business as usual nearby, where the service facility appears to be in full swing.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the core of Swedish labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay & working terms representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations across the nation for nearly a century.

Today approximately 70% of Scandinavia's workers belong of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We favor the right to bargain directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement which creates a kind of hierarchical situation," he told listeners at an event in 2023. "In my view the unions attempt to generate negativity in a company."

Tesla came to Sweden back in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"But they wouldn't respond," says Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She says the union eventually saw no alternative than to call industrial action, beginning in late October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company usually agrees to the agreement."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions were often subject to the whim of managers.

He recalls a performance review at which he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation because he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out on strike. The company employed approximately 130 mechanics working at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall says currently approximately 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has long since substituted these with replacement staff, a situation that has no precedent since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, this being important to recognize. However it violates all established norms. But Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to be norm breakers. So if somebody tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they see that as a compliment."

The company's local division refused requests for interview via correspondence citing "record vehicle shipments".

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

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it suited the organization more not to have a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and provide them optimal terms".

The executive denied that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have a mandate to make our own such choices," he stated.

The union is not entirely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & Finland, are refusing to process Teslas; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and newly built charging stations are not being linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, where twenty chargers remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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