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Across Sweden, around 70 automotive technicians continue to challenge among the world's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This industrial action at the US automaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has now reached its second anniversary, and there is little sign of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the electric car company's picket line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," remarks the 39-year-old. And as the nation's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to grow even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, positioned near an electric vehicle service center within a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides accommodation via a mobile construction vehicle, plus hot beverages & light meals.

However it's operations continue normally nearby, at which the service facility appears to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay and working terms representing their members. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Today some 70% of Scandinavia's employees are members to labor organizations, while 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

This is a system welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to bargain directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However Tesla has upset established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement which creates a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told an audience in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups try to generate conflict in a company."

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

"But they did not reply," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "And we got the impression that they tried to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She states the organization eventually found no alternative except to call industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to issue a warning," comments the union leader. "The company usually signs the contract."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions were often dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was denied a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for a pay rise because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers participated on strike. The company employed approximately one hundred thirty technicians working at the time the strike was initiated. The union says currently approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted the striking workers with new workers, for which that has no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," states German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, this being crucial to recognize. But it goes against all traditional norms. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to become norm breakers. Thus when anyone informs them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive that as praise."

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

In fact, the automaker has given only one press discussion in the two years after the strike started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the organization more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to work closely with the team and give workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "We have authorization to make independent such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in its fight. The strike has received backing by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & neighboring states, decline to process the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while newly built power points are not being linked to power networks across the nation.

There is an example near the capital's airport, at which twenty charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that this could expand," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode