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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive technicians persist to challenge among the globe's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the American automaker's 10 Swedish service centers has now entered two years of duration, and there is little sign of a settlement.

One striking worker has remained on the electric car company's picket line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's chilly winter weather arrives, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday with a fellow worker, standing near an electric vehicle garage on a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, plus coffee and light meals.

But it remains business as usual nearby, at which the workshop appears to operate in full swing.

This industrial action concerns a matter that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right of trade unions to negotiate pay and working terms representing their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for almost one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees are members of a trade union, and 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement supported across the board. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he informed listeners at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups attempt to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden back in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they did not respond," states Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to hide away or evade discussing the matter with us."

She says the organization ultimately found no alternative than to call industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually signs the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that pay & work terms were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he states he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to have been rejected for increased compensation due to having the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers participated on strike. The company had some 130 mechanics employed when the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently approximately seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since substituted the striking workers with new workers, a situation that has not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, 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 practices. Yet the company shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become convention challengers. Thus when anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they see that as a compliment."

The company's local division declined attempts for interview via correspondence mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has given just a single press discussion in the two years since the strike started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the company better not to have a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and give them optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make our own such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely alone in its fight. This industrial action has been supported by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & neighboring states, are refusing to process Teslas; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points remain connected to the grid across the nation.

There is an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty chargers remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station six miles from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our cars, we can power our cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it is difficult to envision an end to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that this could expand," states the researcher, "and ultimately {erode