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In Sweden, around 70 car mechanics persist to confront one of the globe's wealthiest companies – Tesla. The industrial action at the US carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently entered its second anniversary, with little indication of a settlement.

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

"It's a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to grow more challenging.

Janis spends each Monday with a fellow worker, standing near an electric vehicle garage within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, plus coffee and sandwiches.

But it's business as usual nearby, at which the service facility appears to operate in full swing.

The strike involves an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to negotiate pay & working terms on behalf of their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly a century.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees are members to labor organizations, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement supported across the board. "We favor the right to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However Tesla has upset the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a sort of hierarchical situation," he told an audience at an event last year. "In my view labor groups try to create 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 automaker.

"But they did not reply," says the union president, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She states the organization ultimately found no alternative except to announce industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to make a warning," comments the union leader. "The company typically agrees to the contract."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay & work terms frequently dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review at which he states he was denied a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be rejected for a pay rise due to he had the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone went out in the industrial action. Tesla had some 130 technicians working when the strike was called. The union states that today around seventy of its members are participating in the action.

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

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, which is crucial to recognize. However it goes against all established norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to become convention challengers. Thus when anyone tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they perceive this as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for interview via correspondence mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the company has given only one media interview in the two years after the strike began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it suited the organization better to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and give them optimal conditions".

The executive denied that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have a mandate to make independent such choices," he said.

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

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and Finland, decline to process the company's vehicles; waste is no longer removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed power points remain connected to power networks across the nation.

There is an example near the capital's airport, at which 20 charging units stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station six miles from here," he says. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can charge our cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is that this could expand," says Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode