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Across Sweden, around 70 automotive technicians persist to challenge one of the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the American automaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has now reached its second anniversary, with minimal sign for a resolution.

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

"It has been a tough time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to grow more challenging.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a colleague, standing outside a Tesla garage within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee & sandwiches.

However it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the workshop seems to be at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to negotiate pay & conditions representing their members. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Today approximately 70% of Scandinavia's employees belong to labor organizations, while 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However Tesla has upset the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of hierarchical situation," he told listeners at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups attempt to generate conflict in a company."

Tesla entered Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they wouldn't reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they attempted to avoid or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the organization eventually found no other option than to announce industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to make the threat," says the union leader. "Employers typically signs the agreement."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay and conditions were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he states he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for increased compensation because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone participated on strike. Tesla employed some 130 technicians employed at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall states that today approximately seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation there is not occurred since the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," says German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, which is important to understand. However it goes against all traditional practices. Yet Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, listen, you are violating a norm, they see that as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for interview via correspondence citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has given just a single media interview during the entire period since the strike began.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, the executive, told a business paper that it suited the company better not to have a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice not to enter a labor contract was determined by US leadership in the US. "We have authorization to make our own such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and neighboring states, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while newly built power points are not being connected to the grid in the country.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, where twenty charging units stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station 10km from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it's hard to see an end to the deadlock. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is that this could expand," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode