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In Sweden, approximately seventy automotive technicians continue to confront among the globe's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the American automaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has now entered its second anniversary, with little indication of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

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

Janis devotes every start of the week alongside a colleague, positioned near a Tesla service center on an industrial park in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation via a mobile builders' van, as well as hot beverages and light meals.

However it remains operations continue normally nearby, where the workshop appears to operate at full capacity.

The strike concerns an issue that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for wages and conditions representing their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, while ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

This is a system welcomed across the board. "We favor the right to bargain freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of hierarchical situation," he told an audience in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups try to create negativity in a company."

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

"But they did not reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "And we got the belief that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing this with us."

She states the union ultimately found no alternative than to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to make a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He claims that wages and work terms frequently dependent on the whim of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he says he was denied a salary increase on grounds that he "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to be turned down for increased compensation due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out on strike. The company had some 130 technicians employed at the time the strike was initiated. The union says currently approximately seventy of its members are on strike.

Tesla has since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which there is not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," states German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

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

"They aim to become norm breakers. Thus when anyone informs them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they see that as a compliment."

The automaker's local division declined attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has granted only one press discussion during the entire period after the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the company better to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and provide them the best possible terms".

The executive denied that the choice not to enter a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have authorization to make our own such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; rubbish is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed power points remain linked to power networks in the country.

Exists one such facility close to the capital's airport, at which 20 chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

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

With consequences high on both sides, it is difficult to see an end to the deadlock. The union risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is that that would spread," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode