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Across Sweden, around seventy car mechanics continue to confront among the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike at the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently reached two years of duration, and there is minimal indication of a resolution.

One striking worker has been at the electric car company's protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a tough time," states the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a colleague, positioned outside an electric vehicle garage within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a portable builders' van, as well as coffee and light meals.

However it's business as usual across the road, where the workshop appears to operate at full capacity.

The strike involves a matter that reaches to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for pay & working terms on behalf of their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish employees belong of a trade union, and 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

This is a system supported across the board. "We prefer the ability to negotiate directly with the unions and establish collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience at an event last year. "In my view labor groups attempt to generate negativity in a company."

Tesla entered Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has long sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"But they did not respond," states the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to avoid or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She states the union eventually found no alternative except to announce a strike, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the agreement."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that pay and work terms were often subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was said to be turned down for increased compensation because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company employed some 130 mechanics employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says that today around seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted these with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is important to understand. But it violates all traditional norms. But the company doesn't care about norms.

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are violating a standard, they see that as a compliment."

The automaker's local division declined attempts for comment in an email citing "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has given only one press discussion in the two years after the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, the executive, told a business paper that it benefited the organization better not to have a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers the best possible terms".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have authorization to take our own such choices," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations remain linked to the grid in the country.

There is one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

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

With consequences high for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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