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Across Sweden, approximately 70 automotive technicians persist to confront among the world's richest corporations – Tesla. This industrial action at the American automaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently entered two years of duration, with minimal indication of a settlement.

One striking worker has remained on the Tesla picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's chilly winter weather sets in, it's likely to grow even tougher.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a fellow worker, positioned near an electric vehicle garage on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation via a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages and sandwiches.

But it remains business as usual nearby, at which the service facility seems to be at full capacity.

This industrial action involves a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay & working terms representing their members. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Today some 70% of Swedish employees are members to labor organizations, while ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We favor the right to negotiate freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed listeners at an event last year. "In my view labor groups try to generate conflict within businesses."

The automaker entered Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has long sought to secure a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "And we got the impression that they tried to avoid or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She says the organization eventually saw no other option except to call a strike, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue a warning," says the union leader. "The company usually signs the agreement."

But not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay & conditions were often subject to the whim of managers.

He recalls a performance review at which he says he was denied a salary increase on grounds he was "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a coworker was said to be rejected for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone went out on strike. The company had some one hundred thirty technicians employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says currently approximately seventy of its members are on strike.

Tesla has since substituted these with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

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

"It's not against the law, this being crucial to understand. But it violates all traditional practices. But the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They want to be convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, hey, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as a compliment."

The automaker's local division refused attempts for comment in an email citing "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the company has granted only one media interview in the two years after the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it suited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with employees and provide them the best possible conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was determined by US leadership overseas. "We have authorization to make independent such decisions," he stated.

The union is not completely alone in this conflict. The strike has been supported from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed power points remain linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from here," he says. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can power our cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it's hard to see a resolution to the stand-off. The union risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is how that would spread," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode