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In Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront among the globe's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike targeting the US carmaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has now entered its second anniversary, and there is little sign for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the electric car company's picket line starting from October 2023.

"It's a tough time," states the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it's likely to grow even tougher.

Janis spends each Monday alongside a colleague, positioned outside an electric vehicle garage on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides shelter in the form of a portable builders' van, plus coffee & light meals.

But it remains business as usual across the road, where the workshop seems to be at full capacity.

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay & working terms on behalf of their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees belong to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain directly with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But the electric car company has upset established practices. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement which creates a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told listeners at an event in 2023. "In my view the unions attempt to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla entered Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"But they did not respond," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to avoid or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She states the union eventually saw no other option except to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to make a warning," comments the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

But not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that wages and conditions were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review at which he states he was refused a salary increase because that he "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a colleague was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation because having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out on strike. Tesla employed approximately 130 technicians working at the time the strike was initiated. IF Metall states that today around seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, for which there is not occurred since the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is crucial to recognize. However it goes against all traditional practices. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be norm breakers. Thus when anyone informs them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive that as a compliment."

The company's local division declined requests for comment via correspondence citing "record deliveries".

In fact, the company has granted just a single press discussion in the two years since the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it benefited the company better to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and provide workers optimal conditions".

The executive denied that the choice not to enter a labor contract was determined by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make our own such choices," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway and Finland, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; waste is no longer removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points remain linked to the grid across the nation.

There is an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station six miles from here," he comments. "And we can still buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it is difficult to see an end to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that this could expand," states the researcher, "and ultimately {erode