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In Sweden, approximately seventy car mechanics continue to confront among the world's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the US carmaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has currently reached two years of duration, with minimal sign of a settlement.

One striking worker has been on the electric car company's picket line starting from October 2023.

"It's a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic spends each Monday with a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla service center within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter via a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it's operations continue normally nearby, at which the service facility appears to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves a matter that reaches to the core of Swedish labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to negotiate pay and working terms on behalf of their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics across the nation for nearly a century.

Today some 70% of Scandinavia's employees are members to labor organizations, and 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

This is a system supported across the board. "We favor the right to bargain directly with the unions and establish labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However Tesla has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just don't like any arrangement which creates a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York last year. "I think labor groups try to create negativity in a company."

The automaker came to Sweden starting in 2014, while IF Metall has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the automaker.

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

She states the union eventually found no alternative except to announce a strike, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to issue the threat," comments the union leader. "The company typically signs the contract."

However not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, started working with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay and work terms were often subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls a performance review where he says he was refused a salary increase on grounds he was "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to be turned down for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers went out in the industrial action. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty mechanics employed when the industrial action was called. The union states currently around 70 of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

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

"They want to be norm breakers. So if somebody tells them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they see that as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for comment via correspondence citing "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has granted only one media interview in the two years since the industrial action began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the organization better to avoid a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and give workers optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was one made by US leadership overseas. "We have a mandate to take independent such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points are not being connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to the capital's airport, where twenty charging units stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

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

With stakes significant for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the stand-off. The union risks setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is how this could expand," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode