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In Sweden, around seventy car mechanics continue to challenge among the world's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the American automaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has now entered two years of duration, with little sign of a settlement.

One striking worker has remained on the Tesla protest line starting from October 2023.

"It's a tough period," states the 39-year-old. With the nation's chilly winter weather sets in, it's likely to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla service center within an industrial park in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

But it remains business as usual nearby, at which the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action concerns an issue that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages and conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Today approximately 70% of Scandinavia's workers belong to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is a system supported by all parties. "We favor the ability to bargain directly with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has upset established practices. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of anything which creates a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners in New York last year. "In my view labor groups try to create negativity in a company."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, while IF Metall has long sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

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

She says the organization ultimately found no alternative except to call a strike, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," comments the union leader. "The company usually signs the agreement."

But this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that wages & conditions were often dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds he was "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to be turned down for increased compensation because having the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers went out in the industrial action. The company employed some 130 technicians working at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union says that today around seventy of its members are on strike.

Tesla has since replaced these with new workers, for which there is no precedent since the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," says German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, this being important to recognize. However it goes against all established norms. But Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive this as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has given just a single press discussion during the entire period since the strike began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it suited the company better not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with the team and give them optimal terms".

The executive denied that the decision not to enter a labor contract was determined by US leadership in the US. "We have authorization to take independent such choices," he said.

The union is not completely alone in its fight. This industrial action has received backing by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built charging stations are not being connected to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, where twenty charging units stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station 10km from here," he says. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the stand-off. The union risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is how this could expand," says Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode