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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront among the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the US automaker's ten Swedish service centers has now reached its second anniversary, and there is minimal sign for a resolution.

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

"It's a tough time," remarks the 39-year-old. With the nation's chilly winter weather sets in, it is expected to become more challenging.

Janis devotes each Monday with a colleague, standing outside a Tesla service center on an industrial park in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, provides accommodation in the form of a portable builders' van, plus hot beverages & sandwiches.

But it's operations continue normally across the road, at which the workshop appears to operate at full capacity.

The strike concerns an issue that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay and working terms representing their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish employees are members of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

This is a system welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the ability to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he told an audience at an event last year. "In my view labor groups try to create negativity within businesses."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years wanted to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they did not respond," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "And we got the impression that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She states the organization ultimately found no other option except to call a strike, which started on 27 October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," says the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

But not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that wages & conditions frequently subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was refused an annual pay rise because he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to be turned down for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out on strike. Tesla had some 130 technicians employed at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall says currently approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation there is no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," says German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, which is important to understand. But it violates all traditional practices. But Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to be convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, listen, you are violating a standard, they see this as praise."

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

In fact, the automaker has granted just a single media interview during the entire period after the strike started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it suited the company better to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide them the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have authorization to make independent such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely alone in this conflict. The strike has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries and Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points remain linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, where twenty chargers remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners remain 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 service our cars, we can power our cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it is difficult to envision an end to the deadlock. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

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