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Across Sweden, around seventy car mechanics persist to challenge among the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike targeting the American automaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has currently reached its second anniversary, and there is minimal sign for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the electric car company's protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a tough period," states the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week with a colleague, standing near an electric vehicle service center within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation in the form of a portable construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally nearby, where the workshop appears to be at full capacity.

The strike involves an issue that goes to the core of Swedish labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay & working terms representing their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for almost a century.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers belong to labor organizations, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's a system welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement which creates a sort of hierarchical situation," he told an audience at an event last year. "In my view labor groups attempt to generate conflict within businesses."

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

"But they did not respond," says the union president, the organization's president. "And we got the belief that they tried to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She states the organization eventually saw no alternative than to call a strike, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually signs the contract."

However this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay and work terms were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused a salary increase because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was reported to be turned down for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company employed approximately one hundred thirty technicians working when the strike was initiated. IF Metall states currently around seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted these with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, which is important to understand. However it goes against all traditional norms. But Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when somebody informs them, listen, you are violating a standard, they see this as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused requests for interview in an email citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has granted only one press discussion in the two years since the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it suited the company more not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with the team and give workers the best possible conditions".

The executive denied that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such choices," he said.

The union is not completely alone in its fight. This industrial action has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, 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 power networks in the country.

Exists one such facility near the capital's airport, where twenty chargers remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is how that would spread," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode