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In Sweden, approximately 70 automotive mechanics continue to confront among the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike at the US carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has now reached two years of duration, and there is little sign of a settlement.

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

"It has been a tough time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to become more challenging.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a colleague, standing outside an electric vehicle service center within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides shelter in the form of a portable builders' van, as well as coffee & light meals.

But it remains business as usual nearby, where the service facility seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for wages & working terms representing their members. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish workers are members to labor organizations, and 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement supported across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But Tesla has upset the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just don't like any arrangement which creates a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience at an event in 2023. "In my view labor groups try to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden starting in 2014, while IF Metall has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"But they wouldn't reply," states the union president, the organization's president. "We formed the impression that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She states the organization ultimately saw no other option except to announce industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue the threat," says the union leader. "The company usually signs the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla several years ago. He asserts that pay & work terms were often dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review at which he says he was refused an annual pay rise because he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to have been rejected for increased compensation due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. The company employed approximately 130 mechanics employed at the time the strike was called. The union says currently around 70 of its members are participating in the action.

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

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," states German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is crucial to recognize. But it goes against all established norms. Yet the company doesn't care about norms.

"They want to be convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they see this as a compliment."

The automaker's local division declined requests for comment via correspondence citing "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has granted only one press discussion in the two years since the strike started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it suited the organization more to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide them the best possible terms".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have authorization to take independent such choices," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries and Finland, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while newly built power points remain linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to the capital's airport, at which twenty charging units remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it is difficult to envision an end to the deadlock. IF Metall risks setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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