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Across Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics persist to confront one of the globe's richest companies – Tesla. The labor strike targeting the American carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached its second anniversary, and there is little sign of a resolution.

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

"It's a tough period," states the 39-year-old. With Sweden's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to grow more challenging.

Janis devotes each Monday with a colleague, positioned near a Tesla service center on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter via a mobile builders' van, plus coffee & light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the service facility appears to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right of trade unions to negotiate wages & conditions representing their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Today approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees belong of a trade union, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

This is an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We favor the right to negotiate freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "In my view labor groups attempt to create negativity in a company."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has long sought to secure a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they did not respond," says the union president, the organization's president. "We formed the impression that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She states the union ultimately saw no other option than to call a strike, beginning in late October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to make a warning," comments the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

But not in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that wages & conditions frequently dependent on the whim of managers.

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 colleague was said to be rejected for increased compensation because having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company employed approximately 130 technicians working at the time the strike was called. IF Metall states that today around 70 of its members are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

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

"They want to be convention challengers. Thus when anyone informs them, listen, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as praise."

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

Indeed, the automaker has given just a single press discussion in the two years after the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it suited the organization better to avoid a union contract, and instead "to work closely with the team and give workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have a mandate to take our own such decisions," he said.

The union is not entirely alone in its fight. The strike has received backing by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & Finland, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to the grid across the nation.

There is an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union risks setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is how that would spread," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode