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Across Sweden, approximately seventy automotive technicians continue to challenge among the world's richest companies – Tesla. This industrial action at the US carmaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now entered its second anniversary, with little indication of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been on the electric car company's picket line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to grow more challenging.

Janis devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla service center on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides accommodation via a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

However it remains business as usual nearby, where the workshop seems to operate at full capacity.

The strike involves an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to bargain for pay & conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for nearly a century.

Today approximately seventy percent of Swedish employees belong to labor organizations, while 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the ability to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of any arrangement which creates a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York last year. "In my view labor groups try to generate negativity within businesses."

The automaker entered Sweden back in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they did not reply," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "We formed the belief that they tried to hide away or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the union ultimately found no alternative except to call industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to make the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the contract."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, began employment for Tesla several years ago. He claims that wages & work terms frequently subject to the whim of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review at which he says he was denied a salary increase on grounds he was "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to be turned down for a pay rise because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone participated in the industrial action. The company had approximately one hundred thirty technicians employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently approximately 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has long since substituted the striking workers with new workers, for which that has not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, this being crucial to understand. However it goes against all traditional practices. But Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, listen, you are violating a norm, they perceive that as a compliment."

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

In fact, the company has granted just a single press discussion in the two years after the strike began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it benefited the organization more not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with employees and provide workers optimal terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was one made by US leadership in the US. "We have a mandate to take independent such choices," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has been supported by a number of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & neighboring states, decline to process Teslas; waste is not removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while newly built power points remain linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists one such facility near the capital's airport, at which twenty charging units remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

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

With stakes high on both sides, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is that this could expand," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode