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In Sweden, approximately 70 car technicians persist to confront among the globe's wealthiest companies – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the US carmaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now entered its second anniversary, with minimal indication for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been at the Tesla protest line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," states the 39-year-old. With the nation's chilly winter weather arrives, it is expected to grow more challenging.

The mechanic spends each Monday with a fellow worker, standing near a Tesla service center on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies accommodation via a portable builders' van, as well as coffee and sandwiches.

However it remains business as usual across the road, at which the service facility seems to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action involves a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay and conditions representing their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Currently some 70% of Swedish workers belong to labor organizations, while ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

It's an arrangement supported across the board. "We prefer the right to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement which creates a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience in New York last year. "In my view labor groups try to generate negativity in a company."

The automaker came to Sweden starting in 2014, while IF Metall has long sought to establish a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't 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 us."

She states the union eventually found no alternative than to announce a strike, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," says the union leader. "The company usually signs the contract."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla several years ago. He asserts that wages & conditions were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise because having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated on strike. The company employed approximately 130 technicians employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union states that today around seventy of its members are on strike.

Tesla has since substituted these with replacement staff, for which there is no precedent since the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is crucial to recognize. But it violates all traditional norms. But the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when anyone tells them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they see this as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for interview via correspondence citing "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the company has granted just a single press discussion during the entire period since the strike began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it suited the organization more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and give them optimal conditions".

The executive denied that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was determined by US leadership overseas. "We have authorization to make independent such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, decline to process the company's vehicles; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points are not being linked to power networks in the country.

Exists an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 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 an alternative power point 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it is difficult to envision an end to the stand-off. The union risks setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

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