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In Sweden, approximately 70 car mechanics persist to challenge among the globe's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike targeting the American carmaker's 10 Swedish service centers has now reached its second anniversary, and there is little sign for a settlement.

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

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

Janis spends each Monday alongside a colleague, standing outside a Tesla service center within a business district in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages & sandwiches.

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

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the heart of Swedish labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay & conditions on behalf of their members. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations across the nation for almost a century.

Currently some seventy percent of Swedish employees are members to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I simply disapprove of anything which creates a kind of hierarchical situation," he told listeners in New York in 2023. "In my view labor groups try to generate negativity in a company."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they did not reply," says the union president, the union's president. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She states the organization ultimately saw no other option than to call a strike, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," comments the union leader. "The company usually signs the agreement."

But this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay and conditions were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was denied a salary increase because he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a coworker was reported to be rejected for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out on strike. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty mechanics employed when the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall states that today approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which there is no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

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

"It's not against the law, which is crucial to understand. However it goes against all established practices. Yet the company shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. So if somebody informs them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they perceive this as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for interview in an email mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has granted just a single press discussion during the entire period after the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it benefited the company better to avoid a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and provide workers the best possible conditions".

The executive denied that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have a mandate to take our own such choices," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing by a number of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & Finland, decline to handle Teslas; waste is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to the grid in the country.

There is one such facility near the capital's airport, where twenty chargers stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from here," he comments. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is that that would spread," says Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode