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Across Sweden, approximately seventy car mechanics continue to confront one of the world's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This industrial action at the American carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has now reached two years of duration, and there is minimal sign for a settlement.

One striking worker has been on the Tesla picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's chilly winter weather arrives, it's likely to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla garage within a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter in the form of a portable builders' van, as well as coffee and light meals.

But it's operations continue normally nearby, where the workshop appears to be in full swing.

The strike concerns an issue that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for wages and conditions representing their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for nearly a century.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees belong of a trade union, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement supported across the board. "We favor the right to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told listeners in New York last year. "I think labor groups attempt to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla entered Sweden starting in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"But they wouldn't reply," says Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "We formed the impression that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing the matter with us."

She states the union ultimately saw no alternative than to call industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," says the union leader. "Employers typically signs the contract."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker in 2021. He claims that wages & conditions frequently subject to the whim of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused a salary increase because that he "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company had some 130 mechanics working at the time the strike was called. The union states that today around 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has since substituted these with new workers, a situation there is no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," states German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, this being crucial to recognize. However it violates all established practices. But the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. So if anyone tells them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they see that as a compliment."

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

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

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", the executive, told a business paper that it benefited the company better to avoid a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and provide them the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the decision not to enter a labor contract was determined by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to make our own such decisions," he stated.

The union is not completely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries and Finland, decline to process Teslas; waste is not removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations remain connected to power networks in the country.

There is one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station 10km from this location," he says. "And we can still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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