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Across Sweden, approximately 70 automotive mechanics continue to challenge among the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has currently entered its second anniversary, and there is minimal sign for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been at the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

"It's a tough time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's chilly winter weather sets in, it's likely to grow even tougher.

The mechanic spends each Monday with a colleague, positioned outside a Tesla garage within a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter via a portable builders' van, as well as coffee & light meals.

But it's operations continue normally nearby, at which the service facility appears to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the core of Swedish labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to bargain for wages and conditions representing their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, and ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is a system supported across the board. "We prefer the ability to negotiate directly with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just don't like anything that establishes a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he told an audience at an event last year. "I think the unions attempt to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they did not reply," states the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the impression that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She states the organization eventually saw no other option except to announce a strike, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue the threat," comments the union leader. "The company usually signs the contract."

But not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla several years ago. He asserts that pay & work terms frequently dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was denied a salary increase on grounds he was "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to have been turned down for a pay rise due to having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out on strike. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty technicians employed when the industrial action was called. IF Metall says that today approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with new workers, a situation there is not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, which is important to recognize. However it violates all traditional practices. But the company shows no concern about norms.

"They aim to become convention challengers. So if somebody tells them, listen, you are violating a norm, they perceive that as praise."

The company's local division refused requests for interview in an email citing "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has given just a single press discussion during the entire period after the strike started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it suited the company more not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with employees and give workers optimal conditions".

The executive denied that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make our own such decisions," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while newly built power points remain connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can power our cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall risks setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is that this could expand," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode