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Across Sweden, approximately seventy automotive mechanics persist to challenge among the world's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the American carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently entered two years of duration, and there is minimal sign of a resolution.

One striking worker has been at the electric car company's picket line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to grow even tougher.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a colleague, standing outside an electric vehicle garage within a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a mobile construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

However it remains business as usual nearby, at which the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

The strike involves a matter that reaches to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to negotiate pay and conditions on behalf of their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost one hundred years.

Currently some 70% of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, and ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

This is a system welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate freely with the unions and sign labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However the electric car company has upset established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners at an event last year. "I think the unions attempt to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden back in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they did not reply," says Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "We formed the belief that they tried to avoid or evade discussing this with us."

She states the organization ultimately saw no other option except to call industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to make the threat," comments the union leader. "Employers usually agrees to the agreement."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay & work terms were often dependent on the discretion of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been rejected for a pay rise due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty technicians employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union states currently around 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has since substituted the striking workers with new workers, a situation there is no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, which is crucial to recognize. But it violates all established norms. But the company doesn't care about norms.

"They want to be convention challengers. Thus when somebody informs them, listen, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as praise."

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

Indeed, the company has given just a single press discussion in the two years after the strike started.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, the executive, told a business paper that it benefited the company better not to have a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and give workers the best possible terms".

Mr Stark denied that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to make independent such choices," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in its fight. The strike has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & Finland, are refusing to process Teslas; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, where twenty chargers remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from this location," he says. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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