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Across Sweden, around 70 car technicians continue to challenge among the globe's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the US automaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has currently reached its second anniversary, and there is minimal sign of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the Tesla picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a tough period," states the 39-year-old. And as the nation's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a colleague, positioned outside a Tesla service center on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation via a mobile builders' van, plus hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it remains operations continue normally nearby, at which the service facility seems to operate at full capacity.

The strike involves a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages & working terms on behalf of their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Today approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We favor the right to negotiate directly with the unions and establish labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However the electric car company has upset established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners in New York in 2023. "I think the unions try to generate conflict within businesses."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they wouldn't reply," says the union president, the union's president. "We formed the impression that they tried to hide away or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She states the union eventually found no alternative than to announce industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

However not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, began employment for Tesla several years ago. He asserts that wages and conditions frequently subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he says he was denied an annual pay rise because that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated on strike. The company employed some one hundred thirty mechanics employed when the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says currently around seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced these with new workers, a situation that has no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, which is important to recognize. However it violates all established norms. Yet Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if somebody tells them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see that as praise."

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

In fact, the automaker has granted just a single media interview during the entire period since the industrial action began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the organization more not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and give them the best possible terms".

Mr Stark denied that the decision not to enter a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to take independent such decisions," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway and Finland, are refusing to handle Teslas; rubbish is no longer removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed power points remain linked to the grid in the country.

Exists one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that that would spread," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode