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In Sweden, approximately seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront one of the globe's richest corporations – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the American automaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has now entered its second anniversary, with minimal sign of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been on the electric car company's picket line since October 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," remarks the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's chilly winter weather sets in, it is expected to become more challenging.

Janis spends each Monday with a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla garage on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation in the form of a mobile builders' van, as well as coffee & light meals.

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

The strike involves an issue that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages & conditions representing their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Currently some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers belong of a trade union, while 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is a system supported across the board. "We prefer the right to bargain freely with the unions and establish labor contracts," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However Tesla has upset established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a sort of hierarchical situation," he told an audience at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups try to generate negativity within businesses."

The automaker came to Sweden starting in 2014, while IF Metall has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they attempted to avoid or not discuss the matter with us."

She says the union ultimately found no other option except to call industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to make a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually signs the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

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

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to be rejected for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated in the industrial action. The company had approximately 130 mechanics working at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union states currently around seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has long since substituted the striking workers with new workers, for which there is not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," states German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is important to recognize. But it violates all traditional norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to be convention challengers. Thus when anyone tells them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they perceive that as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for comment in an email citing "record vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has given only one media interview during the entire period after the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it suited the organization better to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with the team and provide them the best possible terms".

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 make independent such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; waste is not removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed power points are not being connected to power networks across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to the capital's airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it's hard to see an end to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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