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In Sweden, approximately seventy car mechanics continue to challenge among the globe's richest companies – Tesla. The industrial action at the US automaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has now reached two years of duration, with minimal sign of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the electric car company's protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a tough period," states the 39-year-old. And as the nation's chilly winter weather arrives, it's likely to grow more challenging.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla garage within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter in the form of a portable builders' van, as well as coffee and light meals.

But it's business as usual nearby, at which the workshop appears to operate at full capacity.

The strike involves a matter that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay & working terms on behalf of their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for almost one hundred years.

Currently some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, and 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "In my view labor groups try to create negativity in a company."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years sought to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they did not reply," says the union president, the organization's president. "And we got the impression that they attempted to hide away or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She states the organization ultimately found no other option than to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

But not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay & conditions frequently dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review at which he says he was refused a salary increase because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was said to have been rejected for increased compensation due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company employed some 130 mechanics employed at the time the strike was initiated. IF Metall states currently around 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

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

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," says German Bender, 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 traditional practices. But Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive that as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for interview in an email mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the company has granted just a single media interview during the entire period after the strike began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a business paper that it benefited the organization better to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and give workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have authorization to take independent such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; rubbish is no longer collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while newly built charging stations are not being linked to power networks in the country.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it is difficult to envision an end to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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