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Across Sweden, approximately 70 car mechanics continue to challenge among the globe's richest companies – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has currently entered its second anniversary, and there is minimal sign for a settlement.

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

"It's a difficult time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's cold winter weather sets in, it is expected to become more challenging.

Janis spends each Monday alongside a colleague, standing near a Tesla garage on an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides shelter in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, plus coffee and light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, at which the workshop seems to be in full swing.

The strike concerns an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay and conditions on behalf of their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish employees belong of a trade union, and 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

It's an arrangement supported by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain freely with the unions and sign labor contracts," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But the electric car company has upset established practices. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a kind of hierarchical situation," he informed an audience at an event last year. "In my view labor groups try to generate negativity within businesses."

The automaker came to Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they did not respond," states the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the impression that they attempted to hide away or not discuss the matter with us."

She says the union eventually saw no alternative except to call a strike, which started in late October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to make the threat," comments the union leader. "The company 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 asserts that wages and work terms frequently dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review at which he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for increased compensation because he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed some 130 technicians employed when the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently around seventy of its members are participating in the action.

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

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," states German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, which is crucial to understand. However it violates all traditional practices. But the company shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. Thus when anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive that as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for comment via correspondence mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has given only one press discussion during the entire period after the strike started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a business paper that it benefited the company more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to work closely with employees and give them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have a mandate to take independent such choices," he stated.

The union is not completely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points remain connected to power networks in the country.

Exists one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 chargers remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station six miles from here," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it's hard to envision an end to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is how this could expand," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode