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In Sweden, approximately seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront among the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the US carmaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has currently reached two years of duration, and there is minimal indication of a resolution.

One striking worker has remained on the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

"It has been a tough time," remarks the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it is expected to become more challenging.

Janis devotes every start of the week with a colleague, standing outside an electric vehicle service center within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation via a portable construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages & sandwiches.

However it remains business as usual across the road, where the service facility seems to be at full capacity.

The strike involves an issue that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to bargain for pay & conditions on behalf of their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Today approximately 70% of Swedish employees belong to labor organizations, while 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's a system welcomed by all parties. "We favor the ability to negotiate freely with the unions and sign labor contracts," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Outspoken CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed listeners at an event in 2023. "I think the unions attempt to create negativity in a company."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has long sought to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the organization's president. "And we got the belief that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She says the organization eventually saw no other option except to announce industrial action, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," comments the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay and conditions frequently dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he says he was refused an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be turned down for increased compensation due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out on strike. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty technicians employed when the strike was called. IF Metall says currently around seventy of its members are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, which is important to understand. However it violates all established practices. Yet the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. Thus when somebody informs them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see that as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for interview in an email mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has granted just a single media interview in the two years since the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the company better to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and give them optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make our own such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in this conflict. The strike has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway and Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and newly built charging stations are not being connected to power networks across the nation.

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

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can power our cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the deadlock. IF Metall risks setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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