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In Sweden, approximately 70 automotive mechanics continue to challenge one of the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the American automaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has currently entered its second anniversary, with minimal indication for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been at the Tesla protest line since October 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's chilly winter weather arrives, it is expected to grow more challenging.

Janis devotes each Monday alongside a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla service center within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides shelter via a mobile construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages and light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally nearby, where the workshop appears to be at full capacity.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for pay and working terms representing their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost one hundred years.

Today approximately 70% of Scandinavia's employees are members to labor organizations, and 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to bargain freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "In my view the unions attempt to generate negativity in a company."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," states the union president, the organization's president. "We formed the impression that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She says the union eventually found no alternative than to call industrial action, beginning in late October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to make the threat," says the union leader. "The company typically agrees to the agreement."

However this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay & work terms frequently subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review where he says he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated on strike. The company employed approximately one hundred thirty mechanics employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union states that today approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has since substituted the striking workers with new workers, for which there is no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, this being important to understand. However it goes against all traditional norms. But Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become convention challengers. Thus when somebody informs them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they see this as praise."

The automaker's local division refused attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has given only one media interview in the two years after the strike began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the organization better to avoid a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and give workers optimal terms".

Mr Stark denied that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to process the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed power points remain linked to the grid across the nation.

There is an example close to the capital's airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is how this could expand," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode