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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront one of the world's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the American automaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has currently entered two years of duration, with minimal indication for a resolution.

One striking worker has been at the electric car company's protest line starting from October 2023.

"It's a tough time," remarks the 39-year-old. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday with a colleague, positioned near a Tesla garage within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter in the form of a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages & sandwiches.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the service facility appears to operate in full swing.

The strike involves a matter that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay and working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics across the nation for nearly a century.

Today approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's a system supported across the board. "We prefer the ability to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But Tesla has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of hierarchical situation," he told an audience at an event in 2023. "I think the unions attempt to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has long sought to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they did not respond," says the union president, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She states the organization eventually found no alternative than to call industrial action, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Usually it's enough to make a warning," comments the union leader. "The company usually signs the contract."

But not in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla several years ago. He asserts that wages and work terms were often subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused an annual pay rise because that he "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a colleague was reported to be turned down for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

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

The automaker has since substituted these with new workers, for which there is not occurred since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, this being important to recognize. However it goes against all traditional practices. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. Thus when somebody informs them, listen, you are violating a standard, they perceive this as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for interview in an email citing "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has given just a single media interview in the two years since the industrial action began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and provide them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice not to enter a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "We have authorization to make independent such choices," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries and Finland, are refusing to process Teslas; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while newly built power points remain connected to power networks in the country.

Exists one such facility near the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it is difficult to envision an end to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is that this could expand," says Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode