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In Sweden, approximately 70 car technicians persist to challenge one of the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the US automaker's 10 Swedish service centers has now entered two years of duration, with little sign for a resolution.

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

"It has been a difficult time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to become even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, standing near an electric vehicle service center on a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, plus coffee & light meals.

However it's operations continue normally across the road, where the service facility appears to be at full capacity.

The strike concerns an issue that goes to the core of Swedish labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for pay & conditions on behalf of their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for almost a century.

Today some 70% of Scandinavia's employees are members of a trade union, and ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

This is a system welcomed by all parties. "We favor the right to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of hierarchical situation," he told an audience at an event in 2023. "I think the unions try to create negativity within businesses."

Tesla entered Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall 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 impression that they attempted to hide away or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the organization ultimately saw no alternative than to call industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," comments the union leader. "The company usually signs the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay and conditions were often subject to the whim of managers.

He recalls a performance review where he states he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a coworker was reported to be rejected for a pay rise because having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out in the industrial action. The company employed approximately 130 technicians employed at the time the strike was called. The union says that today around seventy of its members are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which there is not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is important to recognize. However it goes against all traditional norms. But Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They want to be convention challengers. Thus when anyone tells them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they see that as a compliment."

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

Indeed, the automaker has granted only one media interview in the two years since the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it suited the organization more not to have a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and provide them the best possible terms".

The executive denied that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was determined by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to take our own such choices," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported by a number of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Norway and Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while newly built charging stations remain linked to power networks in the country.

There is an example close to the capital's airport, where 20 charging units stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station six miles from this location," he says. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that this could expand," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode