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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics persist to confront one of the globe's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the American automaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now reached its second anniversary, with little sign for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been on the Tesla protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a tough period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's chilly winter weather sets in, it's likely to become more challenging.

Janis devotes each Monday with a colleague, positioned near an electric vehicle garage within a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, provides accommodation in the form of a mobile builders' van, plus coffee & sandwiches.

But it remains business as usual nearby, at which the workshop seems to be in full swing.

The strike involves an issue that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay & conditions representing their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Currently some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers belong of a trade union, while ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to bargain freely with the unions and establish collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I just disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a kind of hierarchical situation," he told an audience in New York last year. "I think labor groups attempt to create conflict within businesses."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"But they did not respond," says the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to avoid or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She states the union ultimately found no other option than to call industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to issue the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually agrees to the contract."

But not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay & work terms were often subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for increased compensation because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed approximately one hundred thirty mechanics employed at the time the strike was initiated. IF Metall says that today around 70 of its members are on strike.

Tesla has since substituted these with replacement staff, a situation there is no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, this being crucial to understand. However it violates all established norms. Yet Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to be norm breakers. So if anyone informs them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they see this as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for interview in an email mentioning "record deliveries".

Indeed, the company has given just a single press discussion during the entire period since the strike began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a business paper that it benefited the company more not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with the team and give workers the best possible terms".

Mr Stark denied that the decision not to enter a labor contract was determined by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway & Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations remain linked to power networks across the nation.

There is one such facility close to the capital's airport, where 20 charging units stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from here," he says. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the deadlock. IF Metall risks setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is that that would spread," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode