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Across Sweden, around seventy car mechanics persist to challenge one of the globe's richest corporations – Tesla. This industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has currently entered two years of duration, and there is minimal indication for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the electric car company's picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

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

The mechanic devotes every start of the week alongside a colleague, positioned outside an electric vehicle service center on a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies shelter in the form of a portable builders' van, plus coffee & light meals.

But it remains business as usual across the road, at which the workshop seems to be at full capacity.

The strike involves a matter that goes to the heart of Swedish labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay & conditions on behalf of their members. This principle of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics across the nation for almost a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish workers are members to labor organizations, while ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement supported by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain directly with the unions and sign collective agreements," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However Tesla has upset established practices. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just disapprove of any arrangement which creates a sort of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience in New York last year. "In my view labor groups attempt to generate negativity within businesses."

The automaker came to Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," says the union president, the union's leader. "And we got the belief that they attempted to avoid or not discuss the matter with us."

She says the union ultimately found no alternative than to announce a strike, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," says the union leader. "The company usually signs the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions frequently dependent on the discretion of managers.

He recalls a performance review at which he states he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed some 130 mechanics working when the strike was called. The union states currently approximately 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has since substituted these with replacement staff, for which that has not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to understand. But it violates all traditional practices. But the company doesn't care about norms.

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

The company's local division declined requests for interview via correspondence mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has given only one media interview during the entire period since the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, told a financial publication that it suited the company better not to have a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and give workers the best possible terms".

The executive rejected that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to make independent such choices," he stated.

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

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and neighboring states, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points are not being connected to power networks in the country.

Exists one such facility close to the capital's airport, at which twenty charging units stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can charge our cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it's hard to see a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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