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Across Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics continue to confront among the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached two years of duration, and there is little indication of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been on the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

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

The mechanic spends every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla service center within a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation in the form of a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages and light meals.

But it's business as usual across the road, where the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

The strike involves an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to negotiate pay & conditions on behalf of their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for almost a century.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement supported across the board. "We prefer the right to negotiate freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just don't like anything which creates a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners at an event in 2023. "I think the unions try to create negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden starting in 2014, while IF Metall has long sought to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they wouldn't respond," states the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the belief that they tried to hide away or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the organization eventually found no alternative except to announce a strike, beginning in late October, last year. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the contract."

But not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that wages and conditions were often subject to the whim of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review where he says he was denied a salary increase on grounds he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a colleague was said to have been rejected for a pay rise because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated on strike. Tesla had approximately one hundred thirty technicians working at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union states that today approximately 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has long since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation there is not occurred since the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," states German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, this being crucial to recognize. However it violates all established norms. But Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to be norm breakers. So if somebody tells them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they see that as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for interview via correspondence citing "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has granted just a single press discussion in the two years after the industrial action began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it benefited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and provide workers optimal conditions".

The executive denied that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such choices," he stated.

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

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built charging stations are not being linked to power networks in the country.

There is an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty charging units remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from this location," he says. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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