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In Sweden, approximately seventy car technicians persist to confront among the globe's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. This industrial action at the US automaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has now reached its second anniversary, and there is little sign for a settlement.

One striking worker has been at the Tesla protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a tough time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week alongside a colleague, positioned near an electric vehicle service center within a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, provides accommodation via a portable builders' van, as well as coffee & light meals.

However it remains business as usual across the road, where the workshop appears to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns a matter that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to negotiate wages and working terms representing their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Currently some 70% of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to bargain freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything which creates a kind of hierarchical situation," he told listeners in New York in 2023. "I think the unions try to generate conflict in a company."

The automaker came to Sweden back in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they did not respond," states the union president, the organization's president. "We formed the impression that they tried to hide away or not discuss the matter with us."

She states the union ultimately saw no other option than to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, last year. "Typically it's enough to make the threat," says the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay and work terms were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he states he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty technicians employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union states currently around seventy of its members are on strike.

The automaker has since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which there is not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, which is important to recognize. But it violates all established practices. But Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to become norm breakers. Thus when anyone tells them, listen, you are violating a standard, they see that as praise."

The company's local division refused requests for comment in an email mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has given just a single press discussion in the two years after the industrial action began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the company better to avoid a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and provide them optimal terms".

The executive denied that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to take our own such decisions," he stated.

The union is not entirely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and Finland, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed power points remain connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, at which 20 charging units remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

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

With stakes significant for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the stand-off. The union risks setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is how that would spread," says Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode