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Across Sweden, approximately 70 car technicians persist to challenge among the world's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the US carmaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has now entered two years of duration, with little sign of a settlement.

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

"It has been a tough period," remarks the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's chilly winter weather sets in, it is expected to become even tougher.

Janis spends every start of the week with a colleague, positioned near an electric vehicle service center within an industrial park in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation via a mobile construction vehicle, plus hot beverages & sandwiches.

But it's operations continue normally nearby, at which the workshop seems to be in full swing.

The strike concerns an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for pay & working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today some 70% of Swedish workers are members to labor organizations, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We favor the right to bargain freely with the unions and establish labor contracts," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But Tesla has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I just disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told listeners at an event last year. "I think the unions attempt to create conflict within businesses."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the impression that they attempted to hide away or not discuss the matter with us."

She states the union ultimately saw no other option than to announce a strike, beginning in late October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually agrees to the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla several years ago. He claims that pay and work terms frequently dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused an annual pay rise because he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation because having the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone went out on strike. Tesla had some one hundred thirty technicians working when the strike was initiated. The union says that today around seventy of its members are on strike.

The automaker has since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation there is not occurred since the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not illegal, this being crucial to recognize. However it violates all established norms. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are violating a standard, they see this as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for interview via correspondence mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has granted just a single press discussion during the entire period after the strike started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it suited the company more not to have a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and provide workers optimal terms".

Mr Stark denied that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was determined by US leadership in the US. "We have a mandate to make our own such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to handle Teslas; rubbish is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points are not being linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 charging units stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The concern is how that would spread," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode