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In Sweden, approximately 70 automotive mechanics persist to challenge one of the globe's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the US carmaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now reached two years of duration, and there is minimal sign for a resolution.

One striking worker has remained at the electric car company's picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult time," states the 39-year-old. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to grow more challenging.

Janis spends every start of the week alongside a colleague, positioned near an electric vehicle garage on a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, provides accommodation via a portable builders' van, plus hot beverages and light meals.

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

The strike concerns an issue that reaches to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for wages and conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Today approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers belong to labor organizations, and 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement supported across the board. "We prefer the right to negotiate freely with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply disapprove of anything which creates a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners in New York in 2023. "I think the unions attempt to create negativity in a company."

The automaker entered Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years wanted to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"But they did not reply," states the union president, the union's president. "We formed the belief that they tried to hide away or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She says the union eventually found no other option except to call industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

However not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions were often dependent on the discretion of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out on strike. The company employed some one hundred thirty technicians employed at the time the strike was initiated. IF Metall says currently approximately 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced these with new workers, a situation that has no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," says German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

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

"They want to be convention challengers. So if anyone tells them, hey, you are violating a norm, they perceive this as praise."

The automaker's local division refused attempts for comment via correspondence citing "record vehicle shipments".

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

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it suited the organization more to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with the team and give them the best possible terms".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have authorization to make our own such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in its fight. This industrial action has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed power points are not being linked to power networks in the country.

There is an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. The union risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

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