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In Sweden, around 70 car mechanics persist to confront among the globe's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. The labor strike targeting the American automaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now entered its second anniversary, with minimal sign for a settlement.

One striking worker has remained on the electric car company's protest line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to grow even tougher.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a colleague, positioned outside an electric vehicle garage on a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter in the form of a portable construction vehicle, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

However it remains operations continue normally nearby, where the workshop seems to be in full swing.

The strike involves a matter that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for wages & conditions representing their members. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Currently approximately 70% of Scandinavia's employees are members to labor organizations, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with the unions and sign collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But Tesla has upset established practices. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York last year. "In my view labor groups try to generate conflict in a company."

Tesla entered Sweden starting in 2014, while IF Metall has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," states the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the belief that they tried to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She states the union eventually saw no other option than to announce a strike, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Usually it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the contract."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He claims that wages & conditions were often dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused an annual pay rise because he was "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to be rejected for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated on strike. The company had some 130 mechanics working at the time the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says that today approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has long since substituted these with replacement staff, a situation there is no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is important to understand. But it violates all traditional practices. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. Thus when anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they perceive that as a compliment."

The automaker's local division declined attempts for interview via correspondence mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the company has granted only one media interview during the entire period after the strike started.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it suited the company more not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with the team and give them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the decision not to enter a labor contract was determined by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take our own such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely alone in its fight. This industrial action has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; waste is no longer removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to power networks in the country.

There is one such facility close to the capital's airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station 10km from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall risks setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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