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Across Sweden, approximately 70 car technicians persist to challenge one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. The industrial action at the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently reached its second anniversary, with little sign of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the electric car company's protest line starting from October 2023.

"It's a tough time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to grow even tougher.

Janis devotes each Monday alongside a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla service center on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation via a mobile builders' van, as well as hot beverages and light meals.

But it remains business as usual nearby, at which the service facility appears to be at full capacity.

The strike involves a matter that goes to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay & conditions on behalf of their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers belong of a trade union, and ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

This is a system welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just don't like any arrangement which creates a kind of hierarchical situation," he informed listeners at an event in 2023. "In my view the unions attempt to generate conflict within businesses."

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

"Yet they wouldn't reply," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "And we got the belief that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She says the union ultimately saw no alternative than to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the contract."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that wages and conditions were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was denied an annual pay rise because he was "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a colleague was said to be rejected for a pay rise due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated on strike. The company employed some 130 mechanics working at the time the strike was initiated. The union states that today approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, which is important to understand. However it violates all established practices. Yet the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to become convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they see this as a compliment."

The company's local division declined requests for interview in an email citing "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the company has granted just a single media interview during the entire period after the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, informed a financial publication that it benefited the organization better not to have a union contract, and instead "to work closely with the team and give them optimal terms".

Mr Stark denied that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to take independent 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.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Norway and Finland, decline to handle Teslas; rubbish is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed charging stations remain connected to the grid in the country.

Exists one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from here," he says. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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