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In Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics persist to confront one of the world's richest corporations – Tesla. This industrial action targeting the US carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has now reached its second anniversary, with little indication for a resolution.

One striking worker has been on the Tesla protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult time," states the 39-year-old. And as the nation's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to become more challenging.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a colleague, positioned near a Tesla garage on a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, provides accommodation in the form of a mobile builders' van, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

However it's operations continue normally across the road, at which the service facility appears to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate wages and working terms representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly a century.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation are rare.

It's a system welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain freely with the unions and establish labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But Tesla has upset established practices. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I simply don't like anything which creates a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners in New York last year. "I think the unions attempt to create conflict within businesses."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market 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," says the union president, the organization's president. "And we got the belief that they tried to avoid or not discuss the matter with us."

She says the union eventually found no other option than to call industrial action, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to make the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the contract."

But not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that wages & conditions frequently subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls a performance review at which he states he was denied an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was reported to be turned down for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone went out on strike. The company had approximately 130 mechanics working at the time the strike was initiated. The union states that today around seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

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

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, this being crucial to recognize. However it goes against all established practices. But the company doesn't care about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are violating a standard, they see this as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for interview via correspondence citing "record deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has given just a single media interview in the two years after the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it suited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and provide workers optimal conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice not to enter a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to make our own such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in this conflict. The strike has been supported from several of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; rubbish is not collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while newly built power points remain connected to power networks across the nation.

Exists one such facility near the capital's airport, at which 20 chargers remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is how this could expand," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode