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In Sweden, approximately seventy car mechanics continue to confront one of the world's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the American automaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently entered its second anniversary, with minimal indication of a resolution.

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

"It's a difficult time," remarks the 39-year-old. With the nation's chilly winter weather sets in, it's likely to grow even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla garage on a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation in the form of a mobile builders' van, plus coffee & light meals.

But it's business as usual nearby, where the workshop appears to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action involves an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for pay and conditions representing their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for nearly a century.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees are members to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is a system welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a sort of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups attempt to create negativity within businesses."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market back in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to establish a labor contract with the company.

"But they wouldn't reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "We formed the belief that they tried to hide away or not discuss this with us."

She says the organization ultimately saw no other option except to announce a strike, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue a warning," says the union leader. "Employers typically signs the agreement."

But this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions were often dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review at which he says he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to have been rejected for increased compensation because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company had some 130 mechanics employed when the industrial action was called. IF Metall says currently approximately 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

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

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, this being crucial to understand. However it violates all established practices. But 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 perceive that as praise."

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

In fact, the automaker has granted just a single media interview in the two years after the strike began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it suited the organization better not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and provide workers optimal terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision not to enter a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in this conflict. The strike has been supported by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, are refusing to process Teslas; rubbish is not removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while newly built charging stations are not being connected to power networks across the nation.

There is an example close to the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station 10km from this location," he says. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it's hard to envision an end to the deadlock. The union risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is that this could expand," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode