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In Sweden, around 70 car mechanics continue to challenge among the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has now reached its second anniversary, with minimal sign for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the electric car company's protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to become more challenging.

Janis spends each Monday alongside a colleague, positioned near a Tesla service center within a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies accommodation via a mobile builders' van, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

But it remains business as usual across the road, where the workshop appears to operate in full swing.

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay & conditions representing their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations in Sweden for almost one hundred years.

Today some 70% of Swedish employees are members to labor organizations, and ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's a system welcomed across the board. "We prefer the ability to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I just disapprove of any arrangement which creates a kind of lords and peasants situation," he informed listeners at an event in 2023. "I think the unions try to generate negativity in a company."

The automaker entered Sweden starting in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has long wanted to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "We formed the impression that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She states the organization eventually found no other option than to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to make the threat," says the union leader. "Employers usually signs the contract."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that wages & conditions frequently subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls a performance review at which he says he was denied an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to be turned down for increased compensation because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone went out on strike. Tesla employed some 130 mechanics employed when the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently around seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has long since replaced these with replacement staff, for which that has not occurred since the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," states German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, which is important to understand. But it violates all traditional norms. But the company doesn't care for conventions.

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

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for interview in an email mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the company has granted just a single press discussion in the two years after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it benefited the company better to avoid a union contract, and rather "to work closely with the team and provide them the best possible terms".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take our own such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in its fight. The strike has been supported from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway and Finland, decline to handle Teslas; rubbish is not removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed charging stations remain linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station 10km from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union risks setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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