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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive technicians continue to confront one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action targeting the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has now entered two years of duration, with minimal indication for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the Tesla picket line since the autumn of 2023.

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

Janis spends every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla service center on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies accommodation via a portable builders' van, plus hot beverages & light meals.

However it's operations continue normally nearby, at which the service facility seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action concerns an issue that goes to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages and conditions on behalf of their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today approximately 70% of Scandinavia's employees belong of a trade union, while 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement supported by all parties. "We prefer the ability to negotiate directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement which creates a sort of hierarchical situation," he told an audience at an event last year. "I think labor groups attempt to create negativity in a company."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "We formed the impression that they tried to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She says the union eventually found no alternative than to call a strike, which started in late October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," says the union leader. "Employers typically signs the agreement."

But this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, began employment for Tesla several years ago. He asserts that wages and conditions frequently dependent on the discretion of managers.

He remembers a performance review at which he states he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for a pay rise because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. Tesla had some 130 mechanics employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says currently approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since substituted these with new workers, for which there is no precedent since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, which is important to understand. However it violates all established practices. But Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to be norm breakers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are violating a norm, they perceive that as praise."

The company's local division refused attempts for comment via correspondence citing "record deliveries".

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

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", the executive, told a business paper that it suited the company more not to have a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers optimal terms".

The executive denied that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was determined by US leadership in the US. "We have a mandate to take our own such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in its fight. This industrial action has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, are refusing to handle Teslas; waste is not removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed power points are not being linked to the grid in the country.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from here," he says. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can power our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is how that would spread," says Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode