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Across Sweden, around 70 car technicians continue to confront among the globe's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. This industrial action at the American carmaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has now reached two years of duration, and there is little sign of a resolution.

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

"It has been a tough time," states the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's chilly winter weather sets in, it is expected to grow more challenging.

Janis spends each Monday alongside a fellow worker, standing outside an electric vehicle service center within an industrial park in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter in the form of a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee & light meals.

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

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right of trade unions to negotiate pay and working terms representing their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish workers belong to labor organizations, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

It's a system supported by all parties. "We prefer the ability to negotiate freely with the unions and sign labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of any arrangement which creates a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners at an event in 2023. "In my view the unions attempt to generate negativity in a company."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has long wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they did not respond," says Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to hide away or not discuss this with our representatives."

She states the union eventually saw no other option except to call a strike, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," says the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that pay and work terms frequently dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he states he was denied a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be rejected for a pay rise because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla had some one hundred thirty mechanics working at the time the industrial action was called. The union states currently around seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since replaced these with replacement staff, for which there is no precedent since the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, this being crucial to understand. However it goes against all established norms. Yet the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they perceive that as praise."

The automaker's local division declined requests for interview in an email citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has given only one media interview during the entire period since the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the company more not to have a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and give them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the decision not to enter a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take our own such choices," he stated.

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

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and neighboring states, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; waste is no longer removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed power points remain connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to the capital's airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists another charging station six miles from here," he says. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it's hard to envision a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is how this could expand," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode