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In Sweden, around 70 car technicians persist to confront among the globe's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has now entered two years of duration, with little sign for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the Tesla protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a tough period," remarks the 39-year-old. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday with a colleague, positioned near a Tesla service center on a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation in the form of a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages & sandwiches.

But it's operations continue normally nearby, where the workshop seems to be in full swing.

The strike involves an issue that reaches to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for wages and conditions on behalf of their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish employees are members of a trade union, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to bargain freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I simply don't like anything which creates a kind of hierarchical situation," he told listeners in New York last year. "I think labor groups try to generate conflict in a company."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years wanted to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they wouldn't respond," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She says the organization ultimately saw no other option than to call a strike, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company typically agrees to the agreement."

However this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay & work terms frequently dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review at which he states he was denied a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be turned down for a pay rise due to he had the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone went out in the industrial action. Tesla employed some 130 mechanics employed at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall states that today approximately 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation there is not occurred since the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, this being crucial to recognize. But it violates all traditional practices. Yet Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive that as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for interview in an email citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has granted only one press discussion during the entire period after the strike began.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the organization more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and give them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was determined by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take independent such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has been supported from several of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed power points are not being linked to the grid in the country.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, at which twenty charging units stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

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

With stakes high on both sides, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union risks setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is that that would spread," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode