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In Sweden, approximately seventy car technicians continue to challenge one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the American automaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has now entered two years of duration, and there is minimal sign for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been on the Tesla protest line since October 2023.

"It's a tough period," states the 39-year-old. With Sweden'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 service center on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter via a portable construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it remains operations continue normally across the road, at which the service facility appears to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action involves a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to negotiate wages and working terms representing their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for almost one hundred years.

Today some 70% of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is a system supported by all parties. "We favor the right to bargain directly with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners at an event last year. "I think labor groups attempt to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they wouldn't reply," says the union president, the union's leader. "And we got the impression that they tried to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She says the organization eventually saw no other option than to announce industrial action, which started in late October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to make the threat," comments the union leader. "Employers usually signs the contract."

However not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay and work terms frequently subject to the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he says he was refused a salary increase on grounds he was "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers participated on strike. Tesla employed approximately one hundred thirty technicians employed at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall says currently around seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted the striking workers with new workers, for which that has no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, this being crucial to understand. But it violates all established practices. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

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

The automaker's local division declined attempts for interview via correspondence citing "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has granted only one media interview in the two years after the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it suited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide workers optimal terms".

The executive denied that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was one made by US leadership in the US. "We have a mandate to make our own such choices," he stated.

The union is not entirely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & Finland, are refusing to handle Teslas; rubbish is not removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed power points remain connected to the grid in the country.

Exists one such facility near the capital's airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from here," he comments. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it is difficult to envision an end to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is that that would spread," states the researcher, "and ultimately {erode