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Across Sweden, around 70 car mechanics persist to challenge one of the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the US automaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now reached two years of duration, and there is little indication for a settlement.

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

"It has been a difficult time," states the 39-year-old. With Sweden's cold winter weather sets in, it is expected to grow more challenging.

Janis spends every start of the week with a fellow worker, standing outside an electric vehicle garage on an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies accommodation via a mobile builders' van, as well as coffee & light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, at which the workshop seems to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate wages and working terms representing their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Swedish employees belong of a trade union, and 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the ability to negotiate freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But Tesla has upset established practices. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything which creates a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners in New York in 2023. "In my view labor groups attempt to create conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has long sought to secure a labor contract with the automaker.

"But they did not respond," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "And we got the impression that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with our representatives."

She states the union ultimately saw no alternative than to call industrial action, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company typically agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions frequently dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review where he says he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was reported to be rejected for a pay rise because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla had approximately 130 mechanics working when the industrial action was called. The union states that today approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, this being crucial to recognize. But it goes against all traditional practices. But the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to become norm breakers. Thus when anyone tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they perceive this as praise."

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

In fact, the automaker has given just a single press discussion during the entire period after the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", the executive, informed a business paper that it suited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with employees and give them optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make our own such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed power points remain connected to power networks across the nation.

There is an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from here," he comments. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it's hard to see a resolution to the stand-off. The union risks setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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