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In Sweden, around 70 car mechanics continue to challenge one of the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the American carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently entered two years of duration, and there is little indication of a resolution.

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

"It has been a tough time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's chilly winter weather arrives, it is expected to grow even tougher.

Janis spends every start of the week alongside a colleague, standing near a Tesla garage on a business district in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter via a mobile builders' van, as well as coffee & light meals.

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

This industrial action involves a matter that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to negotiate pay & conditions representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly a century.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Swedish employees are members to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything which creates a sort of hierarchical situation," he told an audience in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups try to generate negativity in a company."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market back in 2014, and IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they wouldn't respond," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "And we got the belief that they attempted to hide away or not discuss this with our representatives."

She says the union eventually saw no alternative than to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically signs the agreement."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay & work terms were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for a pay rise due to having the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone participated on strike. The company employed approximately one hundred thirty mechanics employed at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall says that today around seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

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

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," says German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, which is crucial to understand. However it violates all traditional norms. But the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if somebody tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused requests for comment in an email mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has granted only one press discussion in the two years since the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, informed a financial publication that it suited the organization better to avoid a union contract, and instead "to work closely with the team and give workers optimal conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have a mandate to take our own such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & neighboring states, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed power points remain linked to power networks across the nation.

There is one such facility near the capital's airport, at which twenty charging units remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it's hard to envision an end to the deadlock. The union risks setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that that would spread," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode