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Across Sweden, around 70 car technicians continue to challenge among the globe's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the American automaker's ten Swedish service centers has now reached its second anniversary, with little sign of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been at the Tesla picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a tough time," states the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to become even tougher.

Janis devotes each Monday with a colleague, positioned outside a Tesla garage within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter in the form of a portable builders' van, plus hot beverages & light meals.

However it's business as usual nearby, at which the service facility seems to be in full swing.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for wages and conditions on behalf of their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has supported industrial relations across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, and 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is a system supported by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I just disapprove of anything which creates a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told an audience at an event in 2023. "I think the unions try to create conflict within businesses."

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

"Yet they wouldn't reply," says Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to avoid or not discuss the matter with us."

She says the organization eventually found no alternative than to call a strike, which started in late October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to make a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually agrees to the agreement."

But this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay & work terms were often dependent on the discretion of managers.

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

However, not everyone participated in the industrial action. Tesla had some one hundred thirty technicians working at the time the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says that today around 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since replaced the striking workers with new workers, for which there is not occurred since the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, which is crucial to recognize. However it goes against all established norms. But Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to be convention challengers. So if somebody tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they see this as praise."

The company's local division declined requests for interview via correspondence citing "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has given just a single media interview during the entire period since the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, informed a financial publication that it suited the company more not to have a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take our own such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported from several of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is not collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed power points are not being linked to power networks across the nation.

There is one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from this location," he says. "And we can still buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is that that would spread," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode