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In Sweden, approximately 70 car technicians continue to confront among the world's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike targeting the US carmaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has currently reached its second anniversary, with minimal sign of a resolution.

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

"It has been a tough period," states the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to become more challenging.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, standing outside a Tesla garage within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies accommodation via a portable builders' van, as well as coffee & light meals.

But it's operations continue normally across the road, where the service facility appears to be in full swing.

The strike involves an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to negotiate wages and working terms on behalf of their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

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

It's a system welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to bargain freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken CEO the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a sort of hierarchical situation," he informed listeners at an event in 2023. "In my view the unions try to create conflict in a company."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"But they did not reply," says the union president, the union's president. "We formed the belief that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with our representatives."

She states the organization ultimately found no other option except to call a strike, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to make a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually agrees to the contract."

But not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay and conditions were often dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he states he was refused a salary increase because that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be turned down for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone went out in the industrial action. Tesla employed some 130 technicians working at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation there is no precedent since the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, this being important to recognize. However it goes against all traditional practices. But the company shows no concern about norms.

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

The automaker's local division declined attempts for interview in an email citing "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has given just a single press discussion during the entire period since the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a business paper that it benefited the company more not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with employees and provide them optimal terms".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have authorization to make our own such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely alone in its fight. This industrial action has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & Finland, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to power networks in the country.

There is one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from this location," he says. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The concern is that this could expand," states Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode