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In Sweden, around seventy car mechanics continue to challenge among the world's richest companies – Tesla. The labor strike at the American automaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has currently reached two years of duration, with minimal sign for a resolution.

One striking worker has remained 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. And as Sweden's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to become more challenging.

Janis spends every start of the week with a colleague, positioned near an electric vehicle service center within a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter via a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

However it's operations continue normally nearby, at which the workshop appears to be in full swing.

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay and working terms representing their members. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish employees are members of a trade union, and ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with the unions and establish labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed listeners at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups try to create negativity in a company."

Tesla entered Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has long wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"But they wouldn't reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "We formed the belief that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She states the union ultimately found no other option than to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," says the union leader. "The company typically signs the agreement."

However not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, started working with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages & conditions frequently subject to the whim of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review where he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds he was "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to have been rejected for increased compensation because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone participated on strike. The company employed approximately 130 mechanics working at the time the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall states that today approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

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

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to understand. But it goes against all established norms. Yet Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to become norm breakers. So if anyone tells them, listen, you are violating a norm, they see that as praise."

The company's local division declined attempts for interview in an email citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has granted just a single press discussion in the two years since the strike started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it suited the company more not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with the team and provide workers optimal conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses a mandate to make independent such decisions," he stated.

The union is not completely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while newly built power points remain connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 chargers remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it's hard to envision an end to the stand-off. IF Metall risks setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is that this could expand," says Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode