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In Sweden, around seventy car technicians persist to challenge one of the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the American automaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently reached two years of duration, and there is minimal sign of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been on the electric car company's picket line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to grow more challenging.

The mechanic spends every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, standing outside a Tesla service center on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, as well as coffee & light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally nearby, at which the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

The strike involves an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for pay & working terms representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for almost a century.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's employees belong of a trade union, while 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

This is a system welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain directly with the unions and establish labor contracts," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York last year. "In my view the unions attempt to create negativity within businesses."

Tesla entered Sweden starting in 2014, and IF Metall has long wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"But they did not reply," says Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "And we got the impression that they attempted to hide away or not discuss this with us."

She says the organization ultimately found no other option than to call a strike, which started on 27 October, last year. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay & work terms were often subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he states he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a colleague was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated on strike. Tesla employed approximately 130 mechanics employed when the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted these with new workers, a situation there is not occurred since the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," says German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, which is crucial to understand. But it goes against all traditional norms. Yet Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to become norm breakers. So if anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive that as a compliment."

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

Indeed, the company has given only one media interview during the entire period after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, informed a financial publication that it benefited the company better to avoid a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and give them optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was one made by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make our own such choices," he stated.

The union is not entirely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; waste is not removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points are not being connected to the grid in the country.

There is one such facility near the capital's airport, at which 20 chargers stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can charge our cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the deadlock. The union risks setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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