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In Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics continue to challenge among the globe's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This industrial action targeting the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently entered its second anniversary, with minimal sign of a resolution.

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

"It's a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it's likely to grow more challenging.

Janis devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla service center within a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter in the form of a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee & sandwiches.

However it's operations continue normally across the road, where the workshop appears to operate in full swing.

The strike involves an issue that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for wages and conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly a century.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's workers belong of a trade union, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

This is a system supported across the board. "We prefer the right to bargain freely with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners in New York last year. "In my view labor groups attempt to generate conflict within businesses."

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

"Yet they did not respond," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "We formed the belief that they tried to hide away or evade discussing the matter with us."

She states the union eventually saw no alternative except to announce industrial action, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Typically it's enough to make the threat," comments the union leader. "The company usually signs the contract."

But not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages & work terms were often subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls a performance review at which he says he was denied a salary increase on grounds that he "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to be turned down for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla had some 130 mechanics employed when the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently around 70 of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since substituted these with new workers, for which there is not occurred since the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," states German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, this being crucial to recognize. But it goes against all established norms. But the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to be convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive that as a compliment."

The automaker's local division refused attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has given just a single press discussion during the entire period after the strike began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a financial publication that it suited the company better not to have a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and provide workers the best possible terms".

Mr Stark denied that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make our own such decisions," he said.

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

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & Finland, are refusing to handle Teslas; rubbish is not collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed power points remain linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, at which 20 charging units stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

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

With stakes high on both sides, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the deadlock. The union risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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