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Across Sweden, around seventy car mechanics persist to challenge one of the world's wealthiest companies – Tesla. The industrial action at the American carmaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has currently entered two years of duration, with minimal sign of a settlement.

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

"It has been a difficult period," remarks the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to grow more challenging.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a colleague, standing outside an electric vehicle service center on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation in the form of a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee and light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, at which the workshop appears to be at full capacity.

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to negotiate wages & conditions representing their members. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost one hundred years.

Today approximately 70% of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is a system supported across the board. "We favor the ability to bargain freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Vocal CEO the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners at an event last year. "In my view labor groups try to create negativity in a company."

Tesla came to Sweden starting in 2014, and IF Metall has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the automaker.

"But they did not reply," says the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing this with our representatives."

She says the organization eventually found no other option except to announce industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually signs the agreement."

However not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, started working for Tesla several years ago. He asserts that wages & conditions were often dependent on the discretion of managers.

He recalls a performance review at which he says he was refused a salary increase on grounds he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to be turned down for increased compensation because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers went out on strike. Tesla employed approximately 130 mechanics working at the time the strike was called. The union says currently approximately seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since replaced the striking workers with new workers, for which that has no precedent since the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," says German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, this being crucial to understand. But it violates all established practices. Yet the company doesn't care about norms.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if anyone tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they see that as a compliment."

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

In fact, the company has granted just a single press discussion during the entire period after the strike started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, told a business paper that it suited the company better not to have a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and provide workers the best possible terms".

The executive denied that the choice not to enter a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "We have a mandate to take independent such decisions," he stated.

The union is not completely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & neighboring states, are refusing to process Teslas; waste is not removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed power points remain linked to power networks in the country.

There is one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 charging units stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station six miles from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can power our cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it's hard to envision an end to the stand-off. The union risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The concern is that this could expand," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode