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Across Sweden, approximately seventy automotive technicians persist to confront among the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action at the American carmaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has now reached its second anniversary, and there is little indication for a settlement.

One striking worker has been at the Tesla picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult period," states the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to become even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday with a fellow worker, standing outside a Tesla service center within a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, plus coffee and light meals.

However it remains business as usual across the road, at which the service facility seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for wages and working terms representing their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's employees belong of a trade union, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement supported by all parties. "We favor the right to negotiate freely with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I just disapprove of anything which creates a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups try to generate conflict in a company."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they did not respond," says Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or not discuss this with us."

She states the organization eventually saw no other option except to announce a strike, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to make a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually agrees to the contract."

However not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He claims that wages & conditions were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was denied an annual pay rise because he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to have been turned down for increased compensation due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. Tesla had approximately 130 technicians employed at the time the strike was initiated. IF Metall says that today around seventy of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since substituted these with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the 1930s.

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

"It's not against the law, which is crucial to understand. However it violates all traditional norms. Yet the company shows no concern about norms.

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

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

In fact, the automaker has given just a single press discussion in the two years after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a business paper that it benefited the organization more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and provide them the best possible terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice not to enter a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have authorization to make our own such choices," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, decline to process the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed charging stations are not being connected to power networks in the country.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, where twenty chargers remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall risks setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is that this could expand," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode