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In Sweden, approximately 70 car mechanics continue to confront one of the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action at the US carmaker's 10 Swedish service centers has now reached its second anniversary, with little indication of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been on the Tesla protest line since the autumn of 2023.

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

Janis devotes each Monday with a fellow worker, standing outside a Tesla garage within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies accommodation via a mobile construction vehicle, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

However it remains business as usual nearby, where the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for pay and working terms representing their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish employees belong of a trade union, and 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is a system welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However the electric car company has upset established practices. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of anything which creates a kind of hierarchical situation," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups try to generate conflict within businesses."

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

"Yet they did not reply," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "And we got the impression that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She says the union ultimately saw no alternative except to call a strike, beginning in late October, last year. "Typically it's enough to make the threat," says the union leader. "The company typically agrees to the agreement."

However not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that wages & conditions were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he states he was refused a salary increase because that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been turned down for increased compensation because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers went out on strike. The company employed approximately one hundred thirty mechanics employed at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall says that today around 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with new workers, a situation that has no precedent since the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at a research institute, a think tank financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, which is important to recognize. But it goes against all traditional norms. But Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to be convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, listen, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as a compliment."

The company's local division refused requests for interview in an email mentioning "record deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has granted only one media interview in the two years after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the company more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to work closely with the team and provide them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have a mandate to take our own such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway & Finland, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations remain linked to the grid across the nation.

There is an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from here," he says. "And we can still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is that that would spread," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode