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Across Sweden, around 70 car mechanics continue to confront one of the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike at the US carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached two years of duration, with minimal sign of a resolution.

One striking worker has remained on the electric car company's protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to grow more challenging.

Janis spends every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, standing near an electric vehicle garage within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies shelter in the form of a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages & light meals.

But it's operations continue normally across the road, at which the service facility seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action concerns an issue that goes to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to negotiate wages and working terms representing their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for almost one hundred years.

Today some 70% of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to bargain directly with the unions and establish collective agreements," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But Tesla has upset established practices. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners in New York last year. "I think labor groups attempt to generate negativity in a company."

Tesla entered Sweden starting in 2014, while IF Metall has for years sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the organization's leader. "We formed the belief that they tried to hide away or not discuss the matter with us."

She states the union ultimately found no other option than to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," says the union leader. "Employers usually agrees to the contract."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

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

He remembers a performance review at which he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a colleague was reported to be rejected for increased compensation due to having the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers went out on strike. The company had approximately 130 technicians employed at the time the strike was called. IF Metall states that today around 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with new workers, for which that has no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," states German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is important to understand. But it violates all established norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to be norm breakers. So if anyone tells them, listen, you are violating a norm, they see this as praise."

The automaker's local division declined attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "record deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has granted just a single media interview in the two years after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it benefited the company more not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with the team and give them optimal 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 independent such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway and Finland, are refusing to process Teslas; waste is not collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and newly built charging stations remain linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists one such facility near the capital's airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

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

With stakes high on both sides, it is difficult to envision a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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