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Across Sweden, approximately seventy automotive technicians continue to challenge one of the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action at the US automaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has now entered its second anniversary, with little indication of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained on the electric car company's picket line since October 2023.

"It's a difficult time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to grow more challenging.

Janis devotes every start of the week with a colleague, positioned near an electric vehicle service center within a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, supplies accommodation via a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages and light meals.

However it's business as usual nearby, where the workshop seems to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns a matter that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for pay and working terms on behalf of their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost one hundred years.

Today approximately seventy percent of Swedish workers belong of a trade union, while 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's a system welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However Tesla has upset the apple cart. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of hierarchical situation," he told an audience at an event last year. "I think labor groups attempt to generate negativity in a company."

The automaker came to Sweden back in 2014, and IF Metall has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"But they did not reply," says the union president, the union's leader. "And we got the belief that they tried to avoid or evade discussing this with us."

She says the union ultimately saw no other option than to call a strike, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to make a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically signs the contract."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

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 supervisors.

He recalls a performance review at which he says he was refused a salary increase because he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was said to have been turned down for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers participated on strike. Tesla employed approximately 130 technicians working at the time the strike was initiated. IF Metall says that today approximately 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," states German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, which is important to recognize. However it goes against all established practices. But the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they perceive this as praise."

The automaker's local division declined requests for interview in an email citing "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has granted just a single press discussion in the two years after the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it benefited the organization better to avoid a union contract, and instead "to work closely with the team and give them the best possible terms".

Mr Stark denied that the decision not to enter a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have a mandate to make our own such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing from several of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & neighboring states, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and newly built charging stations are not being connected to power networks in the country.

There is an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty charging units stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

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

With consequences significant on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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