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Across Sweden, approximately 70 car technicians persist to challenge among the world's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike targeting the American automaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached two years of duration, and there is minimal sign of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been on the Tesla picket line since October 2023.

"It's a tough time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's chilly winter weather sets in, it's likely to become more challenging.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a fellow worker, standing near a Tesla garage on a business district in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter via a mobile builders' van, plus coffee & sandwiches.

But it remains business as usual nearby, at which the service facility seems to be at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate wages and working terms representing their members. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is a system supported across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with the unions and establish collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a sort of hierarchical situation," he informed listeners in New York last year. "In my view the unions attempt to create negativity in a company."

Tesla came to Sweden starting in 2014, while IF Metall has long wanted to secure a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," states the union president, the organization's president. "And we got the belief that they tried to hide away or not discuss this with us."

She states the organization eventually found no alternative except to call a strike, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to make the threat," comments the union leader. "Employers typically signs the agreement."

But not in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages and work terms were often dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a colleague was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation because having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out on strike. Tesla had some 130 mechanics employed when the strike was called. IF Metall states that today around seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

Tesla has long since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, which is crucial to recognize. But it violates all traditional practices. Yet Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They want to be norm breakers. So if somebody informs them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they see that as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for interview in an email mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has given just a single media interview during the entire period after the strike started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, informed a financial publication that it suited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with the team and give them the best possible conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a labor contract was determined by US leadership overseas. "We have a mandate to make independent such decisions," he said.

The union is not entirely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed charging stations remain linked to the grid in the country.

There is an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it is difficult to envision an end to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that this could expand," says Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode