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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics persist to confront one of the world's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action at the US automaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has currently entered its second anniversary, and there is little sign of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the Tesla picket line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a tough time," states the 39-year-old. With Sweden's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday with a fellow worker, standing near a Tesla service center within an industrial park in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation via a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the service facility appears to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to negotiate wages and conditions representing their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers belong to labor organizations, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is an arrangement supported by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain freely with the unions and establish labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I simply disapprove of anything that establishes a sort of hierarchical situation," he informed an audience at an event in 2023. "In my view the unions try to generate conflict in a company."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, and IF Metall has long sought to establish a collective agreement with the company.

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

She says the organization eventually saw no other option except to call a strike, which started in late October, last year. "Typically it's enough to make the threat," comments the union leader. "The company usually agrees to the agreement."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay and work terms were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review where he states he was refused an annual pay rise because he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to be turned down for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone went out in the industrial action. Tesla had approximately 130 mechanics employed at the time the strike was initiated. IF Metall says that today around seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

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

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not illegal, this being crucial to recognize. However it violates all traditional practices. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They aim to be norm breakers. So if anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see that as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused requests for interview via correspondence mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the company has granted only one press discussion during the entire period since the strike started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, told a financial publication that it suited the organization more not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and give workers optimal terms".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make our own such choices," he said.

The union is not completely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, decline to handle Teslas; rubbish is no longer removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed power points remain connected to power networks across the nation.

There is an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 chargers remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from here," he comments. "And we can still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it's hard to see an end to the stand-off. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

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