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Across Sweden, approximately seventy car mechanics continue to challenge one of the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action at the American automaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has now entered its second anniversary, with minimal indication of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the electric car company's picket line since the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult time," states the 39-year-old. And as the nation's chilly winter weather sets in, it is expected to become even tougher.

Janis devotes each Monday alongside a fellow worker, positioned outside an electric vehicle service center on an industrial park in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter in the form of a portable construction vehicle, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

However it remains business as usual across the road, where the workshop appears to operate in full swing.

The strike involves an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay and working terms representing their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Today some 70% of Scandinavia's employees belong to labor organizations, while ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is a system welcomed by all parties. "We favor the ability to negotiate freely with the unions and establish collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted established practices. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience at an event in 2023. "In my view labor groups try to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"But they did not reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing the matter with us."

She states the union ultimately found no other option except to call industrial action, beginning in late October, last year. "Typically it's enough to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that pay and work terms frequently subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review at which he says he was denied a salary increase because he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a colleague was reported to be turned down for increased compensation because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone went out on strike. Tesla had some one hundred thirty technicians working at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently approximately 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since replaced these with replacement staff, for which there is not occurred since the era of the 1930s.

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

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to recognize. However it violates all established norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if anyone tells them, listen, you are violating a norm, they perceive that as praise."

The company's local division refused requests for interview via correspondence citing "record deliveries".

In fact, the company has given only one media interview in the two years after the strike started.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the organization better not to have a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and provide workers the best possible terms".

The executive rejected that the decision not to enter a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to make independent such decisions," he said.

The union is not entirely alone in its fight. The strike has received backing by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway and Finland, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while newly built power points remain connected to power networks in the country.

There is an example close to the capital's airport, where twenty chargers remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from this location," he says. "And we can still buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

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