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In Sweden, around 70 car technicians continue to challenge among the globe's richest companies – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the US automaker's ten Swedish service centers has now reached its second anniversary, with little sign of a resolution.

One striking worker has been on the electric car company's protest line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to grow more challenging.

Janis spends each Monday alongside a fellow worker, standing outside a Tesla service center within a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it's operations continue normally across the road, where the service facility appears to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action involves an issue that goes to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate wages and conditions representing their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations across the nation for nearly a century.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement supported by all parties. "We prefer the ability to bargain freely with the unions and sign labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted established practices. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything which creates a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told listeners in New York last year. "In my view labor groups attempt to create negativity in a company."

The automaker entered Sweden back in 2014, and IF Metall has long wanted to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "And we got the impression that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She states the organization eventually found no alternative than to call industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," says the union leader. "The company typically signs the agreement."

But not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that wages and work terms frequently dependent on the discretion of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was said to have been turned down for a pay rise due to he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out on strike. The company had some 130 mechanics employed when the strike was called. IF Metall says that today around seventy of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since substituted these with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, this being important to understand. But it violates all traditional norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if anyone tells them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they perceive that as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for interview via correspondence citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has granted only one media interview during the entire period after the strike began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a business paper that it benefited the company better to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with employees and provide workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark denied that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership in the US. "We have authorization to make our own such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely alone in its fight. This industrial action has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway and neighboring states, are refusing to process Teslas; rubbish is not removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points remain linked to the grid in the country.

There is an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty chargers stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the deadlock. The union risks setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is that that would spread," states Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode