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Across Sweden, around seventy car technicians persist to challenge one of the world's wealthiest companies – Tesla. The labor strike targeting the US carmaker's 10 Swedish service centers has currently entered its second anniversary, and there is little sign for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the electric car company's protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult period," states the 39-year-old. With Sweden's chilly winter weather sets in, it's likely to become more challenging.

Janis spends every start of the week with a fellow worker, standing near a Tesla garage within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a mobile construction vehicle, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

However it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the workshop appears to operate in full swing.

The strike involves an issue that goes to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to bargain for pay and working terms on behalf of their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics across the nation for nearly a century.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, and ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

This is a system supported by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain freely with the unions and establish labor contracts," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But Tesla has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I simply don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners in New York in 2023. "I think the unions try to generate negativity in a company."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has long wanted to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

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

She states the organization ultimately found no alternative except to call industrial action, which started in late October, last year. "Typically the threat suffices to make a warning," says the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He claims that wages & work terms were often subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review at which he says he was refused an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to be turned down for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out in the industrial action. The company employed approximately one hundred thirty technicians working when the industrial action was initiated. The union states that today approximately seventy of its members are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted these with replacement staff, a situation that has no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, this being important to recognize. But it goes against all traditional practices. Yet Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to become convention challengers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they perceive that as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for interview via correspondence mentioning "record deliveries".

Indeed, the company has given only one media interview in the two years since the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a business paper that it benefited the company more not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide them optimal terms".

The executive denied that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have a mandate to take independent such choices," he said.

The union is not completely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations are not being connected to power networks in the country.

There is an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty chargers stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from this location," he says. "And we can still buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can power our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it is difficult 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 this could expand," states the researcher, "and ultimately {erode