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Across Sweden, approximately 70 car mechanics continue to challenge one of the world's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the American carmaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has currently entered two years of duration, with little indication for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been on the electric car company's picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a tough time," states the 39-year-old. With Sweden's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to become even tougher.

Janis devotes each Monday with a fellow worker, standing outside a Tesla garage within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation via a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it's operations continue normally nearby, where the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

The strike concerns an issue that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate wages & conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for nearly a century.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement supported by all parties. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with the unions and establish collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like any arrangement which creates a kind of lords and peasants situation," he informed listeners at an event last year. "In my view the unions attempt to create conflict within businesses."

The automaker entered Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has long sought to secure a labor contract with the company.

"But they did not respond," states the union president, the organization's leader. "We formed the belief that they tried to hide away or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She states the organization eventually saw no other option except to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the contract."

But not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay and work terms frequently dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was said to be rejected for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers participated on strike. The company had approximately 130 technicians employed when the strike was called. The union states currently approximately 70 of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since substituted the striking workers with new workers, for which there is not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, which is important to understand. However it goes against all established practices. Yet the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. Thus when somebody tells them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they see that as a compliment."

The automaker's local division declined attempts for comment in an email citing "record deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has given just a single press discussion during the entire period after the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a business paper that it benefited the company more to avoid a union contract, and rather "to work closely with the team and provide them optimal terms".

Mr Stark denied that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have authorization to make independent such choices," he stated.

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

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and Finland, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is not removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points remain linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can power our cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is that this could expand," says Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode