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Across Sweden, around 70 automotive technicians continue to challenge among the world's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action at the American automaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has now reached two years of duration, with minimal sign for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been at the electric car company's protest line starting from October 2023.

"It's a tough period," states the 39-year-old. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to become even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week with a colleague, standing outside an electric vehicle garage within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides shelter in the form of a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee & sandwiches.

But it's operations continue normally across the road, where the workshop seems to be in full swing.

The strike involves an issue that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay and conditions representing their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Currently some seventy percent of Swedish workers belong to labor organizations, and 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of anything which creates a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told an audience at an event last year. "I think the unions try to create conflict within businesses."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they did not respond," says Marie Nilsson, the union's leader. "And we got the belief that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing the matter with us."

She says the organization ultimately saw no alternative than to call industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the contract."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that pay & work terms frequently subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he states he was denied a salary increase because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation because having the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company employed some one hundred thirty technicians working when the industrial action was called. IF Metall says that today around 70 of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since substituted these with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the Great Depression.

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

"It's not against the law, this being important to recognize. But it violates all established norms. Yet the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to be norm breakers. Thus when somebody tells them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they see that as praise."

The automaker's local division declined requests for interview via correspondence citing "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has given only one press discussion in the two years after the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with employees and give them the best possible terms".

The executive denied that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was determined by US leadership in the US. "We have a mandate to make our own such choices," he stated.

The union is not completely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and Finland, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points are not being connected to the grid across the nation.

There is an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty chargers remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it's hard to envision an end to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

"The concern is that this could expand," says the researcher, "and ultimately {erode