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Across Sweden, around seventy car technicians continue to challenge among the world's wealthiest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the US automaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now reached its second anniversary, with little indication of a resolution.

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

"It's a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to become more challenging.

The mechanic spends every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, standing outside an electric vehicle service center on a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation via a mobile builders' van, plus coffee and light meals.

However it's business as usual across the road, at which the service facility appears to operate in full swing.

The strike concerns a matter that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for pay and working terms representing their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics across the nation for almost a century.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Swedish workers belong of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

It's a system welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain directly with the unions and establish labor contracts," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement which creates a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience at an event in 2023. "I think the unions try to generate conflict in a company."

The automaker came to Sweden back in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has long wanted to secure a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," states the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the belief that they attempted to avoid or evade discussing this with us."

She states the union ultimately found no alternative than to call industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," comments the union leader. "The company usually signs the contract."

However not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay & work terms frequently subject to the discretion of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he says he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds that he "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for a pay rise because having the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers participated on strike. Tesla employed approximately 130 mechanics employed when the strike was initiated. IF Metall states currently approximately 70 of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation that has no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, this being important to understand. But it goes against all established norms. But the company doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be norm breakers. So if somebody tells them, listen, you are violating a norm, they perceive this as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for interview in an email mentioning "record deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has given just a single media interview in the two years since the strike began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it benefited the company better not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide workers optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such decisions," he stated.

The union is not entirely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing by a number of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, decline to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations remain connected to the grid in the country.

There is one such facility close to the capital's airport, at which twenty charging units stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from here," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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