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Across Sweden, around seventy car mechanics continue to confront one of the world's richest companies – Tesla. This industrial action at the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently reached two years of duration, with minimal sign of a resolution.

One striking worker has been at the electric car company's picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult time," states the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to become more challenging.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla garage on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides shelter in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, plus coffee & light meals.

But it remains business as usual nearby, at which the service facility seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action concerns a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for pay & working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported industrial relations across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Currently some seventy percent of Scandinavia's employees belong of a trade union, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's a system supported by all parties. "We prefer the ability to bargain directly with the unions and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups attempt to generate conflict in a company."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market back in 2014, while IF Metall has for years wanted to secure a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," states the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the impression that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She says the organization eventually found no other option except to announce industrial action, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," says the union leader. "Employers typically signs the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that wages and work terms were often dependent on the discretion of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to have been rejected for a pay rise because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company had some 130 technicians employed when the industrial action was called. The union says that today approximately seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation that has no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," says German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, this being crucial to understand. But it violates all traditional norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to become norm breakers. So if anyone informs them, hey, you are violating a norm, they see that as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused 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 industrial action started.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it suited the company better not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers the best possible terms".

The executive denied that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have authorization to take independent such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in its fight. The strike has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and neighboring states, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations remain connected to power networks across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to the capital's airport, where twenty chargers remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can power our cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it is difficult to see an end to the deadlock. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

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