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In Sweden, around 70 car technicians continue to challenge among the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action at the US automaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached its second anniversary, with minimal indication of a resolution.

One striking worker has been on the electric car company's picket line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a tough period," states the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to become more challenging.

The mechanic spends every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, standing near an electric vehicle service center within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies accommodation in the form of a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it remains business as usual across the road, where the service facility appears to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to bargain for wages and working terms on behalf of their members. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's employees are members of a trade union, while ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement which creates a kind of lords and peasants situation," he informed listeners in New York last year. "In my view labor groups try to generate conflict in a company."

The automaker entered Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they wouldn't reply," says the union president, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to hide away or not discuss this with our representatives."

She says the organization ultimately found no alternative except to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Usually it's enough to make a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

However not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that pay & conditions were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review at which he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been rejected for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated in the industrial action. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty technicians working when the strike was initiated. The union states currently approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since replaced these with new workers, a situation that has no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," states a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, this being crucial to recognize. However it violates all established norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They aim to become convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they perceive this as praise."

The company's local division declined attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

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

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a business paper that it suited the organization more not to have a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and give them the best possible terms".

The executive denied that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take independent such choices," he said.

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

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to handle Teslas; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points remain linked to the grid across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty chargers remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall risks setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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