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Across Sweden, around 70 car technicians continue to confront among the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike at the US carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached two years of duration, with minimal indication for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been at the Tesla picket line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," remarks the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to grow more challenging.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, standing outside an electric vehicle garage on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, plus hot beverages & light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the service facility seems to be at full capacity.

The strike concerns an issue that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for wages and conditions representing their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported labor dynamics across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Today approximately 70% of Swedish employees belong of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is a system welcomed across the board. "We favor the right to bargain freely with the unions and sign collective agreements," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of anything which creates a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told an audience at an event in 2023. "I think the unions try to generate conflict in a company."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the organization's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She states the union eventually saw no other option except to call industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," comments the union leader. "The company typically signs the agreement."

But this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages & work terms were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he states he was denied an annual pay rise because he was "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a colleague was said to have been turned down for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers went out on strike. The company had some 130 technicians employed at the time the strike was initiated. The union says that today approximately 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has since substituted these with new workers, for which that has not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," states German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, this being important to recognize. But it violates all traditional norms. Yet Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They aim to become convention challengers. Thus when somebody informs them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see this as praise."

The automaker's local division refused requests for comment via correspondence citing "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the company has given only one press discussion during the entire period after the strike started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", the executive, told a business paper that it suited the company better 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 to avoid a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to make our own such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has received backing from several of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & Finland, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points remain linked to the grid in the country.

There is an example close to the capital's airport, at which twenty charging units remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station 10km from here," he says. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it is difficult to see an end to the deadlock. The union risks setting a precedent should it surrender the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is how that would spread," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode