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Across Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics persist to challenge one of the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike at the US automaker's ten Scandinavian service centers has currently reached its second anniversary, and there is minimal sign for a resolution.

One striking worker has remained at the electric car company's protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it's likely to grow more challenging.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a colleague, standing outside an electric vehicle garage on a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, provides accommodation in the form of a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee & sandwiches.

However it's business as usual across the road, where the workshop seems to be in full swing.

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay & working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Currently some 70% of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to bargain directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted established practices. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience in New York last year. "I think the unions attempt to create conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to establish a labor contract with the company.

"But they wouldn't respond," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "We formed the impression that they tried to avoid or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She says the union eventually found no alternative than to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay and conditions were often subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review where he says he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to be rejected for a pay rise because having the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone went out on strike. Tesla employed some one hundred thirty technicians employed at the time the industrial action was called. The union says that today around 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has since replaced these with new workers, for which there is no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, this being crucial to recognize. However it violates all traditional practices. Yet Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They want to be norm breakers. So if somebody informs them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see that as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for interview in an email mentioning "all-time high deliveries".

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

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", the executive, informed a financial publication that it suited the company better to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and provide them optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was determined by US leadership in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to take our own such choices," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported from several of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries and neighboring states, decline to process Teslas; rubbish is not removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to the grid across the nation.

There is an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which twenty charging units stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it's hard to see a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is how that would spread," states the researcher, "and ultimately {erode