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Across Sweden, approximately 70 car mechanics continue to challenge one of the world's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This industrial action at the US automaker's ten Swedish repair facilities has now reached two years of duration, and there is little indication for a settlement.

One striking worker has been on the Tesla picket line starting from October 2023.

"It's a difficult period," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to become even tougher.

Janis devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned outside an electric vehicle service center on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation via a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages and light meals.

But it's operations continue normally nearby, where the service facility appears to operate at full capacity.

The strike concerns a matter that reaches to the heart of Swedish labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate wages & working terms on behalf of their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for almost one hundred years.

Currently approximately 70% of Scandinavia's workers belong of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

This is a system supported by all parties. "We prefer the right to bargain freely with the unions and establish labor contracts," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he told an audience at an event last year. "In my view labor groups try to create negativity in a company."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has long wanted to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"But they wouldn't reply," states the union president, the organization's president. "We formed the belief that they tried to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She says the organization ultimately found no alternative except to announce a strike, beginning in late October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the contract."

However not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that pay and work terms frequently dependent on the discretion of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he states he was denied a salary increase on grounds he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was said to be rejected for a pay rise due to having the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers participated on strike. The company had some 130 technicians working at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall states that today approximately seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

The automaker has since replaced these with replacement staff, for which that has not occurred since the era of the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," says German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, which is crucial to understand. However it goes against all traditional practices. But the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to become convention challengers. Thus when anyone informs them, listen, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as a compliment."

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

Indeed, the company has granted just a single media interview in the two years since the strike began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", the executive, told a business paper that it suited the organization more to avoid a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and provide them optimal terms".

Mr Stark denied that the decision to avoid a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have authorization to take our own such decisions," he said.

The union is not completely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported by a number of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries and Finland, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while newly built charging stations remain connected to the grid across the nation.

There is an example near the capital's airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can power our cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that that would spread," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode