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Across Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics persist to confront among the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action at the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached two years of duration, and there is minimal sign of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been on the electric car company's picket line since the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult period," remarks the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to become more challenging.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a colleague, standing near a Tesla garage within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

However it remains operations continue normally nearby, at which the service facility appears to be in full swing.

The strike concerns an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to bargain for wages & working terms representing their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's workers belong of a trade union, and 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is a system supported by all parties. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement which creates a kind of lords and peasants situation," he informed an audience at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups attempt to generate conflict in a company."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market starting in 2014, while IF Metall has for years wanted to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"But they did not respond," states the union president, the organization's president. "We formed the impression that they tried to avoid or evade discussing the matter with our representatives."

She states the union ultimately saw no other option than to announce industrial action, which started in late October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually agrees to the agreement."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that wages & conditions were often dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was refused an annual pay rise because that he "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was reported to be turned down for increased compensation due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out in the industrial action. Tesla had approximately 130 mechanics employed at the time the strike was called. IF Metall states currently around seventy of its members are on strike.

The automaker has since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which there is no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, which is important to understand. But it violates all established norms. Yet Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to become norm breakers. So if anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see that as praise."

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

In fact, the automaker has given only one press discussion in the two years after the strike began.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, told a business paper that it benefited the company more not to have a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and provide workers optimal conditions".

The executive denied that the choice not to enter a labor contract was determined by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such choices," he said.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. The strike has been supported by a number of other unions.

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and neighboring states, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is not removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while recently constructed power points remain connected to power networks across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall risks setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that that would spread," says Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode