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In Sweden, approximately seventy car technicians continue to confront one of the world's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the American automaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has now reached its second anniversary, with minimal sign of a settlement.

One striking worker has remained at the electric car company's protest line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a difficult period," states the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to grow more challenging.

The mechanic devotes each Monday alongside a fellow worker, standing near an electric vehicle service center on a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter via a mobile builders' van, plus hot beverages & light meals.

However it's business as usual nearby, at which the workshop appears to operate in full swing.

The strike concerns a matter that goes to the core of Swedish labor traditions – the right of trade unions to bargain for pay and working terms representing their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's workers belong of a trade union, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to bargain directly with the unions and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However Tesla has upset established practices. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just disapprove of anything which creates a kind of hierarchical situation," he told an audience at an event last year. "I think labor groups try to generate conflict within businesses."

The automaker came to Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and IF Metall has for years sought to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they did not respond," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "And we got the belief that they tried to hide away or not discuss this with us."

She states the union eventually saw no other option than to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to make a warning," comments the union leader. "Employers usually signs the contract."

But not in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, began employment for Tesla several years ago. He claims that pay and conditions were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he states he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds he was "not reaching Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to be turned down for increased compensation because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. The company employed approximately 130 technicians working at the time the industrial action was called. The union says that today around seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted these with new workers, a situation there is not occurred since the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, this being important to understand. However it violates all traditional practices. But the company shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to become convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they perceive that as praise."

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

In fact, the company has given only one media interview in the two years since the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", the executive, told a business paper that it suited the company better not to have a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and give them optimal terms".

The executive denied that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take independent such decisions," he stated.

The union is not completely alone in its fight. This industrial action has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries and Finland, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; waste is not removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points are not being connected to the grid across the nation.

Exists an example close to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

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

With stakes high on both sides, it is difficult to envision an end to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

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