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Across Sweden, approximately seventy car mechanics continue to confront among the globe's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike at the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has now entered its second anniversary, with minimal sign of a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been on the Tesla protest line since October 2023.

"It's a tough period," states the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it is expected to become even tougher.

Janis spends each Monday with a colleague, standing near an electric vehicle service center within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile construction vehicle, plus hot beverages & light meals.

But it's operations continue normally nearby, at which the workshop appears to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves a matter that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate wages and conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish workers belong of a trade union, while 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

This is a system welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to bargain directly with the unions and sign labor contracts," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners at an event in 2023. "In my view labor groups try to generate conflict in a company."

Tesla came to Sweden back in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has long wanted to secure a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they did not reply," says Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "We formed the impression that they tried to avoid or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She states the organization ultimately saw no alternative than to announce a strike, beginning on 27 October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

However not in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions were often subject to the discretion of managers.

He remembers a performance review where he states he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for increased compensation because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone went out on strike. Tesla employed some 130 mechanics working at the time the industrial action was called. The union says currently around 70 of its members are on strike.

The automaker has since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, this being important to understand. But it violates all traditional practices. But Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. So if anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see that as a compliment."

The company's local division refused attempts for comment in an email mentioning "record deliveries".

Indeed, the company has given just a single press discussion during the entire period after the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it benefited the company more not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with employees and give workers the best possible terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice to avoid a labor contract was determined by US leadership in the US. "We have authorization to make our own such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has been supported by a number of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, decline to process the company's vehicles; waste is no longer removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed power points are not being linked to power networks in the country.

Exists an example near the capital's airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from here," he says. "And we can still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

"The worry is how that would spread," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode