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Across Sweden, around 70 car technicians persist to confront one of the world's richest companies – Tesla. The labor strike targeting the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has currently reached two years of duration, and there is minimal indication of a resolution.

One striking worker has been at the Tesla protest line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a tough period," states the 39-year-old. And as the nation's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become more challenging.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a colleague, standing outside a Tesla garage within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation in the form of a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee and sandwiches.

However it's operations continue normally across the road, where the workshop seems to operate at full capacity.

The strike involves a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right of trade unions to negotiate pay & conditions on behalf of their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Swedish employees are members of a trade union, while 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We prefer the ability to bargain directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But the electric car company has upset established practices. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners in New York last year. "In my view labor groups try to create negativity in a company."

The automaker entered Sweden starting in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has long wanted to secure a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they did not respond," states the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the belief that they attempted to hide away or not discuss the matter with us."

She states the organization ultimately saw no alternative than to announce a strike, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," comments the union leader. "The company usually signs the agreement."

However this did not happen in this case.

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

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused a salary increase because that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a coworker was said to be rejected for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone went out in the industrial action. The company employed some 130 mechanics employed when the industrial action was called. IF Metall states that today around 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which there is not occurred since the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and systematically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, which is important to recognize. However it goes against all traditional norms. Yet the company doesn't care about norms.

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they see that as a compliment."

The company's local division refused attempts for interview in an email citing "all-time high deliveries".

In fact, the automaker has given just a single press discussion in the two years since the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it suited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with the team and give them optimal terms".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have authorization to take our own such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has been supported from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Norway and Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; and recently constructed power points remain linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, where 20 charging units stand idle. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

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