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In Sweden, around seventy automotive mechanics continue to confront among the globe's richest companies – Tesla. This labor strike targeting the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has now reached its second anniversary, and there is little indication for a settlement.

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

"It's a tough period," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become more challenging.

The mechanic spends each Monday with a fellow worker, positioned outside a Tesla service center on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a portable builders' van, plus coffee & sandwiches.

But it's business as usual across the road, where the service facility seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that reaches to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to negotiate wages and conditions representing their members. This concept of collective agreement has supported industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Today approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, while 90% are covered under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's a system welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But Tesla has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like any arrangement which creates a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "I think labor groups try to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla entered Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has for years wanted to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the union's president. "And we got the impression that they attempted to hide away or not discuss this with us."

She states the union ultimately saw no alternative except to call industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, started working with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay and conditions were often dependent on the discretion of managers.

He remembers a performance review at which he says he was denied an annual pay rise because he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a colleague was reported to be rejected for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out on strike. The company had approximately 130 technicians working at the time the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall states that today approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

The automaker has since replaced the striking workers with new workers, for which there is no precedent since the Great Depression.

"Tesla 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 illegal, this being crucial to understand. However it violates all traditional norms. But Tesla shows no concern for conventions.

"They aim to become convention challengers. So if somebody informs them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see this as a compliment."

The automaker's local division refused attempts for interview in an email citing "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has granted only one press discussion during the entire period since the industrial action started.

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

Mr Stark rejected that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was determined by US leadership overseas. "We have a mandate to make independent such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Norway and neighboring states, are refusing to handle Teslas; waste is not removed from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while newly built power points remain connected to power networks across the nation.

Exists one such facility close to the capital's airport, at which twenty charging units remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station 10km from this location," he says. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our vehicles, we can power our cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it is difficult to envision an end to the stand-off. The union risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

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