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In Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics continue to challenge one of the world's richest companies – Tesla. This industrial action targeting the US automaker's ten Swedish service centers has currently reached two years of duration, and there is minimal indication of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been at the Tesla picket line since October 2023.

"It has been a tough time," states the worker in his late thirties. With the nation's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to grow even tougher.

The mechanic spends each Monday with a colleague, positioned outside a Tesla service center within an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides shelter via a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it remains operations continue normally nearby, where the workshop seems to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right for worker organizations to bargain for wages and working terms on behalf of their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has supported industrial relations across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish workers are members to labor organizations, and 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's a system supported across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However the electric car company has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York last year. "In my view labor groups attempt to create conflict within businesses."

The automaker entered Sweden back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has long wanted to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they did not respond," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "We formed the belief that they attempted to avoid or not discuss the matter with us."

She says the organization eventually found no other option except to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages and conditions frequently dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review where he states he was refused a salary increase because he was "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been rejected for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, not everyone participated in the industrial action. The company had approximately 130 mechanics employed at the time the strike was called. IF Metall says that today approximately seventy of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted these with replacement staff, for which there is no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," says German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, which is important to recognize. But it goes against all established norms. But Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to be convention challengers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are violating a norm, they perceive this as a compliment."

The automaker's local division declined requests for comment via correspondence citing "all-time high deliveries".

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

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", the executive, told a financial publication that it suited the organization more to avoid a union contract, and instead "to work closely with the team and provide workers optimal terms".

The executive denied that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take our own such decisions," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in this conflict. The strike has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Port workers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway & neighboring states, are refusing to process Teslas; rubbish is no longer removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed power points remain connected to power networks in the country.

There is one such facility close to the capital's airport, where twenty charging units stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the leader of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from here," he says. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent should it surrender the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is that this could expand," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode