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In Sweden, approximately seventy automotive technicians continue to challenge one of the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the US automaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has currently reached its second anniversary, and there is minimal sign of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has remained at the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

"It's a tough time," remarks the 39-year-old. With Sweden's cold winter weather arrives, it's likely to grow more challenging.

Janis devotes each Monday with a colleague, positioned near an electric vehicle service center within an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter in the form of a portable builders' van, as well as coffee & sandwiches.

However it's operations continue normally nearby, where the workshop appears to be in full swing.

The strike involves a matter that goes to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for pay and conditions representing their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for almost a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, while ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is a system supported across the board. "We favor the ability to bargain directly with the unions and sign collective agreements," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However Tesla has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners at an event in 2023. "In my view the unions try to generate conflict in a company."

The automaker came to Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has long wanted to establish a labor contract with the company.

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

She says the organization eventually found no alternative except to announce a strike, beginning in late October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to issue a warning," comments the union leader. "Employers usually agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, originally of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker in 2021. He claims that wages & work terms frequently dependent on the discretion of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he states he was denied an annual pay rise because he was "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a coworker was reported to have been rejected for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers went out on strike. Tesla had approximately one hundred thirty technicians working when the industrial action was initiated. The union says that today around 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with new workers, for which there is not occurred since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, this being important to recognize. But it violates all established norms. But Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to become norm breakers. So if anyone tells them, listen, you are breaking a standard, they see that as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused requests for comment in an email citing "all-time high deliveries".

Indeed, the company has given only one media interview in the two years after the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a business paper that it benefited the organization better not to have a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with employees and provide workers the best possible terms".

The executive denied that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was determined by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take independent such decisions," he said.

The union is not completely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway and Finland, decline to handle Teslas; waste is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points are not being linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty charging units stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it is difficult to see a resolution to the stand-off. IF Metall risks setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that this could expand," says Mr Bender, "and ultimately {erode