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In Sweden, around seventy car technicians continue to confront one of the world's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the US carmaker's ten Swedish service centers has now entered its second anniversary, with minimal indication of a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been at the electric car company's protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a tough period," remarks the 39-year-old. And as the nation's chilly seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

The mechanic spends each Monday alongside a colleague, standing outside a Tesla garage on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, supplies accommodation via a mobile builders' van, plus coffee & sandwiches.

But it remains operations continue normally nearby, where the service facility appears to be at full capacity.

The strike concerns an issue that reaches to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to negotiate pay and conditions on behalf of their workforce. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Currently some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers belong to labor organizations, while 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

It's a system supported by all parties. "We prefer the ability to negotiate freely with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But Tesla has upset established practices. Vocal CEO the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement which creates a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed listeners in New York in 2023. "In my view the unions attempt to generate negativity in a company."

The automaker came to Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has long sought to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"But they did not respond," says the union president, the organization's leader. "And we got the impression that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She states the union ultimately saw no alternative except to call a strike, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to make a warning," says Ms Nilsson. "The company usually signs the contract."

But not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, began employment for Tesla several years ago. He claims that wages and work terms were often subject to the whim of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review at which he states he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "not reaching Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was reported to be rejected for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. The company had approximately 130 technicians employed at the time the industrial action was called. The union states that today approximately 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation that has no precedent since the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, this being crucial to recognize. However it violates all established practices. But Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They aim to become convention challengers. Thus when anyone informs them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they see this as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused requests for comment in an email citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has given just a single media interview in the two years after the strike began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it suited the company more to avoid a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and give workers optimal conditions".

The executive denied that the decision to avoid a labor contract was determined by US leadership overseas. "We have authorization to make our own such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in its fight. The strike has been supported by a number of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to handle Teslas; rubbish is no longer collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points remain connected to the grid in the country.

There is an example close to the capital's airport, at which twenty charging units stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from this location," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can power our electric cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is that this could expand," states the researcher, "and ultimately {erode