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Across Sweden, approximately 70 car technicians continue to challenge one of the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action at the US carmaker's 10 Swedish service centers has now entered its second anniversary, with little indication of a settlement.

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

"It has been a tough time," states the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold winter weather arrives, it's likely to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla service center on an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides shelter via a portable construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages and sandwiches.

However it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the service facility appears to be in full swing.

The strike involves an issue that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay and working terms on behalf of their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Today some 70% of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, and 90% fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is a system supported across the board. "We prefer the ability to negotiate directly with the unions and establish collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But the electric car company has upset the apple cart. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything which creates a sort of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups try to create negativity in a company."

The automaker entered the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has long wanted to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," states the union president, the union's president. "We formed the belief that they attempted to avoid or not discuss the matter with us."

She says the union ultimately saw no alternative except to call industrial action, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to issue a warning," comments the union leader. "The company usually signs the contract."

But this did not happen on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay and conditions were often subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls a performance review where he says he was refused an annual pay rise because he was "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to be rejected for a pay rise because having the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone went out on strike. Tesla had some one hundred thirty mechanics employed at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently approximately seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since substituted the striking workers with new workers, a situation that has no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & methodically," says German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

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

"They aim to become norm breakers. Thus when anyone informs them, hey, you are violating a standard, they see that as praise."

The automaker's local division refused requests for comment via correspondence citing "record deliveries".

Indeed, the company has given only one media interview in the two years since the strike began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the company more not to have a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and provide them optimal terms".

The executive rejected that the choice not to enter a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make independent such decisions," he stated.

The union is not completely isolated in this conflict. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Norway and neighboring states, are refusing to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is not collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and newly built power points are not being linked to power networks in the country.

There is one such facility close to the capital's airport, at which 20 charging units remain unused. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can power our cars."

With consequences significant on both sides, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. The union risks setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The worry is how that would spread," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode