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Across Sweden, approximately 70 car technicians persist to confront one of the world's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike at the US carmaker's 10 Swedish service centers has currently reached two years of duration, with little sign of a settlement.

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

"It has been a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's chilly winter weather arrives, it's likely to become more challenging.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a colleague, standing outside a Tesla garage within a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages & sandwiches.

But it remains business as usual nearby, at which the service facility seems to operate in full swing.

The strike involves an issue that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to bargain for wages & working terms on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Currently approximately 70% of Swedish workers are members to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement supported across the board. "We favor the ability to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like anything which creates a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "In my view the unions try to create conflict in a company."

The automaker came to the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, and the metalworkers' union has for years wanted to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

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

She says the union ultimately found no alternative except to announce a strike, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," comments the union leader. "Employers usually signs the contract."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He asserts that pay and conditions frequently subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He remembers a performance review at which he says he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was said to have been turned down for a pay rise because he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers went out in the industrial action. The company had approximately one hundred thirty mechanics employed at the time the industrial action was called. The union states currently around seventy of its members are on strike.

The automaker has since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," states 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 understand. But it violates all established norms. But Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to be norm breakers. Thus when anyone tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as praise."

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

In fact, the automaker has granted just a single media interview in the two years after the strike started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it suited the organization better to avoid a union contract, and rather "to work closely with employees and give workers optimal conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice to avoid a labor contract was determined by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take independent such choices," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Norway and Finland, are refusing to process Teslas; waste is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while newly built power points are not being connected to power networks in the country.

There is an example close to the capital's airport, where twenty charging units remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from here," he comments. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it's hard to see an end to the stand-off. The union risks setting a precedent if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

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