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Across Sweden, around 70 car mechanics persist to challenge one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – Tesla. This industrial action targeting the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian repair facilities has now entered two years of duration, with little indication of a settlement.

One striking worker has remained at the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

"It's a difficult period," states the 39-year-old. With Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic spends every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, standing near an electric vehicle service center on a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, supplies shelter via a mobile construction vehicle, as well as hot beverages & sandwiches.

But it remains business as usual nearby, where the workshop appears to be in full swing.

The strike concerns a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right of trade unions to negotiate pay & working terms on behalf of their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations across the nation for almost one hundred years.

Currently some seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers belong of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We prefer the right to bargain directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken CEO the company leader has said he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just don't like anything which creates a sort of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners at an event in 2023. "In my view labor groups try to generate negativity in a company."

The automaker came to Sweden starting in 2014, and IF Metall has long sought to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they did not reply," states Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "And we got the belief that they attempted to avoid or not discuss the matter with our representatives."

She says the organization ultimately found no other option than to call a strike, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Typically the threat suffices to issue a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company usually signs the contract."

However not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, started working for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay & conditions were often dependent on the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was refused an annual pay rise on grounds he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". At the same time, a colleague was reported to be turned down for increased compensation due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers participated on strike. Tesla had some 130 mechanics working when the strike was initiated. IF Metall states currently approximately 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted these with new workers, a situation there is no precedent since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly & systematically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not illegal, which is crucial to recognize. But it violates all established norms. But Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if somebody tells them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they perceive this as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused requests for interview via correspondence citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has granted only one media interview during the entire period since the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a financial publication that it suited the company better to avoid a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and give them the best possible terms".

The executive rejected that the choice to avoid a labor contract was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have authorization to make our own such decisions," he said.

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

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and Finland, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed charging stations remain linked to the grid across the nation.

There is an example near the capital's airport, at which twenty chargers remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, states vehicle owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station six miles from this location," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the stand-off. The union risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is that this could expand," says the researcher, "and eventually {erode