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Across Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics persist to challenge among the world's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This labor strike at the US automaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has currently entered its second anniversary, with minimal indication for a settlement.

One striking worker has been on the electric car company's protest line since the autumn of 2023.

"It has been a tough period," states the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week alongside a colleague, standing outside a Tesla garage within a business district in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a portable construction vehicle, plus hot beverages & light meals.

But it's operations continue normally nearby, where the service facility seems to be in full swing.

The strike involves an issue that reaches to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority for worker organizations to bargain for pay & working terms representing their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today some 70% of Swedish workers belong of a trade union, while ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation are rare.

This is a system welcomed across the board. "We favor the right to bargain freely with the unions and sign labor contracts," says Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Vocal chief executive Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply don't like anything which creates a kind of hierarchical situation," he informed an audience at an event in 2023. "I think the unions attempt to generate negativity in a company."

The automaker entered Sweden starting in 2014, and IF Metall has long sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"But they did not respond," states the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or evade discussing this with us."

She states the organization ultimately found no alternative except to call industrial action, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to issue the threat," says the union leader. "Employers usually signs the agreement."

However this did not happen on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, started working with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages and work terms frequently dependent on the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he says he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds he was "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to have been turned down for a pay rise because having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers went out in the industrial action. Tesla employed some 130 technicians working at the time the industrial action was initiated. The union says that today approximately 70 of its members are on strike.

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

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," says German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

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

"They aim to be norm breakers. So if somebody tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined attempts for interview in an email mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the company has granted only one press discussion during the entire period since the strike began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a financial publication that it suited the company better to avoid a union contract, and instead "to work closely with employees and give them optimal terms".

Mr Stark denied that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was determined by US leadership in the US. "We have authorization to make independent such decisions," he said.

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

Port workers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Norway & neighboring states, decline to process Teslas; waste is not collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; while newly built power points are not being connected to the grid in the country.

Exists one such facility near the capital's airport, where 20 charging units stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station six miles from here," he comments. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can power our cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it is difficult to see an end to the deadlock. IF Metall risks setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that that would spread," states the researcher, "and ultimately {erode