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Across Sweden, around 70 automotive technicians persist to confront among the globe's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the American carmaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now entered two years of duration, with minimal sign for a settlement.

Janis Kuzma has been at the Tesla protest line since October 2023.

"It has been a tough period," states the 39-year-old. With the nation's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to become more challenging.

The mechanic spends every start of the week with a fellow worker, standing outside a Tesla service center on an industrial park in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies accommodation in the form of a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee & sandwiches.

However it remains business as usual across the road, at which the workshop appears to be in full swing.

The strike involves a matter that goes to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right of trade unions to bargain for pay & working terms on behalf of their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today some 70% of Scandinavia's workers belong to labor organizations, and 90% fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement welcomed across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," states Mattias Dahl of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "opposes" with the concept of labor organizations. "I just don't like any arrangement that establishes a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told an audience in New York last year. "In my view the unions attempt to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden starting in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has long sought to secure a collective agreement with the automaker.

"But they wouldn't respond," states Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "We formed the belief that they tried to hide away or not discuss this with our representatives."

She states the organization ultimately found no other option except to announce industrial action, which started in late October, 2023. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He claims that wages & work terms were often subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review at which he states he was refused a salary increase because he was "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a coworker was said to be rejected for a pay rise due to he had the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers went out on strike. The company had approximately 130 technicians working at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall states currently approximately seventy of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has since replaced these with new workers, for which that has no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," says a labor researcher, a researcher at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is important to understand. However it violates all established norms. But Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They aim to become convention challengers. Thus when somebody informs them, hey, you are breaking a norm, they perceive that as praise."

The automaker's local division declined requests for interview via correspondence mentioning "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has granted only one media interview in the two years after the strike began.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a business paper that it benefited the company better to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to collaborate directly with the team and give workers the best possible conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to make our own such choices," he stated.

The union is not completely alone in its fight. The strike has been supported by a number of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway & neighboring states, are refusing to process Teslas; waste is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; and newly built power points are not being connected to the grid across the nation.

There is one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, where twenty charging units stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from here," he says. "And we can still purchase vehicles, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it is difficult to see an end to the stand-off. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

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