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In Sweden, approximately 70 car technicians persist to confront one of the world's wealthiest companies – Tesla. This labor strike at the American carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has now reached two years of duration, and there is little indication of a resolution.

One striking worker has been at the electric car company's picket line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It's a tough time," remarks the 39-year-old. And as Sweden's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it's likely to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a colleague, positioned outside an electric vehicle garage within a business district in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter via a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages and light meals.

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

This industrial action concerns a matter that goes to the core of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right of trade unions to negotiate pay and working terms representing their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Today some seventy percent of Swedish workers belong of a trade union, and ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement supported across the board. "We prefer the ability to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish labor contracts," states Mattias Dahl from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However the electric car company has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the idea of unions. "I simply don't like any arrangement which creates a kind of lords and peasants situation," he told listeners at an event in 2023. "In my view the unions attempt to generate negativity within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden starting in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has long sought to establish a collective agreement with the company.

"Yet they wouldn't reply," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "We formed the belief that they attempted to hide away or not discuss this with our representatives."

She states the organization ultimately found no other option than to call industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Usually the threat suffices to make the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages and conditions were often subject to the whim of managers.

He remembers an evaluation meeting at which he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers went out on strike. The company had some 130 mechanics employed at the time the strike was initiated. IF Metall states currently around seventy of their represented workers are participating in the action.

Tesla has since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation there is no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly & systematically," says a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

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

"They want to become convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, hey, you are violating a norm, they see that as praise."

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

Indeed, the company has given just a single media interview in the two years after the industrial action started.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the company better not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with employees and give workers the best possible terms".

The executive denied that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was determined by US leadership in the US. "We have a mandate to take our own such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries & neighboring states, decline to process the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer removed from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations remain linked to power networks in the country.

Exists one such facility close to the capital's airport, where twenty charging units stand idle. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from here," he says. "Plus we are able to still purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can power our cars."

With stakes significant for all parties, it's hard to see an end to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is how this could expand," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode