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In Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics persist to challenge one of the world's richest companies – Tesla. The industrial action at the US carmaker's 10 Swedish service centers has currently entered two years of duration, with minimal sign for a resolution.

Janis Kuzma has been at the electric car company's picket line since the autumn of 2023.

"It's a difficult period," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's cold seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to become more challenging.

Janis spends each Monday alongside a colleague, standing outside a Tesla garage on a business district in Malmö. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation in the form of a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee & sandwiches.

However it remains business as usual nearby, at which the workshop appears to operate in full swing.

This industrial action involves an issue that goes to the heart of Swedish industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to negotiate wages & working terms representing their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Currently approximately seventy percent of Scandinavia's workers are members of a trade union, while ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

It's a system welcomed across the board. "We prefer the ability to bargain freely with the unions and establish collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Businesses employer group.

However Tesla has upset established practices. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of labor organizations. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement which creates a sort of lords and peasants sort of thing," he told listeners at an event last year. "I think labor groups try to generate negativity in a company."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, while IF Metall has for years wanted to establish a labor contract with the company.

"Yet they did not reply," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "And we got the impression that they attempted to hide away or not discuss the matter with us."

She says the union ultimately found no other option except to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to make a warning," comments Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the contract."

But not in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, began employment for Tesla in 2021. He claims that pay and work terms frequently subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he says he was denied an annual pay rise because that he "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a colleague was said to have been rejected for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone participated on strike. Tesla had some 130 mechanics working when the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall states that today around 70 of its members are participating in the action.

Tesla has long since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

"Tesla has accomplished this [found replacement staff] publicly and methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It is not against the law, which is important to understand. However it violates all traditional practices. Yet the company doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to become norm breakers. So if somebody informs them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they perceive that as a compliment."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary refused requests for interview in an email citing "all-time high vehicle shipments".

In fact, the company has given only one media interview in the two years since the strike started.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the company better to avoid a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and give workers optimal conditions".

The executive rejected that the decision not to enter a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take independent such choices," he stated.

The union is not completely isolated in its fight. The strike has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is not collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while recently constructed charging stations are not being linked to the grid across the nation.

There is an example close to the capital's airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There exists an alternative power point six miles from here," he says. "And we can still buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With stakes significant on both sides, it's hard to envision a resolution 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 eventually {erode