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Across Sweden, around seventy car mechanics continue to challenge among the globe's richest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This labor strike targeting the US carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has now entered two years of duration, with minimal indication of a resolution.

One striking worker has remained at the Tesla protest line since October 2023.

"It's a tough period," remarks the 39-year-old. With Sweden's chilly winter weather sets in, it is expected to grow more challenging.

Janis spends every start of the week with a fellow worker, standing outside an electric vehicle service center within a business district located in southern Sweden. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides accommodation via a portable construction vehicle, as well as coffee and light meals.

However it remains business as usual across the road, where the service facility appears to operate in full swing.

This industrial action concerns a matter that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right of trade unions to bargain for pay & working terms on behalf of their workforce. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics across the nation for nearly one hundred years.

Today approximately 70% of Swedish workers belong to labor organizations, while 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation are rare.

It's a system welcomed by all parties. "We favor the ability to bargain freely with the unions and establish collective agreements," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses employer group.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply don't like any arrangement which creates a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience in New York in 2023. "In my view labor groups try to generate conflict in a company."

Tesla entered Sweden starting in 2014, and the metalworkers' union has long wanted to secure a labor contract with the company.

"But they did not reply," states Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "We formed the impression that they tried to avoid or not discuss this with our representatives."

She says the organization eventually found no other option than to call industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," comments Ms Nilsson. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

However not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, originally from Latvia, started working for Tesla several years ago. He claims that pay and conditions were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he says he was denied an annual pay rise because he was "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to be turned down for increased compensation because he had the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers participated in the industrial action. The company employed some 130 mechanics working when the industrial action was called. IF Metall says currently approximately seventy of its members are on strike.

Tesla has long since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation there is no precedent since the era of the 1930s.

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

"It is not against the law, this being important to understand. But it violates all traditional norms. But Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

"They want to become convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they see this as a compliment."

The company's Swedish subsidiary refused attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

Indeed, the automaker has granted just a single media interview during the entire period since the industrial action began.

In March 2024, the local division's "country lead", Jens Stark, informed a financial publication that it benefited the company better not to have a union contract, and rather "to work closely with employees and give workers optimal terms".

The executive denied that the choice not to enter a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses authorization to take independent such decisions," he said.

The union is not entirely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has been supported from several of labor organizations.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Norway and Finland, decline to process Teslas; rubbish is not removed from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed power points are not being linked to the grid across the nation.

There is an example close to the capital's airport, at which 20 charging units remain unused. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's another charging station 10km from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can maintain our vehicles, we can charge our cars."

With stakes high on both sides, it is difficult to envision an end to the deadlock. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern should it surrender the principle of collective agreement.

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