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Across Sweden, around 70 car mechanics persist to challenge one of the world's richest companies – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The labor strike targeting the US carmaker's 10 Scandinavian service centers has now entered its second anniversary, with minimal indication for a resolution.

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

"It's a difficult time," states the worker in his late thirties. With Sweden's chilly winter weather sets in, it is expected to become more challenging.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week alongside a fellow worker, standing near an electric vehicle service center on an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, IF Metall, provides accommodation via a portable construction vehicle, plus coffee and sandwiches.

But it remains business as usual nearby, at which the workshop seems to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action concerns a matter that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the right of trade unions to bargain for pay and working terms representing their workforce. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has supported industrial relations in Sweden for nearly a century.

Currently some seventy percent of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, while 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

This is a system welcomed by all parties. "We favor the right to bargain freely with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," says a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

However Tesla has disrupted established practices. Vocal CEO the company leader has stated he "opposes" with the concept of unions. "I simply disapprove of any arrangement that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed an audience at an event in 2023. "In my view labor groups attempt to generate negativity in a company."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market back in 2014, and IF Metall has for years wanted to establish a labor contract with the automaker.

"Yet they did not reply," states the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the belief that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She states the union eventually found no alternative than to call industrial action, beginning in late October, last year. "Typically it's enough to make a warning," comments the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

However not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, began employment with the automaker several years ago. He claims that pay & work terms frequently subject to the discretion of supervisors.

He recalls a performance review where he says he was denied a salary increase because he was "not reaching company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to have been turned down for increased compensation because having the "wrong attitude".

However, some workers went out in the industrial action. The company had approximately 130 mechanics employed when the strike was called. The union states that today approximately 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has long since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, for which that has no precedent since the Great Depression.

"The company has accomplished this [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," states German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a policy organization supported by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not illegal, this being important to recognize. However it goes against all established norms. But the company doesn't care about norms.

"They want to be convention challengers. So if anyone informs them, hey, you are breaking a standard, they see that as a compliment."

The automaker's local division declined attempts for comment via correspondence mentioning "record deliveries".

Indeed, the automaker has given only one press discussion in the two years after the strike began.

In March 2024, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a financial publication that it suited the organization more not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to work closely with employees and give workers the best possible terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice to avoid a collective agreement was determined at Tesla headquarters overseas. "We have a mandate to make independent such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in neighbouring Denmark, Norway and Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; waste is no longer collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed power points are not being linked to power networks across the nation.

Exists an example close to the capital's airport, at which 20 chargers stand idle. But Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from this location," he says. "And we can continue to buy our cars, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences high for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the stand-off. The union risks setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of collective agreement.

"The worry is that this could expand," states the researcher, "and ultimately {erode