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In Sweden, around 70 automotive mechanics persist to confront among the world's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. This industrial action at the American automaker's ten Swedish service centers has now reached its second anniversary, and there is little sign for a resolution.

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

"It's a difficult time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's cold seasonal conditions arrives, it is expected to become more challenging.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a colleague, positioned near an electric vehicle service center on an industrial park in Malmö. The labor organization, the Swedish metalworkers' union, provides accommodation in the form of a portable builders' van, plus hot beverages & sandwiches.

However it's business as usual nearby, where the workshop seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action concerns a matter that goes to the heart of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right of trade unions to negotiate pay & conditions on behalf of their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned labor dynamics across the nation for almost a century.

Today some 70% of Swedish employees belong to labor organizations, and 90% are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

This is an arrangement welcomed by all parties. "We favor the ability to negotiate freely with the unions and establish labor contracts," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But the electric car company has disrupted established practices. Outspoken chief executive Elon Musk has said he "disagrees" with the idea of labor organizations. "I simply don't like any arrangement that establishes a sort of lords and peasants situation," he informed an audience at an event last year. "In my view the unions try to generate negativity in a company."

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

"But they wouldn't respond," says the union president, the union's leader. "And we got the belief that they attempted to avoid or not discuss this with our representatives."

She states the organization eventually saw no alternative except to announce industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue a warning," says the union leader. "Employers typically agrees to the agreement."

But this did not happen in this case.

Janis Kuzma, who is of Latvian origin, started working with the automaker several years ago. He asserts that pay and work terms were often dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He recalls an evaluation meeting at which he states he was denied an annual pay rise because he was "not reaching company targets". At the same time, a colleague was said to have been turned down for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, some workers went out in the industrial action. The company employed approximately 130 technicians employed when the industrial action was initiated. IF Metall says that today around 70 of their represented workers are participating in the action.

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

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," states a labor researcher, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It's not against the law, which is important to understand. But it goes against all traditional norms. Yet Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to be norm breakers. So if anyone informs them, listen, you are violating a norm, they perceive this as praise."

The company's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for interview in an email mentioning "record deliveries".

In fact, the company has given just a single press discussion in the two years since the strike began.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it suited the organization better not to have a union contract, and rather "to collaborate directly with employees and provide them optimal terms".

Mr Stark rejected that the choice not to enter a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "We have a mandate to make independent such choices," he stated.

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

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & Finland, decline to process Teslas; waste is no longer collected from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while newly built charging stations remain linked to the grid in the country.

There is one such facility near the capital's airport, where 20 chargers stand idle. But a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group the Swedish Tesla association, says vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There exists another charging station 10km from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it's hard to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of collective agreement.

"The concern is that that would spread," states the researcher, "and ultimately {erode