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In Sweden, around 70 car mechanics persist to confront one of the globe's wealthiest corporations – the electric vehicle manufacturer. The industrial action targeting the US carmaker's 10 Swedish service centers has now entered its second anniversary, and there is little sign for a settlement.

One striking worker has remained on the electric car company's protest line since October 2023.

"It's a tough time," states the worker in his late thirties. And as Sweden's cold winter weather sets in, it's likely to grow more challenging.

The mechanic devotes every start of the week with a fellow worker, standing outside an electric vehicle service center on an industrial park located in southern Sweden. His union, IF Metall, supplies accommodation via a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages and light meals.

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

The strike involves an issue that reaches to the heart of Scandinavia's labor traditions – the authority of trade unions to bargain for wages and conditions on behalf of their workforce. This principle of collective agreement has supported industrial relations across the nation for almost a century.

Currently some 70% of Scandinavia's employees are members of a trade union, and ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Strikes across the nation occur infrequently.

It's an arrangement supported by all parties. "We favor the ability to bargain directly with worker representatives and sign collective agreements," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

But Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Vocal CEO Elon Musk has said he "opposes" with the idea of unions. "I just disapprove of any arrangement which creates a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he informed listeners at an event last year. "I think the unions try to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to the Scandinavian market back in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to establish a collective agreement with the automaker.

"Yet they wouldn't respond," states the union president, the union's leader. "We formed the impression that they tried to avoid or evade discussing this with us."

She states the organization eventually found no alternative except to announce industrial action, which started on 27 October, last year. "Typically it's enough to make a warning," comments the union leader. "The company usually signs the contract."

However this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, who is from Latvia, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages & conditions were often subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls an evaluation meeting where he states he was refused a salary increase on grounds that he "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a coworker was said to have been turned down for a pay rise due to having an "inappropriate demeanor".

Nevertheless, some workers went out on strike. Tesla employed approximately 130 technicians employed at the time the industrial action was called. IF Metall states that today approximately seventy of its members are on strike.

Tesla has since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation that has not occurred since the Great Depression.

"Tesla has done it [found replacement staff] openly and methodically," says German Bender, a researcher at a research institute, a policy organization financed by Swedish trade unions.

"It's not against the law, this being important to understand. But it goes against all established norms. But Tesla doesn't care about norms.

"They aim to become convention challengers. So if somebody tells them, hey, you are violating a standard, they see that as praise."

The automaker's Swedish subsidiary declined requests for interview in an email mentioning "record vehicle shipments".

In fact, the automaker has given just a single press discussion in the two years after the strike started.

In March 2024, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, told a business paper that it benefited the company better to avoid a collective agreement, and rather "to work closely with the team and provide them optimal terms".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was one made at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to make our own such choices," he said.

The union is not entirely isolated in this conflict. This industrial action has been supported from several of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Nordic countries and neighboring states, are refusing to handle Teslas; rubbish is not removed from the automaker's Swedish facilities; while newly built charging stations remain linked to power networks in the country.

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

"There exists an alternative power point 10km from this location," he says. "Plus we are able to continue to buy our cars, we can service our cars, we can power our cars."

With consequences high on both sides, it is difficult to see a resolution to the deadlock. IF Metall faces the danger of setting a precedent if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

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