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Across Sweden, around 70 car technicians continue to challenge among the world's richest corporations – Tesla. This labor strike at the US automaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has now entered its second anniversary, with little sign of a settlement.

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

"It's a tough time," remarks the worker in his late thirties. And as the nation's chilly seasonal conditions sets in, it is expected to grow even tougher.

The mechanic devotes each Monday with a fellow worker, positioned near a Tesla service center on a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, provides shelter via a portable builders' van, as well as hot beverages & light meals.

But it remains operations continue normally across the road, where the service facility seems to operate in full swing.

This industrial action concerns a matter that reaches to the core of Scandinavia's industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to bargain for wages & working terms representing their members. This principle of negotiated labor contracts has underpinned industrial relations across the nation for almost a century.

Currently approximately 70% of Scandinavia's workers are members to labor organizations, and ninety percent fall under by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages in Sweden occur infrequently.

This is a system welcomed across the board. "We prefer the ability to bargain directly with the unions and establish collective agreements," says a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted the apple cart. Outspoken CEO Elon Musk has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I just don't like any arrangement which creates a kind of hierarchical sort of thing," he told listeners in New York last year. "I think the unions attempt to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla came to Sweden back in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has long sought to secure a labor contract with the company.

"But they wouldn't respond," says Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "We formed the impression that they tried to avoid or not discuss this with our representatives."

She states the union ultimately found no alternative except to announce a strike, which started on 27 October, last year. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," says the union leader. "Employers usually agrees to the agreement."

But not on this occasion.

Janis Kuzma, who is from Latvia, began employment with the automaker in 2021. He asserts that wages and work terms frequently dependent on the whim of supervisors.

He remembers an evaluation meeting where he says he was refused a salary increase because that he "failing to meet Tesla's goals". Meanwhile, a coworker was reported to be rejected for a pay rise due to he had an "inappropriate demeanor".

However, some workers went out on strike. Tesla had some 130 technicians employed at the time the strike was initiated. IF Metall says that today around 70 of its members are on strike.

The automaker has since substituted 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 and systematically," says German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank financed by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, which is crucial to recognize. But it violates all traditional practices. But Tesla doesn't care for conventions.

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

The automaker's local division declined attempts for interview in an email mentioning "record deliveries".

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

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "country lead", the executive, told a business paper that it suited the company more not to have a union contract, and instead "to collaborate directly with the team and give them optimal conditions".

Mr Stark rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was one made by US leadership overseas. "We have authorization to make our own such choices," he stated.

IF Metall is not entirely isolated in its fight. This industrial action has been supported by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Scandinavian nations, Norway and neighboring states, are refusing to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is not collected from Tesla's Swedish facilities; while newly built power points are not being linked to the grid across the nation.

There is one such facility near Stockholm Arlanda Airport, at which 20 charging units remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the president of an owner's club the Swedish Tesla association, states vehicle owners are unaffected by the strike.

"There's another charging station 10km from this location," he says. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our cars, we can power our electric cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it's hard to envision a resolution to the deadlock. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that this could expand," states the researcher, "and eventually {erode