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Across Sweden, around seventy car mechanics continue to challenge one of the world's richest companies – Tesla. The industrial action targeting the American carmaker's 10 Swedish repair facilities has currently entered its second anniversary, with little sign of a settlement.

One striking worker has been on the Tesla protest line starting from the autumn of 2023.

"It has been 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 more challenging.

The mechanic spends each Monday with a colleague, positioned outside an electric vehicle garage on a business district located in southern Sweden. His union, the Swedish metalworkers' union, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, as well as coffee and sandwiches.

However it remains operations continue normally across the road, at which the service facility seems to be at full capacity.

The strike involves an issue that reaches to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the authority of trade unions to bargain for wages and conditions representing their members. This concept of negotiated labor contracts has supported labor dynamics in Sweden for nearly one hundred years.

Today some 70% of Swedish workers are members to labor organizations, and ninety percent are covered by a collective agreement. Labor stoppages across the nation occur infrequently.

This is an arrangement supported by all parties. "We favor the right to negotiate directly with worker representatives and establish collective agreements," states a business representative from the Association of Swedish Enterprise employer group.

However the electric car company has upset established practices. Outspoken CEO the company leader has stated he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I simply don't like anything that establishes a sort of hierarchical situation," he told an audience at an event in 2023. "I think labor groups attempt to create conflict within businesses."

The automaker entered Sweden back in 2014, while the metalworkers' union has long sought to establish a labor contract with the company.

"But they did not reply," states Marie Nilsson, the union's president. "And we got the impression that they tried to avoid or not discuss this with us."

She says the union ultimately saw no alternative than to call industrial action, beginning on 27 October, 2023. "Typically it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically agrees to the contract."

But this did not happen in this case.

The striking mechanic, originally of Latvian origin, began employment for Tesla several years ago. He asserts that wages and conditions were often subject to the discretion of managers.

He recalls a performance review where he states he was denied a salary increase because he was "failing to meet company targets". At the same time, a coworker was said to be rejected for increased compensation because having the "wrong attitude".

However, not everyone went out in the industrial action. The company had approximately one hundred thirty technicians working when the industrial action was initiated. The union says currently approximately seventy of its members are on strike.

Tesla has long since replaced these with replacement staff, a situation there is not occurred since the 1930s.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] openly & methodically," says German Bender, an analyst at a research institute, a think tank supported by Scandinavian labor organizations.

"It is not against the law, this being crucial to understand. But it violates all established norms. But Tesla shows no concern about norms.

"They want to be norm breakers. So if anyone tells them, listen, you are violating a standard, they perceive that as a compliment."

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

Indeed, the company has given just a single press discussion in the two years after the industrial action started.

Earlier this year, the Swedish subsidiary's "national manager, the executive, informed a business paper that it benefited the company more to avoid a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and give workers optimal conditions".

The executive denied that the decision to avoid a collective agreement was one made by US leadership overseas. "Our division possesses a mandate to make independent such choices," he stated.

The union is not completely alone in this conflict. This industrial action has received backing by a number of other unions.

Port workers in nearby Denmark, Norway and Finland, decline to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is not collected from the automaker's Scandinavian locations; and recently constructed charging stations remain connected to power networks across the nation.

There is one such facility close to the capital's airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. However Tibor Blomhäll, the leader of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point six miles from here," he says. "And we can continue to purchase vehicles, we can service our vehicles, we can charge our electric cars."

With stakes high for all parties, it is difficult to see an end to the deadlock. IF Metall risks establishing a pattern if it concedes the fundamental concept of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is that this could expand," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode