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Across Sweden, approximately seventy automotive technicians continue to challenge among the globe's richest companies – Tesla. This labor strike at the US carmaker's ten Scandinavian repair facilities has now reached two years of duration, with minimal sign of a resolution.

One striking worker has remained on the electric car company's picket line starting from October 2023.

"It has been a tough time," states the 39-year-old. With the nation's cold winter weather arrives, it is expected to become even tougher.

The mechanic spends each Monday with a colleague, standing outside an electric vehicle service center on a business district in Malmö. His union, IF Metall, supplies shelter in the form of a mobile builders' van, as well as coffee and sandwiches.

But it's operations continue normally nearby, where the service facility seems to operate at full capacity.

This industrial action involves an issue that goes to the core of Swedish industrial culture – the right for worker organizations to negotiate pay and working terms representing their members. This concept of collective agreement has underpinned industrial relations in Sweden for almost a century.

Today some 70% of Swedish workers belong of a trade union, and ninety percent fall under under negotiated labor contracts. Labor stoppages in Sweden are rare.

It's an arrangement supported across the board. "We favor the ability to negotiate freely with the unions and sign labor contracts," states a business representative of the Confederation of Swedish Businesses business organization.

But Tesla has disrupted established practices. Outspoken chief executive the company leader has said he "disagrees" with the concept of unions. "I just disapprove of anything that establishes a kind of lords and peasants sort of thing," he informed listeners in New York last year. "I think labor groups try to generate conflict within businesses."

Tesla entered the Scandinavian market starting in the mid-2010s, while the metalworkers' union has for years sought to secure a collective agreement with the company.

"But they wouldn't reply," says Marie Nilsson, the organization's president. "And we got the impression that they tried to avoid or not discuss this with our representatives."

She says the union eventually saw no other option than to call industrial action, beginning in late October, 2023. "Usually it's enough to issue the threat," says Ms Nilsson. "The company typically signs the contract."

However not on this occasion.

The striking mechanic, originally from Latvia, started working with the automaker in 2021. He claims that pay & work terms were often dependent on the whim of managers.

He recalls a performance review where he says he was denied an annual pay rise on grounds that he "failing to meet company targets". Meanwhile, a coworker was said to have been turned down for a pay rise because he had the "wrong attitude".

Nevertheless, not everyone participated on strike. Tesla had some 130 technicians working when the industrial action was called. The union states that today approximately 70 of their represented workers are on strike.

The automaker has since substituted the striking workers with replacement staff, a situation that has no precedent since the era of the Great Depression.

"The company has done it [found replacement staff] publicly and systematically," states German Bender, an analyst at Arena Idé, a think tank supported by Swedish trade unions.

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

"They aim to become norm breakers. Thus when somebody tells them, listen, you are breaking a norm, they see that as praise."

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

Indeed, the company has granted only one press discussion during the entire period since the strike started.

Earlier this year, the local division's "national manager, Jens Stark, told a business paper that it suited the company better not to have a collective agreement, and instead "to collaborate directly with employees and provide them the best possible terms".

The executive rejected that the decision to avoid a labor contract was determined at Tesla headquarters in the US. "Our division possesses authorization to take our own such decisions," he said.

IF Metall is not completely isolated in its fight. The strike has received backing by a number of other unions.

Dockworkers in nearby Denmark, Nordic countries & neighboring states, decline to handle the company's vehicles; rubbish is no longer collected from Tesla's Scandinavian locations; and newly built charging stations remain connected to power networks across the nation.

There is an example close to the capital's airport, where 20 charging units remain unused. However a Tesla enthusiast, the president of enthusiasts group Tesla Club Sweden, says Tesla owners remain unaffected by the labor dispute.

"There's an alternative power point 10km from here," he comments. "Plus we are able to still buy our cars, we can maintain our cars, we can charge our electric cars."

With consequences significant for all parties, it's hard to see a resolution to the stand-off. The union faces the danger of establishing a pattern if it concedes the principle of negotiated labor contracts.

"The concern is how that would spread," states Mr Bender, "and eventually {erode