Tesla is suing Sweden’s transport agency, criminating it of a” discriminative attack” on the US electric automaker after a strike averted its new vehicles from getting license plates in Sweden.
The lawsuit is an escalation of a dispute between the car company and the union representing Sweden’s Telsa workers, who are demanding collective bargaining rights and have been on strike for five weeks.
The strike, called by IF Metall, which has more than 300,000 members in Swedish industry, has attracted numerous secondary or sympathizing unions representing, among others, postal workers, dockers, electricians, and painters.
On Thursday, Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, condemned the secondary actions of the postal service PostNord as “crazy” after the license plates were not allowed on new Tesla cars.
According to Swedish financial newspaper Dagens Industri, the automaker said in documents filed with the Norrkoping District Court on Monday: “This license plate confiscation is a discriminatory attack without any legal support against Tesla.”
Anna Berggrund, director of vehicle information at the Swedish Transport Agency, confirmed that it had received an interim ruling from the district court agreeing within seven days for Tesla to receive license plates directly from the plate maker, but they had not yet decided how to do so. . respond.
She said: “It follows from the decision that our sign manufacturer has announced that it is willing to supply the signs directly to Tesla if the Swedish Transport Agency agrees. We at the Swedish Transport Agency now need to analyze this announcement and assess what implications it will have for us and what measures may need to be taken to implement this decision. It’s still too early to say what exactly that will mean.”
Tesla has reportedly requested that a district court allow it to obtain license plates from the manufacturer while legal proceedings are pending. That request was granted on Monday, Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported, meaning Tesla can take its license plates back from the manufacturer. If the Swedish transport agency does not agree to the request within seven days, it will be fined one million kroner (£76,000).
Veli-Pekka Sjaikkalja, a senior representative of IF Metall, said: “We note that Tesla has decided to go the long way by starting the legal process. There is a simple and quick way to solve this situation – to sign a collective agreement. As soon as Tesla does this, the conflict ends.
” Swedish laws state that the government shouldn’t choose sides in labor request conflicts. We assume that the Swedish Transport Agency will remain neutral in the current conflict, as it should be.”
It is also known that TM Sweden, Tesla’s Swedish subsidiary, is suing PostNord for non-delivery of mail.
The postal company said the ST union had blocked the delivery of mail from PostNord to TM Sweden as a “condolence measure for IF Metall”. The right to strike is “protected by the constitution and so strong that it can be considered force majeure,” PostNord added.
A spokesman said: “We now need to read the claim and form an idea of the content and what it means. Above all, PostNord is neutral in the conflict.”
The fight for collective agreements, which cover conditions such as wages, pensions, working hours, and holidays, is being portrayed as the biggest attempt to save the Swedish union model from global labor practices in decades. This has been compared to the 1995 strikes at Toys R Us, which were won by Swedish unions.
Since the start of the Tesla strike, Swedish global payments company Klarna has signed a collective agreement with workers to prevent planned actions at its headquarters in Stockholm. Some commentators have speculated that the strikes affecting the automaker could reignite talks on the matter at the Swedish streaming company Spotify.
In Norway, Fellesforbundet, the largest union in the Norwegian private sector, said it would block Swedish Teslas from entering the country.
Tesla didn’t instantly respond to requests for comment.
