Elon Musk scored an early victory in his labor dispute with Swedish authorities, as Tesla won an injunction Monday forcing the state to deliver license plates for its new cars.
In a day of high legal drama, Tesla filed a pair of lawsuits against the Swedish Transport Administration and the national postal service over their refusal to deliver license plates for its cars due to action by postal workers sympathetic to a strike by the carmaker’s mechanics.
The Transport Agency said late Monday that an interim ruling by the court in Norrköping said it must allow Tesla to pick up the plates directly from its offices within the next seven days.
The agency said it would study the decision, but that it was too early to say what the consequences would be.
The automaker had sued the agency to allow it to pick up plates for new vehicles directly, rather than having to receive them by mail. Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, had described the postal service’s blocking of the delivery of registration licenses as “insane”.
Tesla said: “We are pleased that this decision will allow Tesla to continue delivering new cars to our customers.”
The lawsuit, filed in Norrköping District Court on Monday, demands that “the registration plates for the vehicles owned by Tesla … come into Tesla’s possession,” according to a copy seen by the Financial Times.
The automaker is also suing PostNord, asking the Solna district court to order the release of all packages addressed to the automaker.
The lawsuits are an escalation of Tesla’s anger over the Swedish strike and the growing number of sympathy actions by other workers that are increasingly hurting the electric carmaker’s business there.
About 130 mechanics in Sweden, who belong to the IF Metall union, went on strike last month after Tesla rejected their request for collective bargaining.
Swedish unions argue that Tesla must sign a collective agreement like almost all companies in the country, which means that wages and working conditions are set jointly in negotiations between unions and employer organizations.
Postal workers who deliver spare parts and license plates, cleaners who clean Tesla’s dealerships, and dockworkers who unload its cars have all since refused to work for the U.S. brand.
Musk is a staunch critic of unionization and has managed to avoid collective bargaining in his global operations, including in Germany, where he opened a factory.
Tesla has no production in Sweden, but the strike is starting to have an impact after a factory that makes parts for its cars stopped production on Friday in support of the strikes.
Unlike in Germany and many other countries, such sympathy actions are allowed in Sweden.
The Swedish Transport Administration has a contract with PostNord, which is partly owned by the Swedish state, to deliver all its mail and has said it cannot send it with an alternative company.
Tesla, which wants to collect the license plates directly from the Transport Agency, called its actions a “discriminatory attack” that is “deeply damaging.” The lawsuit added: “This measure can only be described as a unique attack on a company operating in Sweden.”
It added that PostNord’s actions in not delivering the plates were a “targeted and unlawful attack” on Tesla.
In the lawsuit, Tesla accuses PostNord of acting against the constitution, arguing that the postal workers’ sympathy action violated the company’s obligation to fulfill the “socially important” task of delivering mail.
Seko, the Swedish union that includes postal workers, said it saw the lawsuit “as a sign that Tesla has not been able to circumvent our sympathy action.”
It added: “There is an easy way for Tesla to solve this, and that is to sign a collective agreement with IF Metall.”
PostNord did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
