Tesla is suing the Swedish government to force it to take action against widespread strikes that have crippled the electric carmaker’s operations.
Tesla sued the Swedish Transport Administration on Monday after employees affiliated with Sweden’s public service union, Fackförbundent ST, stopped delivering mail, including license plates, to Tesla, local news sources reported on Monday.
In Sweden, all license plates for new vehicles are delivered through Postnord, Sweden’s postal agency, meaning the blockade prevents newly purchased Teslas from becoming road legal.
“This confiscation of license plates is a discriminatory attack without any legal basis against Tesla,” the automaker reportedly said. “Tesla requests that the district court order the Swedish Transport Administration to ensure that the license plates of the vehicles owned by Tesla … come into Tesla’s possession,” Elon’s musketeers demanded.
For those unfamiliar with the strike that sparked ST and other union sympathy actions, the fracas began in late October with the Swedish union IF Metall, which represents industrial workers in the automotive industry, among others. Tesla has refused to negotiate with the local union, so employees went on strike on October 27, and other workers have supported them.
“Tesla is good at going green, but now they need to ensure sustainability for their employees. They do this by signing a collective agreement,” IF Metall said in a discussion of the reasons for the strike.
Tesla digs itself an EU-sized labor hole
Swedish labor rights are incredibly strong, with the labor group Unionen estimating that about 70 percent of the country’s workers are members of one of Sweden’s many unions.
The government largely stays out of matters between unions and employers, meaning that much of the labor market is controlled by agreements between employers and workers, rather than by government regulators who intervene only in extreme cases.
As part of the “Swedish model,” sympathy actions – known as sympatiåtgärd – such as ST’s blockade of mail deliveries to Tesla, are perfectly legal. However, ST isn’t the only union to have announced sympathy actions in support of IF Metall’s Tesla strike.
The Swedish Transport Workers Union has been blockading ports across Sweden since November 17, refusing to load or unload Tesla vehicles from arriving ships, as has the Port Workers Union.
