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Elon Musk scored a first victory in his labor dispute with Swedish authorities when Tesla won a preliminary court ruling on Monday forcing the state to hand over license plates for its new cars.
In a day of high legal drama, Tesla filed two lawsuits against the Swedish Transport Agency and the national postal service for refusing to provide license plates for its cars because postal workers sympathized with a strike among the automaker’s mechanics.
The transport company said late Monday that an interim ruling by the court in Norrköping had ruled that it must allow Tesla to collect the license plates directly from its offices within the next seven days.
The agency said it would review the decision but it was too early to say what the consequences would be.
The car manufacturer had sued the authority so that it could collect the license plates for new vehicles directly instead of receiving them by post. Musk, CEO of Tesla, described the postal workers’ blocking of the delivery of registration licenses as “crazy”.
Tesla said: “We are pleased that this decision allows Tesla to continue delivering new vehicles to our customers.”
The lawsuit, filed on Monday in the Norrköping District Court, demanded that “the license plates of the vehicles that Tesla owns…” . . come into the possession of Tesla,” says a copy obtained by the Financial Times.
The car manufacturer is also suing PostNord and is asking the Solna district court to order the release of all packages addressed to the car manufacturer.
The lawsuits are an escalation of Tesla’s anger over the Swedish strike and the increasing number of sympathy actions by other workers that are increasingly damaging the electric car maker’s business there.
About 130 mechanics in Sweden belonging to the IF Metall union went on strike last month after Tesla rejected their request for collective bargaining.
Swedish unions argue that Tesla, like almost all companies in the country, must sign a collective agreement, meaning that wages and working conditions are set jointly in negotiations between unions and employers’ associations.
Postal workers who deliver spare parts and license plates, cleaners who clean Tesla dealerships and longshoremen who unload their cars have all since refused to work with the US brand.
Musk is a vocal critic of unionization and has managed to avoid collective bargaining at its global operations, including in Germany, where the company opened a factory.
Tesla has no production facility 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 permitted in Sweden.
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The Swedish Transport Agency has a contract with PostNord, which is partly owned by the Swedish state, to deliver all mail and has said it cannot send it with an alternative company.
Tesla, which plans to collect license plates directly from the transportation company, called its actions “a discriminatory attack” that was “deeply damaging.” The lawsuit continues: “This measure can only be described as a unique attack on a company operating in Sweden.”
It added that PostNord’s actions not to provide the license plates constituted a “targeted and unlawful attack” on Tesla.
In the lawsuit, Tesla accuses PostNord of acting unconstitutionally and argues that the postal workers’ sympathy lawsuit violates the company’s obligation to fulfill the “socially important” task of delivering mail.
Seko, the Swedish union that includes postal workers, said it viewed the lawsuit “as a sign that Tesla could not bypass our sympathy campaign.”
It added: “There is an easy way for Tesla to solve this problem and that is to sign a collective agreement with IF Metall.”
PostNord did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Additional reporting by Peter Campbell in London