A Swedish court has ruled that the nation’s Transport Agency must allow Tesla to collect license plates for its vehicles. Deliveries to the automaker have stopped as part of an ongoing labor dispute.
Although the Transport Agency technically never stopped issuing license plates to the automaker, it said it had no way to deliver them, because it is contractually obliged to use Postnord. Employees at the postal service joined a strike against Tesla out of sympathy with mechanics at its service centers.
However, the agency must allow the automaker to collect the license plates itself or face a fine of 1 million Swedish crown (around US$96,700 at current exchange rates), reports CNN. That follows an interim judgement by a district court in the city of Norrköping, which has given the license plate issuer seven days to comply.
Read: Tesla Sues Swedish Transport Agency And Postal Service Over Refusal To Deliver License Plates
The Transport Agency has stated that it is evaluating whether to appeal the decision. In a statement, the agency mentioned, ‘We have started looking at how we could make it practically possible for Tesla to pick up the plates,’ regardless of the appeal decision.
In a post on his social media platform, X, Tesla CEO Elon Musk called the labor action against the company “insane.” Both the executive and the company have opposed unions, and refused to sign a collective bargaining agreement with Swedish mechanics represented by the IF Metall union.
In contrast to many other countries, approximately 90 percent of the nation’s workers are unionized, with unions negotiating agreements on their behalf. Following five years of unsuccessful attempts to secure a collective agreement with Tesla, members of IF Metall decided to initiate a strike.
However, the action has caught the interest of workers across Sweden, who view this as a fight for the nation’s labor practices, not simply a dispute between 130 or so mechanics and an American automaker.
As a result, dockworkers have refused to unload Tesla vehicles, maintenance workers have refused to clean Tesla locations, and postal workers are refusing to deliver any mail, including license plates and spare parts. Tesla has also sued Postnord, but no judgements have yet been handed down in that case.