A district court in Sweden has found that postal workers in the country should not be forced to deliver mail to Tesla. Following the reversal of an injunction in a related case, that means that the automaker cannot receive license plates for its new vehicles for the time being.
Union represented workers at PostNord decided to stop delivering mail to Tesla last month. They said they were acting against the automaker out of solidarity with mechanics employed at its service centers, who launched a strike in October, following years of failed attempts to get Tesla to sign a collective bargaining agreement.
The PostNord embargo meant that the automaker would not receive spare parts or mail, including license plates for new vehicles. Meanwhile, the Transport Agency said that since it had no other method of getting the plates to Tesla, the automaker would have to wait until the mail strike ended to receive them. It quickly sued both the postal service and the agency.
Read: Swedish Transport Agency Doesn’t Have To Allow Tesla To Pick Up Plates In Stunning Reversal
As part of the suits, the automaker asked for temporary injunctions to force PostNord to deliver the mail, and to allow it to pick up license plates directly from the Transport Agency. It was granted the latter injunction last week, but an appeals court reversed the decision yesterday. Today, Reuters reports that a district court has decided not to grant Tesla a temporary injunction in the case against the postal service, either.
“The district court has decided that PostNord should not be forced to make deliveries to Tesla before the case is closed,” the Solna district court wrote in a statement. In a post responding to news of the case on X, Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote, “this is insane.”
To make matters worse for the automaker, workers across the Nordic region are pledging not to help it deliver new vehicles to Sweden. The latest are represented by Finland’s union for dockworkers, AKT.
“It is a crucial part of the Nordic labor market model that we have collective agreements and unions support each other,” AKT said in a statement. It said that its action would start on December 20, the same day that Norway’s unions vowed to stop handling shipments of Tesla vehicles bound for Sweden.
That, in addition to similar moves from Swedish and Danish transport workers, means that Tesla will not be able to ship vehicles to Sweden or its neighbors. That leaves Tesla with no other option than trucking if it wants to get EVs into its fifth-largest European market by volume.
On top of Swedish dockworkers, mail carriers, and, of course, mechanics, maintenance workers, electricians and drivers in the nation are striking against Tesla for its attitude towards collective bargaining.
In addition, the Danish pension fund says it has sold its shares in the company for its refusal to sign an agreement with its mechanics. Swedish pension funds have also urged Tesla to sign, but have not yet sold their shares.
