Tesla may have picked an unwinnable fight with Sweden’s powerful unions — The first ever strikes and a solidarity blockade against the US carmaker could force it to rethink its entire anti-union model::The first ever strikes and a solidarity blockade against the US carmaker could force it to rethink its entire anti-union model, says journalist Martin Gelin
This is actually the one part of this whole strike I disagree with.
The government signed an agreement that prevents license plates from being delivered other than via this postal union. You can’t pick them up or get them any other way (that I’m aware of today)
It is a de-facto ban on car sales if you don’t sign a collective agreement, and there’s no way this was intended by the government.
IMO this is going to be challenged. The government should not have been able to make an agreement like this. It’s just some unintended consequence that has never surfaced before.
What if something else happened that prevented the mail from this one union from being delivered indefinitely? ALL auto manufacture sales would halt if that happens.
I think there’s a fair chance of this successfully being challenged, OR, the agreement being altered prior to being challenged to provide another way to get plates directly from the government, or to allow the citizens themselves to pick up the plates.
Edit: And in case it wasn’t clear, I don’t see a problem with this as long as citizens can get a plate, even if that makes Tesla and their lives more difficult.
To be clear, this is the government-owned postal service that does the deliveries of these license plates. They have other privileges on account of being the official postal service.
There are other legal consequences to not bargaining and signing a union contract in Sweden, this is quite simply the way the Swedish labour market works.
Other companies have been de-facto banned from the Swedish market before by refusing to bargain in the past (Toys’R’Us for example), I don’t see why Tesla’s case would be any different. Were I to be a judge to receive this case, I would question why Tesla would refuse to do something so mundane and universally expected as to bargain with the unions. Upon not receiving a good reason as to not do it, I would then promptly throw that case into the trash where it belongs.
As expected, Tesla has sued, and won an injunction pending the lawsuit to be allowed to pick up the mail.
This is why this is different.
Toys R Us wasn’t legally prevented from selling anything. It was just wasn’t worth the trouble it was causing.
Tesla cannot sell anymore due to a government signed contract that prevents delivery in any other way.
That’s why this is different.