Tesla has lost its court appeal aimed at mitigating the impact of its Swedish strike. Will it finally compromise and go back to the negotiation table?
For the past two months now, Tesla service workers in Sweden have been on a strike in order to get included in a collective agreement.
The automaker has always had a hard stance against unions, and it has been able to fend off unionization efforts at its manufacturing facilities.
This new effort seemed to be manageable for Tesla since it would just involve about 100 service workers in Sweden, but it has now grown into the most serious effort that Tesla had to deal with to date.
That’s because several other unions in the country have joined forces to mess with Tesla’s operations in order to put pressure on the company.
Port workers, electricians, and cleaning services that deal with Tesla in the country have refused to work with the company since the service workers announced the strike.
As we previously reported, Elon Musk has reportedly told Tesla Sweden that they are not allowed to sign any collective agreement with a union.
This zealot approach has stalled negotiations and encouraged more unions to take actions against Tesla, even outside of Sweden.
Unions in Denmark and Norway have banded together to boycott Tesla operations until they agree to a collective agreement with their service workers.
One of the most effective “sympathy strikes” as been postal workers in Sweden refusing to deliver Tesla license plates, which is limiting Tesla’s ability to deliver vehicles in the market.
The automaker has taken the issue to court in an attempt to force the postal service to deliver the documents, but the effort has now been completely shut down in the court of appeal (via Bloomberg):
Sweden’s appeal court said the postal service “can’t get the industrial action to end and its stance of respecting legal industrial action does not constitute sabotage,” according to documents seen by Bloomberg News. Any approval of Tesla’s demands would risk infringing the employees’ right to take action, it added.
This could efficiently block Tesla from delivering vehicles in Sweden.
Now, will it force Tesla to finally go back to the negotiation table or will the automaker stick with Elon Musk’s hard stance against unions? We will have to wait and see.