A district court ruled that Sweden’s constitution prevented it from taking a side in a labor dispute between Tesla and local unions that has dragged on for 11 months.
A district court in Sweden ruled on Friday that it could not force a local postal company to resume deliveries to Tesla that had stopped nearly a year ago as part of a wider labor dispute aimed at getting the U.S. automaker to sign a collective bargaining agreement.
Tesla filed the lawsuit against PostNord, the main postal service in Sweden, last year as part of its efforts to push back against a walkout nearly a year ago by mechanics at its service centers across the country. The labor action garnered support from unions in other industries, including the postal carriers’ guild.
Tesla does not make cars in Sweden, which has the world’s third-highest share of electric vehicles after Norway and Iceland, but it has several dealerships and service centers there. Despite the strike, the automaker was able to increase its sales in Sweden by 1 percent to 16,478 cars in the first nine months of the year, according to Mobility Sweden, an automobile industry organization.
Unions hold considerable power in Sweden, with nearly 70 percent of the country’s work force holding memberships. Tesla’s refusal to enter into talks with IF Metall, the mechanics’ union, was viewed by many workers as an affront to the country’s system of cooperation between organized labor and companies.
In its ruling, the court said that the Swedish constitution forbids the state from intervening in a labor dispute. “Parties in the labor market have the right to take action, and the state should not intervene,” said Patrik Alm, a senior judge at the Solna District Court.
Neither Tesla nor PostNord responded to a request for comment.
Postal workers, who are represented by the Seko union, stopped all service to Tesla, including deliveries of new license plates, which are issued by the Swedish Transport Agency. Tesla has sued the agency in a separate case.
The company is facing other boycotts in the country, but has since found a workaround for some of them. After dockworkers stopped unloading Teslas arriving in ports, for example, the automaker began trucking them into Sweden over land.
For the license plates, Tesla now has new owners apply for them directly. New tags were then delivered to the owners, circumventing the dealerships.
The head of Seko welcomed the ruling on Friday and said the union would continue to support IF Metall as long as needed, and called on Tesla to agree to talks with the mechanics.
“Now it’s probably time for Tesla to stop fooling around and respect the Swedish collective agreement model,” Seko’s union president, Gabriella Lavecchia, said. “The fact that they spend so much time and energy trying to get around the game rules is just a signal that they have big problems.”
The ruling can be appealed at a higher court within the next three weeks.