Swedish postal workers have stopped delivering license plates to Tesla’s factory, as a show of solidarity with Tesla’s striking staff. Unhappy with this, Tesla is suing the Swedish Transport Agency for “unfairly” targeting it.
The Swedish Transport Agency, which is bound to use the state backed mail service, doesn’t seem alarmed.
An agency spokesperson said that they had not seen the lawsuit but did not share the view that it was failing to meet obligations.
“Tesla has decided to have the issue tested in court, which is their right,” Mikael Andersson said.
“We need to look at the lawsuit and Tesla’s reasoning in it. Reasonably, the district court will allow the Swedish Transport Agency to express itself in the case and thus our attitude to Tesla’s reasoning will be clear. The District Court may then hear the matter.”
About 130 workers at the Tesla repair shop have been striking since October 27th. The IF Metall union says that they’re demanding: “good wages, good pensions and good insurance for staff.”
The staff are reportedly paid less than industry average and offered fewer benefits.
As a result of their strike, eight other unions have announced actions targeting Tesla in support of the striking workers.
In the UK, such solidarity strikes have been illegal since 1992, which is unfortunate considering how much pressure they put on businesses to negotiate with their staff.
Unfortunately, after the Thatcher government broke the Miners’ Strike, successive governments have passed laws to weaken union power. We’re going to have to fight hard if we want to achieve stronger striking and other rights for workers again.
In Sweden, the postal workers started their blockade of Tesla on November 20th, and dock workers have stopped unloading Tesla cars.
Tesla owner, Elon Musk, has previously taken union busting measures at the company and is likely to do all he can to subvert this strike.
Tesla’s lawsuit against the government shows what an impact these strikes are having though. Good luck to the strikers and well done to those workers outside Tesla for supporting them with their own actions.
