Tesla has filed a lawsuit against the Swedish government's Transport Agency over a workers' strike that has blocked the U.S. auto maker's requests for license plates for new vehicles, business daily Dagens Industri reported on Monday.
Would be interesting to see exactly what the claims are. As I understand it, the agency is in fact sending them the plates. It’s the postal workers that refuse to deliver them, which is protected by the Swedish constitution and thus labelled as force majeure.
Yes and it doesn’t apply here. Seizure (“beslag” in Swedish) has a specific meaning in legal contexts, and it’s hardly used at all outside legal jargon.
See Chapter 27 of the Code of Judicial Procedure (Rättegångsbalken) regulating how an authority may use seizure. Link to English translation
There is such a thing as de-facto doing things though. It’d be more useful to look at precedent with similar cases than just a cold read of the words. It can very easily play out differently than you think.
at worst they’re using work to rule to screw over Tesla. More realistically they don’t want to be part of that conflict whatever individuals at the agency may feel about this whole thing.
Would be interesting to see exactly what the claims are. As I understand it, the agency is in fact sending them the plates. It’s the postal workers that refuse to deliver them, which is protected by the Swedish constitution and thus labelled as force majeure.
They are sending them through a service that is knowingly refusing to deliver them. And the Transportation Agency refuses to simply let Tesla pick them up.
They are sending them through a service that is knowingly refusing to deliver them.
As opposed to using any other delivery service, where sympathy action could just as well happen. It’s not like the government deliberately picked a delivery company whose workers are hostile to Tesla.
It’s not like the government deliberately picked a delivery company whose workers are hostile to Tesla.
When they learned that the plates were not being delivered, they did not provide relief by letting Tesla pick up the plates at no cost to the Transportation Authority.
While it would have been easy for the agency to do so, making special arrangements for a company to help them circumvent a labor conflict can easily be interpreted as taking sides, so it is well understandable that the government agency threads carefully here. It can well be argued that doing nothing is the neutral action.
My understanding is that today’s interim decision came before the defendant (the agency) was officially served or had answered the suit, so we don’t know what their arguments are really.
They are sending them through a service that is knowingly refusing to deliver them.
Yes, and to a layman like me, this is probably Tesla’s only possible legal standing.
They will never have any success suing Postnord for their (employees’) actions during a work conflict. Not here in Scandinavia, where work conflicts are an accepted part of the game.
But perhaps the government or the plate manufacturer can be legally forced to try to work around the force majeure situation caused by this conflict, so the plates must be shipped through alternative channels. Perhaps.
The plates are manufactured by the Swedish Transport Agency. They are obliged to deliver the plates through PostNord according to rules set by the government agency Kammarkollegiet (The Swedish Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency). As all agencies in Sweden, they work independently from the government. Therefore Tesla will have to take Kammarkollegiet to the Administrative Court, and if this happens, it will probably be appealed all the way up to the Supreme Administrative Court.
Tesla can collect its license plates from the manufacturer Scandinavian Motorcenter.
If the Swedish Transport Agency does not agree to it within seven days, a fine of one million kroner awaits, Norrköping district court decided on Monday afternoon.
It is true that there has been a decision in which they approve Tesla’s lawsuit, says lawyer Johannes Ericson to Aftonbladet.
Via its Swedish law firm Setterwalls, Tesla submitted two lawsuits on Monday, against the Swedish Transport Agency and PostNord.
In the lawsuit against the Swedish Transport Agency - which was submitted to the Norrköping district court - Tesla also demanded that, on an interim basis, i.e. temporarily, get the registration plates that the Swedish Transport Agency has forbidden the manufacturer Scandinavian Motorcenter to hand out directly to Tesla.
Monday afternoon, the Norrköping District Court granted Tesla’s request:
Yes, it is true that there has been a decision in which they approve Tesla’s lawsuit, says lawyer Johannes Ericson at Setterwall’s law firm.
What do they approve of?
They approve the interim request. They say that the Swedish Transport Agency must give consent for Tesla to pick up the license plates from the manufacturer of license plates.
At a fine of SEK 1 million?
Exactly, that’s right. Within seven days.
What do you think of the decision from the Norrköping District Court?
I have no comments regarding the decision. Tesla will be responsible for any comments regarding the decision, says Ericson.
But perhaps the government or the plate manufacturer can be legally forced to try to work around the force majeure situation caused by this conflict, so the plates must be shipped through alternative channels
I believe all Tesla is asking is to be able to pick up the plates themselves.
Yeah, but that would be in violation of the Swedish postal workers collective bargaining agreement and thus illegal under Swedish law. The “solution” Tesla wants to a legal strike is to do illegal actions. Sweden isn’t the states. Tesla can play ball or get the fuck out
The postal workers work for a state-owned company - therefore it’s the state-owned company that is refusing to deliver the plates. This idea that the workers don’t represent the company is nonsensical.
The fact that PostNord operates as a “for profit company” is irrelevant. It is a state-owned and state controlled company - there are only two owners, and one of them is the Swedish Government.
The Tesla lawsuit is completely legitimate - the state-owned company is refusing to deliver license plates. PostNord - as the company - is responsible for its employees failing to carry out their duties, and doing so in a discriminatory way.
“Are you also saying the striking Tesla workers are representing Tesla?” The correct analogy would be if Tesla employees selectively disabled the cars of people it didn’t like, say if PostNord or the US Postal Service had an all-Tesla mail fleet. Tesla would be held responsible for that - as they should be.
Pro-union/Anti-Tesla commenters have invented/made-up/imagined a distinction between the actions of employees and the responsibility of the company.
The Tesla lawsuit is completely legitimate - the state-owned company is refusing to deliver license plates. PostNord - as the company - is responsible for its employees failing to carry out their duties, and doing so in a discriminatory way.
You are just completely wrong and I think you are doing it on purpose. You know just as well as I do that the workers striking is not on the company. Sympathy strikes are completely legal as long as they only target the company they are striking against in Sweden. Tesla being the only company targeted is required for it to be legal. But somehow you are trying to turn that into an argument for why it is illegal. You are completely delusional or just paid by Tesla to spread misinformation. You can disagree all you want with how Sweden operates, that doesn’t change how the country works or how this situation will be solved.
Pro-union/Anti-Tesla commenters have invented/made-up/imagined a distinction between the actions of employees and the responsibility of the company.
Another delusional take which you don’t seem to understand would be needed to be applied at all situations. That includes the striking workers at Tesla. In your fantasy world those workers would represent Tesla as well. You can’t just spew shit and then selectively apply it in the situation where it favours your viewpoints.
“You know just as well as I do that the workers striking is not on the company.”
You keep reframing this to match your view. PostNord workers are not on strike. They are refusing to deliver mail to one recipient, but continuing to deliver mail to everyone else. That’s not a strike - there is a fundamental difference between a union striking against its employer and employees continuing to work normally except for one recipient of its services.
As an aside, its interesting how quickly you went to the ad-hominem attacks. I mean right away, in your first post. Why is that?
You are using the US legal framework to understand a Swedish situation
In much of Europe striking doesn’t limit to refusing to work, but can be refusing to do only certain tasks or refusing to do them only for a certain client
In Sweden it is legal for the workers of a company to strike in sympathy with other workers at another company with the caveat that they can’t strike completely but can refuse to do work that would benefit the company the original strike was against
It’s the postal workers that refuse to deliver them, which is protected by the Swedish constitution and thus labelled as force majeure.
If this were true, it’s pretty scary.
Regardless of anything to do with Tesla or any business, what if post office workers stopped delivering mail to Treta Grunberg because of an ethical issue.
The state-run transport agency turned down Tesla’s request to pick up the license plates itself and also declined to send them via distribution channels other than PostNord.
Yes, but obviously the agency would stop being politically neutral about the strike if they’d treat Tesla different than other companies, in theory. They obviously don’t want to start to make exemptions to their administrative structures on the demands of a company.
Given that no other company (other than Toys’r’us) did what Tesla did there’s no previous case to compare it, to. So - this will go through the courts.
Although they decided to defend this by arguing the contract it has in place with the postal almost as if from business constraint as opposed to an administrative requirement.
State agencies have to seek the best offer for their contracts ever so often. They bulk deliver via one company that needs to win a bidding against other companies. Usually that means a company that signs a contract with a state agency trades some profits for the prime service contractor. The contract IS a business contract. But the state agency itself is bound by administrative requirements to get the best deal they can, whenever a previous time-based contract with a company has run out. Either side would be in breach of contract: PostNord if they’d stop delivering (they don’t - PostNord workers use their legally guaranteed right to strike); the agency if they’d suddenly breach the exclusive bulk postage contract they negotiated.
I don’t think US state agencies operate that differently on that end? The difference is that workers in Sweden have rights that US workers don’t.
I mean the agency likely has a duty to ensure they’re received in a timely fashion though. The agency would likely have to step in to provide an alternative.
Would be interesting to see exactly what the claims are. As I understand it, the agency is in fact sending them the plates. It’s the postal workers that refuse to deliver them, which is protected by the Swedish constitution and thus labelled as force majeure.
How does that constitute “sending them”?
If I sold something on eBay but the guys at UPS won’t deliver it to you, it’s still on me to make sure it gets to you.
A quote from the lawsuit (translated from Swedish):
Seizing would imply that the police or government is holding them back, right?
Yes and it doesn’t apply here. Seizure (“beslag” in Swedish) has a specific meaning in legal contexts, and it’s hardly used at all outside legal jargon.
See Chapter 27 of the Code of Judicial Procedure (Rättegångsbalken) regulating how an authority may use seizure. Link to English translation
It means the same in dutch! I didnt know you swedes said the same. But it also means batter, as in pannenkoekenbeslag = pancakebatter
Oliebollenbeslag would be a fitting substitute this time of year.
You sure about that? Because it sure seems like the courts don’t agree with you: https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/27/sweden-sides-with-tesla-says-transport-agency-must-deliver-plates-or-pay-up/
There is such a thing as de-facto doing things though. It’d be more useful to look at precedent with similar cases than just a cold read of the words. It can very easily play out differently than you think.
Imagine thinking we run on common law in Sweden.
Sweden isn’t common law so precedents are largely irrelevant. The law is applied as written on a case by case basis.
I love seeing that these stranger redditors know more than musk’s lawyers lol
So a government agency would have to issue an order of seizing specific items or property, which they probably have not done.
Yes,
at worst they’re using work to rule to screw over Tesla. More realistically they don’t want to be part of that conflict whatever individuals at the agency may feel about this whole thing.
No, but it also doesn’t imply that there’s a legal protection here.
Is Tesla allowed to pick up the license plates directly from their DMV equivalent?
They are sending them through a service that is knowingly refusing to deliver them. And the Transportation Agency refuses to simply let Tesla pick them up.
As opposed to using any other delivery service, where sympathy action could just as well happen. It’s not like the government deliberately picked a delivery company whose workers are hostile to Tesla.
When they learned that the plates were not being delivered, they did not provide relief by letting Tesla pick up the plates at no cost to the Transportation Authority.
While it would have been easy for the agency to do so, making special arrangements for a company to help them circumvent a labor conflict can easily be interpreted as taking sides, so it is well understandable that the government agency threads carefully here. It can well be argued that doing nothing is the neutral action.
My understanding is that today’s interim decision came before the defendant (the agency) was officially served or had answered the suit, so we don’t know what their arguments are really.
Yes, and to a layman like me, this is probably Tesla’s only possible legal standing.
They will never have any success suing Postnord for their (employees’) actions during a work conflict. Not here in Scandinavia, where work conflicts are an accepted part of the game.
But perhaps the government or the plate manufacturer can be legally forced to try to work around the force majeure situation caused by this conflict, so the plates must be shipped through alternative channels. Perhaps.
The plates are manufactured by the Swedish Transport Agency. They are obliged to deliver the plates through PostNord according to rules set by the government agency Kammarkollegiet (The Swedish Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency). As all agencies in Sweden, they work independently from the government. Therefore Tesla will have to take Kammarkollegiet to the Administrative Court, and if this happens, it will probably be appealed all the way up to the Supreme Administrative Court.
This would probably take a couple of years.
And PostNord are notorious for loosing packages. They should be called BlackHoleNord because that is where objects go to disappear!
It only took a few hours to get the first court instance to rule in Tesla’s favor:
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/Mo0V85/tesla-far-ut-sina-registreringsskyltar
I fail to see why Transportstyrelsen would have any motivation to appeal the court’s decision. They have no stakes in this game.
This isn’t a verdict in the actual court case though, it’s only temporary.
This won’t necessarily mean that Tesla will get their plates. Because I assume IF Metall has a presence at the number plate factory.
I believe all Tesla is asking is to be able to pick up the plates themselves.
Yeah, but that would be in violation of the Swedish postal workers collective bargaining agreement and thus illegal under Swedish law. The “solution” Tesla wants to a legal strike is to do illegal actions. Sweden isn’t the states. Tesla can play ball or get the fuck out
/r/iamverybadass
They have a right to try the court even if it gets thrown out. This is Sweden. Not some country without a judicial system.
Tesla is already getting the plates. This ain’t Toys R Us they’re dealing with.
As far as I know the swedish postal workers aren’t striking.
Perhaps people have property rights, that unions can’t block in a fair country.
The postal workers work for a state-owned company - therefore it’s the state-owned company that is refusing to deliver the plates. This idea that the workers don’t represent the company is nonsensical.
The company operates as a for profit company without government intervention, they just own it together with the Danish state.
And no it’s not nonsensical at all, what the fuck are you even implying? Are you also saying the striking Tesla workers are representing Tesla?
The fact that PostNord operates as a “for profit company” is irrelevant. It is a state-owned and state controlled company - there are only two owners, and one of them is the Swedish Government.
The Tesla lawsuit is completely legitimate - the state-owned company is refusing to deliver license plates. PostNord - as the company - is responsible for its employees failing to carry out their duties, and doing so in a discriminatory way.
“Are you also saying the striking Tesla workers are representing Tesla?” The correct analogy would be if Tesla employees selectively disabled the cars of people it didn’t like, say if PostNord or the US Postal Service had an all-Tesla mail fleet. Tesla would be held responsible for that - as they should be.
Pro-union/Anti-Tesla commenters have invented/made-up/imagined a distinction between the actions of employees and the responsibility of the company.
You are just completely wrong and I think you are doing it on purpose. You know just as well as I do that the workers striking is not on the company. Sympathy strikes are completely legal as long as they only target the company they are striking against in Sweden. Tesla being the only company targeted is required for it to be legal. But somehow you are trying to turn that into an argument for why it is illegal. You are completely delusional or just paid by Tesla to spread misinformation. You can disagree all you want with how Sweden operates, that doesn’t change how the country works or how this situation will be solved.
Another delusional take which you don’t seem to understand would be needed to be applied at all situations. That includes the striking workers at Tesla. In your fantasy world those workers would represent Tesla as well. You can’t just spew shit and then selectively apply it in the situation where it favours your viewpoints.
“You know just as well as I do that the workers striking is not on the company.”
You keep reframing this to match your view. PostNord workers are not on strike. They are refusing to deliver mail to one recipient, but continuing to deliver mail to everyone else. That’s not a strike - there is a fundamental difference between a union striking against its employer and employees continuing to work normally except for one recipient of its services.
As an aside, its interesting how quickly you went to the ad-hominem attacks. I mean right away, in your first post. Why is that?
You are using the US legal framework to understand a Swedish situation
In much of Europe striking doesn’t limit to refusing to work, but can be refusing to do only certain tasks or refusing to do them only for a certain client
In Sweden it is legal for the workers of a company to strike in sympathy with other workers at another company with the caveat that they can’t strike completely but can refuse to do work that would benefit the company the original strike was against
If this were true, it’s pretty scary.
Regardless of anything to do with Tesla or any business, what if post office workers stopped delivering mail to Treta Grunberg because of an ethical issue.
Welcome to scandinavia. Strikes and unions are legal and they hold massive sway.
Not what the article said…
Yes, but obviously the agency would stop being politically neutral about the strike if they’d treat Tesla different than other companies, in theory. They obviously don’t want to start to make exemptions to their administrative structures on the demands of a company.
Given that no other company (other than Toys’r’us) did what Tesla did there’s no previous case to compare it, to. So - this will go through the courts.
Although they decided to defend this by arguing the contract it has in place with the postal almost as if from business constraint as opposed to an administrative requirement.
State agencies have to seek the best offer for their contracts ever so often. They bulk deliver via one company that needs to win a bidding against other companies. Usually that means a company that signs a contract with a state agency trades some profits for the prime service contractor. The contract IS a business contract. But the state agency itself is bound by administrative requirements to get the best deal they can, whenever a previous time-based contract with a company has run out. Either side would be in breach of contract: PostNord if they’d stop delivering (they don’t - PostNord workers use their legally guaranteed right to strike); the agency if they’d suddenly breach the exclusive bulk postage contract they negotiated.
I don’t think US state agencies operate that differently on that end? The difference is that workers in Sweden have rights that US workers don’t.
WHAT
I mean the agency likely has a duty to ensure they’re received in a timely fashion though. The agency would likely have to step in to provide an alternative.