Killing blow for Tesla: The cars do not get new license plates
IF Metall’s strike will stop new Tesla cars from being put into service. The reason is the sympathy measure that blocks Postnord’s handling of mail to Tesla.
According to the Swedish Transport Agency, registration plates may not be distributed in any other way.
Tesla rages against the “disproportionate action” of the authority and state-owned Postnord.
IF Metall’s strike against Tesla in the fight for a collective agreement has almost lasted a month, but work at Tesla’s facilities is still ongoing. There are staff who take care of cars that have arrived by truck and make them ready for customer delivery. Among other things, the number plates that normally arrive via Postnord are mounted.
But it will stop.
Tesla will henceforth not receive any new license plates because Postnord no longer handles mail for the electric car company. The Swedish Transport Agency may not change postal providers.
“The authority Kammarkollegiet has procured a framework agreement for letter and parcel services that all authorities must use. And according to that agreement, we must use Postnord,” explains Anna Berggrund, department director Vehicle Information at the Swedish Transport Agency.
On Monday night, Seko’s sympathy measure came into effect. It involves a blockade against the distribution, delivery and collection of shipments, letters, packages and pallets made by Postnord and Citymail to all of Tesla’s workplaces throughout Sweden. The trade union ST’s blockade concerning Postnord’s deliveries to Tesla began to apply on Tuesday afternoon.
Anders Porelius, who is press manager at Postnord Sweden, confirms that all mail delivery to Tesla has been stopped.
“We are neutral in the basic conflict, but we do not bypass the blockade. Shipments destined for Tesla are not distributed. The right to strike is so strong that it counts as force majeure. This means that we are not violating the social mission,” he says.
What does Postnord do with all mail to Tesla?
“We take care of it and store it,” says Anders Porelius.
The Swedish Post and Telecommunications Board, which is the supervisory authority, is informed and announces via press officer Petter Öhrn that the issue is being followed.
There is no information on how many number plates are involved so far. Between January and October, roughly 17,000 new Teslas have been registered in Sweden, which means an average of 1,700 cars per month. New registrations have continued even since the strike broke out. Last week alone, approximately 500 new cars were delivered. The plates are ordered when the car leaves the factory so there will be a delay before the postal blockade hits the car deliveries.
The process of registering cars is the same for all car brands. New cars are registered by the Swedish Transport Agency and then an order is made for registration plates from the supplier with whom the Swedish Transport Agency has an agreement. It is Scandinavian Motorcenter (SMC) in Danderyd. But Tesla is not allowed to go there and collect the signs.
“Our agreement with SMC describes how the signs are to be distributed to ensure that the signs are delivered to the right recipients. The agreement does not allow signs to be handed out or picked up directly from the sign manufacturer,” says Anna Berggrund.
She explains that the Swedish Transport Agency’s responsibility is to ensure that the signs are manufactured.
“Our mission is to provide license plates through procured suppliers. We have completed this by taking the signs to Postnord," she says.
Tesla emphasized in a written statement to Di that the mail blockade “does not have an immediate impact on our delivery capability.”
“The fact that the Swedish Transport Agency, the state authority responsible for the delivery of all registration plates in Sweden, and Postnord, a state-owned company, contribute in this way to the disproportionate action of Swedish unions is remarkable. It is Tesla’s legal right not to enter into a collective agreement and the Swedish Transport Agency has a legal duty to deliver license plates,” writes Tesla.
Translation borrowed from that other site.
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So much props for the Swedish people not letting their brothers and sisters get shit on by Tesla. Soon Tesla will no longer be able to claim they don’t sign collective bargaining agreements.
The thing is that this isn’t just about Tesla and their employees/contractors - our entire labour market is built on collective negotiations between workers and the employers. If a single big corp gets away with preventing unionization amongst its employees, it may very well upend the entire thing. Hence why other unions act in solidarity and other companies don’t even try to support tesla - as doing so could very well lead to the strike spreading and becoming a general strike.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Sweden is a small market, so Elon won’t care. But what’s his end game? Abandon the market?
Tbf Sweden will probably stand alone with such an efficient response. In most other EU countries Tesla continues to get away with it.
The thing is that in Sweden these collective agreements are regulating things that other countries regulate by law.
It is part of Swedish culture and worked so far, because employers held up their side too. This is one of the reasons why Sweden is working so well in many aspects. Employers and employees have a mutual understanding of respect and working with each other. But because of that many things arent codified into law, because noone ever thought they’d have to.
So they have much more to lose than in other European countries, where it is “only” about wages and benefits.
It works the same way in Switzerland.
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In contrast with the Swedes, we won’t strike, because we are cowards.
It largely works the same way in the Netherlands
it does not work this way in germany
(just to complete the list of replies)Unfortunately, German unions have allowed themselves to become a farce.
Their legal standing is very limited (strikes are only legal in a very limited set of circumstances), people in high level leadership of the big unions often sit on the boards of the very companies they are representing their members against, and there is a revolving door between high level union leadership and the “social” democrat party, which is social democrat in name only and has a more than 100 year history of selling out the working class.
Norwegian dock workers refuse to help Tesla bypass Swedish strikers, so not completely alone
Nordic countries represent small markets that purchase far oversized numbers of EV’s compared to other places. 1500/m shipped is nothing to scoff at lol.
This is how strikes should be. Not just 1000 workers at Amazon on black friday
This is illegal in the US. It’s called “secondary strikes” and was banned by the Taft-Hartley act.
The Taft-Hartley act was passed during the red scare. Truman tried to veto it but was overruled by congress.
Then I understand why unions don’t have a chance in the US. They have no power.
Yikes. This is going to be interesting to watch unfold.
I’ve been watching this from the sidelines and wondering what Tesla will do, sign, leave, set up 3rd party union shops, but this move effectively shuts down any auto manufacturer that it is played against.
Everything else could in theory be worked around.
Can’t they deliver the cars without plates and say they fulfilled their part of the deal? Over here the owner can get the plates themselves so such a blockade would be irrelevant.
I am not sure about that. Cars in the car dealership are also registered to the dealership, and for things like taking a test-drive that is necessary.
Also if the car is delivered to people at their adress, it is significantly more expensive to put it on a truck to drive there than to just drive it there directly.
Well I think the problem is the car isn’t registered until a plate is affixed and it’s likely, from the impact this is having, that consumer law prevents the delivery of an unregistered vehicle.
To my knowledge, there is a similar requirement in the UK for Auto sales, the registration isn’t complete until a plate is affixed. (There was a blip in this process circa early-2018 IIRC, and it led to Fiat having issues fulfilling car sales to their retail partners, don’t recall the specifics but I bought a new Fiat then, and there was some chatter from the forecourt that it was good it was cleared up).
If this is actually the case, and they can’t deliver the car, I think they’re going to sue and I’d support that. I don’t know what the outcome would be but I’d support their ability to try.
There should be a way for Tesla to get the plates as it’s their right to not sign the agreement and work around it if they want. Just like it’s the strikers and sympathy strikers right to strike.
This one postal union having defacto control over every auto manufactueres ability to operate in the county is a step too far if true.
Let them pick them up in person, or let the customer get it, or something else and then I’d be cool with it.
This is the only action up until now that I can’t get behind.
They can try suing but the postal service hasn’t done anything wrong. It’s not their fault that the government department in charge of issuing plates has made it a requirement for their outsourcing partners to use the national postal service to deliver plates.
To be clear, this isn’t an action, this is by default an inaction of a group in solidarity that’s having an unintended (and subjectively a somewhat funny side effect); but it’s the registry’s rules that are causing the impasse.
Sue that the government agreement isn’t lawful?
I’m really not sure as this is really complicated but we’ll see if they can find a way.
Again, assuming the customer can’t get one somehow.
Edit: im getting downvotes here, but a government agency signed an agreement that in theory gives the postal union the power over all auto manufacturer sales if there is a sympathy strike. Essentially declaring that you cannot sell cars in the country without an agreement. That seems a little unprecedented to me and worth a challenge. I’m all for it being exceptionally difficult and not worth it without a agreement, but not impossible. The government shouldn’t be able to cede that power unless they write a law for it.
I think that’s likely the route that Tesla would take, sue that the rules as stated aren’t capable of accommodating Force Majeure or other similar disruptions. But it will take time; and I don’t imagine that they’ll need to, eventually there will be some change to allow other delivery routes. I don’t think this was done on purpose; rather that the restrictions were placed reasonably and this hadn’t come up as no other automaker in the country had deliberately antagonised its workers to this extent.
This is the problem with Tesla wanting to operate the same way in every country, if you don’t cede that countries are unique bodies of law, regulations, and social practices, you can’t then complain when you fall afoul of that combination.
Ya, I don’t think this was done on purpose either, it’s just one of those unexpected combinations of things, and that’s something they might be able to challenge.
No idea, but maybe that’s possible? I wonder what delivery would look like and how soon they could order a plate.
It’s very, very easy to solve this problem, Elon - you just sign the contract. It all goes away at that point. Time to wise up.
I appreciate the effort, but “killing blow” isn’t accurate.
It’s the title of the article. Journalists are so dramatic these days.
Needlessly clickbaity title.
how is that a “killing blow”? they dont have DMV’s in Sweden?
As you probably have been told by now, Sweden has other rules than the US, so while we have agencies like the US DMV, they eork bery different
In some countries the car gets a plate on import, the number never changes.
Some weeks from now, it’s going to be impossible for Tesla to deliver vehicles. (Edit as they won’t have a license plate)
The only options are sign, only work at arms length via union contractors, leave or sue.
I think what OP is asking is whether the car buyers can obtain the plates themselves. In the US the vehicle owner can get plates directly from the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) which has offices all over the place so it would be trivial to bypass this.
I guess Postnord can also boycott Tesla owners but I’m not sure how they’d be able to tell that a plate sent to a random person is going to be used for a Tesla.
I’ve looked into it a bit since it was weird to me as well.
The gist of it is that you can’t buy the car without plates, as it is forbidden to sell cars that are not roadworthy. Tesla can’t get the plates themselves, since the transport authority is obligated to send them using Postnord. You can bang on the door, but the plate isn’t even in the building, it’s with some government contractor who will give it to Postnord. Postnord then will just sit on it since the workers won’t touch it.
Tesla could sell cars in Norway as some have pointed out, and there may be no duty to import cars as goods into Sweden, but if it works the same as in the NL, there is massive taxes to get the licence plate naturalized, and you can’t drive a Norwegian car perpetually in Sweden.
Tesla seems to be fucked.
Yeah I’ve been reading Wikipedia myself. I’ve discovered that any page about “Vehicle registration plates of [insert country name]” is a rabbit hole. 😅
Ya, I understand that now, someone else also mentioned it.
I imagine they’d have to deliver at their home though, or have the cars be delivered at the delivery spot and then sit on the lot while the owner gets a plate?
Unless you can get the plate before receiving it?
I assume that because of the system no normal buyer would want to get a plate to their home (why would they, they get plates with the car from the dealer after all), so any plate from the plate producer to a private address would also not be delivered? To be honest, personally I would be ok with having to pick up my plate from a dealer if that means Tesla doesn’t break the strike.
