Postnord cannot order its employees to deliver mail to Tesla.
This is what the company writes in a statement to the Solna district court - where they also refer to “force majeure”.
It was on Monday that Tesla sued the Swedish Transport Agency and Postnord, after the electric car manufacturer did not receive registration plates for new cars distributed. This is because the postmen and other employees are members of trade unions that strike in sympathy with Tesla in the company’s conflict with IF Metall.
Now Postnord responds in a statement to the Solna District Court.
Postnord about Tesla: “Not true” Initially, the company writes, via the law firm Mannheimer Swartling, that Tesla’s lawsuit is “characterized by invective and irrelevant descriptions” and that it is not true that Postnord’s actions would be “system threatening” or some kind of “attack” against Tesla.
- That we would have such an attitude or work in the manner alleged in the lawsuit is unrealistic and incorrect, says Anders Porelius, press manager at Postnord, in a press release.
Postnord claims to be neutral and outside the conflict between Tesla and the unions, but believes that it has an “obligation to respect the measures taken”.
“Postnord assesses that Seko’s and ST’s sympathy measures constitute both a legal and a practical obstacle for Postnord to provide Tesla shipments that are addressed to Tesla,” the company writes in its statement.
Refers to force majeure According to Postnord, the company has no control over the situation and therefore refers to force majeure. The company also emphasizes that the right to strike is constitutionally protected, and therefore applies over and above the distribution obligation in the Postal Act.
In the 14-page opinion, the lawyers at Mannheimer and Swartling then go through why they believe that Tesla’s request for interim security measures should be rejected. They write, among other things, that Postnord’s agreement is with the Swedish Transport Agency and not with Tesla, so if there is anyone who can request the ordered signs, it is the Swedish Transport Agency. They also write that Tesla can “easily” order new signs and collect them from the manufacturer.
The Solna district court must now decide what obligations Postnord has pending trial.
This is an interesting nuance to me. I guess I assumed the delivery employees are agents of the delivery company, and therefore if the employees refuse to deliver an item it is the same thing as the delivery company refusing to deliver the item.
Where do you think the legal boundary would be? Could the delivery company refuse to deliver an item for any reason? What if the delivery employee doesn’t like the religion, type of business, etc, of the package’s destination?
Force majeure is the legal boundary that’s being referred to. Basically the company can’t force it’s unionized employees to go against their union’s sympathy strike. Therefore, they can’t be held liable. At least that’s what they are arguing.
Ah! This is the best explanation I’ve heard. Thank you!
To reiterate and hopefully expand a little:
The postal company has already ordered its workers to deliver all packages, but the workers are defying part of this order.
The postal company can threaten the postal workers in various ways, but this would be the same as threatening the union itself, which would result in the union doing a full strike against the postal company, resulting in much bigger losses for said company.
The distinction is if it is officially sanctioned by the union. The company or its employees for that matter can’t just go on strike for belief reasons, they do it properly with their union backing them. Also it’s not that they simply refuse to work, they do their normal jobs but simply do not process Tesla deliveries. Everything else gets delivered fine.
As a german I love what is happening and I am really envious. While we do have unions too and they aren’t completely useless it would be so much better to have them negotiate like this. True, economy wide solidarity instead of our way of strike, pausing just one type of job in one sector, with plenty of accommodations for the companies to make it not as urgent to yield to the workers. We can’t even legally do a general strike. Fucking bullshit
Well in Germany “political strikes” aka any strikethat is not directly related to negotiating about union contracts or workers fighting management decisions against individual workers is considered illegal.
That rule was decided by a Nazi judge and is happily upheld in the federal republic, where in particular the employer and business organizations love continuity woth Nazi Germany, both in structure of the labor market and the people working at the employer lobby organizations.
But the German unions are mostly happy with the status quo and are doing nothing to challenge it, because most union leaders also get to sit on the boards of the companies they are supposed to represent their members against, and have a cushy revolving door with the “Social” Democrat party.
They also keep massively underdelivering in the narrow field where they can act legally, most often not even securing enough pay raises to compensate for inflation. This has lead to a vicious cycle of weak unions losing members due to their weakness and becoming even weaker.
They are doing the entire workers’ rights movement a great injustice, especially considering that unions and strikes were entirely illegal in the past and many people died fighting for making them legal.
The delivery company isn’t refusing anything. It’s the striking employees as part of a specific labour dispute where there are specific demands and Tesla has a clear way to resolve the dispute.
I don’t think the delivery company can refuse to deliver items at all or they’d face a lawsuit like the one Tesla just made and it would actually be successful.
That would be discrimination, and I imagine the company would fire the employee in that case.
The difference between that scenario and what’s happening is that the employee is also an agent of a union, not delivering mail to Tesla is part of an ongoing strike, and the right of unions to strike is protected. If a union or individual employee decided not to deliver mail based on ideological differences, not as part of a strike, that would not be protected. If the strike ends and they continue to not deliver mail to Tesla, that would also not be protected.