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Tesla faced further setbacks in Sweden after unions said they would stop collecting waste from the US carmaker’s repair centres and the company suffered a legal defeat over the collection of its registration plates.

The Swedish Transport Workers’ union said on Wednesday that its members would stop collecting waste at Tesla workshops on December 24 unless the electric car pioneer signed a collective agreement in the country.

“This kind of sympathy action is very unusual. We are doing it now to protect the integrity of Swedish collective agreements and the Swedish labour market model. Tesla cannot buck the norm in the Swedish labour market,” said Tommy Wreeth, head of the transport union.

Unions have already stopped unloading Tesla cars from ships in Sweden and will soon do the same in Norway, Denmark and Finland. They no longer deliver post to Tesla in Sweden and unions have stopped cleaning its premises in sympathy with a strike that started in late October among mechanics at its repair centres over the carmaker’s refusal to sign up to the collective bargaining system.

The union announcement came as Tesla on Wednesday suffered a legal setback as it tried to force the Swedish state to let it collect registration plates for new cars directly rather than currently have them delivered by post. As postal workers are not delivering its mail, this means that Tesla currently cannot register new cars for customers.

The court of appeal overturned a decision by a district court to allow Tesla to pick up the licence plates directly from the Swedish Transport Agency as an interim relief measure. It said that the transport agency had not sabotaged Tesla or breached its rights by refusing to let the carmaker collect the plates directly.

The agency sends all plates to carmakers by PostNord, the national mail carrier, and unions there have blocked their workers from delivering parcels to Tesla.

Musk has called that measure “insane” and said recently “I disagree with the idea of unions”.

The appeals court decision was over the interim measure, and the full case before the district court is pending.

Swedish trade unions have in turn insisted that their decades-old labour model could be undermined if Tesla is allowed not to sign a collective agreement. Other companies in new industries such as battery maker Northvolt and buy now, pay later company Klarna have signed collective agreements in recent years.

“Even if you are one of the richest people in the world, you can’t just make your own rules. We have some agreements on the labour market in the Nordics, and you have to comply with them if you want to do business here,” Jan Villadsen, head of Denmark’s 3F Transport union, said last week.

Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.

Additional reporting by Peter Campbell in London