diff --git a/.github/workflows/service.publish.yaml b/.github/workflows/service.publish.yaml
index 618e2115..f969c73f 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/service.publish.yaml
+++ b/.github/workflows/service.publish.yaml
@@ -73,10 +73,10 @@ jobs:
           printf -v joined_tags "%s," "${tags[@]}"
           # Generate label flags
           readarray -t labels < <( echo "${{ steps.meta.outputs.labels }}" )
-          printf -v label_flags -- "--image-label=\"%s\" " "${labels[@]}"
+          printf -v label_flags -- "--image-label=%s " "${labels[@]}"
           ko publish -B \
-            --tags=${joined_tags%,} \
-            ${label_flags}
+            --tags="${joined_tags%,}" \
+            "${label_flags}" \
             github.com/carbynestack/ephemeral/cmd/discovery \
             github.com/carbynestack/ephemeral/cmd/ephemeral \
             github.com/carbynestack/ephemeral/cmd/network-controller