German union steps up efforts to recruit Tesla workers with office near Berlin plant

IG Metall says automaker offers lower pay than German rivals

NATHAN EDDY
January 03, 2022

REUTERS

About 12,000 employees are expected to build up to 500,000 electric cars a year in Gruenheide, with production expected to start early this year.

BERLIN -- IG Metall, the dominant metalworkers' union in Germany, wants to represent as many employees as possible at Tesla's new factory in near Berlin.

The union has opened an office "very close" to the factory in Gruenheide, its district leader for Berlin, Brandenburg and Saxony, Birgit Dietze, said.

Besides supporting the election of a works council, the union will be available to answer questions on topics including pay, working hours and employment contracts, Dietze told the German Press Agency (DPA).

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has had a rocky relationship with organized labor in the past and was ordered in March last year to delete a tweet from 2018 threatening to strip U.S. employees of their stock options if they formed a union.

IG Metall has said job applicants have told them that the automaker is offering pay 20 percent below the collectively bargained wages paid by German automakers. Tesla is also shaking up conventional German contracts by offering packages with stock options and bonuses rather than predetermined holiday pay.

Musk has made his irritation for German laws and processes known, saying in a letter to authorities in April that the country's complex planning requirements were at odds with the urgency needed to fight climate change. The automaker has repeatedly had to push back the expected opening of the factory due to environmental objections and red tape.

In the future, about 12,000 employees are expected to build up to 500,000 electric cars a year in Gruenheide, with production expected to start early this year.

The union understands that 1,800 workers had been hired by Christmas, the DPA reported.

"We assume that the first production stage will start with about 6,000 employees," Dietze told the news outlet.

She also pointed out additional players in the automotive industry will be established around the plant.

"In terms of transformation, it is necessary to take the employees with us," Dietze said. "We are not the dinosaurs of the industrial age but are looking forward in a progressive way. We are actively intervening in the issues of shaping industrial policy."

Should collective bargaining one day occur between the union and Tesla, one point of contention would already be foreseeable.

According to her findings, part of Tesla's compensation should be achieved through stock options, Dietze told the DPA.

"Optionally, on top of a secured collective bargaining standard like that of the metal and electrical industry, we would have no objection," the trade unionist said. "But what generally does not work in our members' estimation is that parts of the remuneration are so thoroughly flexible that the employee does not know exactly what is coming out for them at the end of the month or the year?"

Tesla posted record 308,600 global deliveries in the fourth quarter of 2021, with the better-than-expected results pushing full-year deliveries to more than 936,000 vehicles.

The Tesla Model 3 is on course to be Europe's best-selling full-electric vehicle in 2021 amid strong gains in overall sales of battery-electric vehicles.