German article: https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/gewerkschaft-klagt-ueber-arbeitsbedingungen-bei-tesla-a-c5c27aff-eec1-4a32-a865-0c5904809900
Translation:
Union complains about working conditions at Tesla
Cold factory floors, stress and strange silence clauses: IG Metall (germanys biggest union) is making serious accusations against the German Tesla plant. A job advertisement is also causing irritation.
IG Metall is concerned about working conditions at Tesla in Grünheide. Employees told the union of displeasure about burdensome shift systems, frequent overtime on weekends, a very high workload overall and too few staff, said Irene Schulz, IG Metall's district manager for Berlin, Brandenburg and Saxony.
According to the report, employees also said it was sometimes too hot in the production halls in summer and too cold in winter. All in all, the company was not doing enough to improve working conditions and offered too little space for leisure and recreation. “In our observation, there is also a lack of a management culture that promotes open debate in the company about such employee concerns.”
Employees have to sign a confidentiality agreement with their employment contract, which is repeatedly referred to in the company's day-to-day business. This makes employees uncertain whether they are allowed to talk to the union about their employment contracts at all. “The fact that such questions are asked at all is something we don't know from other companies in this form and with this frequency,” Schulz said.
The union's district manager also told of a job posting for a security intelligence investigator that is causing a lot of questions in the company. “You will conduct both proactive and reactive investigations and actively address internal and external threats to Tesla's proprietary and confidential information,” the company's job posting states. Expectations include “several years of experience as an investigator with international/national law enforcement or intelligence agencies and/or equivalent time in a corporate security environment.“
Who or what should the investigator investigate?
Due to a lack of transparency within the company, many employees are now wondering what exactly is supposed to be the content of these investigations – and whether they themselves might come under scrutiny, Schulz said. Tesla did not initially comment on the allegations when asked.
For some time now, IG Metall has also been complaining about significant salary differences at the plant, which are often incomprehensible. Initially, Tesla was able to recruit many employees despite salaries that were below the collectively agreed wages of other companies in the metal industry. Tesla employees also receive shares in the company, which the group considers an additional financial incentive.
But apparently the Grünheide plant has thus been unable to meet the targets it set itself for new hires and has raised wages, which the union says results in an unfair salary structure. IG Metall had reported complaints from the workforce last summer.
———–
Seems like Tesla is trying everything to create the most toxic working conditions possible. But what Tesla has not yet realized is that “American working conditions or working culture” do not really work in Germany… Walmart has had to learn this painfully.
The new Tesla plant was built somewhere outside of Berlin and can only be reached by car. Only a few buses and no train connection. This means that many Berliners are already out of the loop as potential employees, since private individuals in Berlin rarely need a car. They do plan to improve connections to the inner city area of Berlin sometime in 2023, but … that doesn't help them find workers now.
The joke is also that Tesla thought they could attract Polish workers with the location being close to the German-Polish border. What Tesla forgot: there are laws that require German language skills in such factories to be able to react quickly to dangers (aka: workplace safety). This greatly minimizes the number of possible employees from Poland.
In addition, a large wave of lawsuits is rolling towards Tesla in Germany, among other things because of “misleading advertising on CO2 emissions, because of the “Sentry mode”, which violates German data protection law and and and.
I guess I need popcorn ^^