Tesla’s Conflict with a German Labor Union Is Getting Out of Hand

• Not necessarily a push toward ‘unionization’
• Why IG Metall stuck around after a defeat
• Here’s what’s making this conflict so dramatic right now
• Is keeping this factory open even worth it for Tesla?

It’s an incident André Thierig, Tesla’s director of manufacturing for its German plant, called “truly beyond words!” A union representative from Germany’s largest metalworker’s union, IG Metall, is being accused of secretly recording a meeting of the plant’s employee council on Tuesday. According to Thierig, Tesla “called police and filed a criminal complaint!” 

Someone recording a meeting may not sound all that explosive at first, but the labor mess at the Berlin-Brandenberg Tesla Gigafactory has dragged on for years now, and since German work-related norms and laws reflect an alien society sorely lacking in American freedom, the details may be a little tricky to grasp if you’re unfamiliar with European labor politics, but here’s what you might want to know to get up to speed:

IG Metall has been duking it out with Tesla in Berlin since around the time the plant first opened. Potential employees during initial hiring reported, according to IG Metall, that they were being offered 20% less than German autoworkers with collective bargaining agreements. Giga Berlin remains the only non-union automotive plant in Germany.

Not necessarily a push toward ‘unionization’

In defiance of the stereotype you may have in your head, unions aren’t dramatically more common in Germany than the U.S. But that’s not because the labor movement there is as feeble as the one we have here. As is common across Europe, the ubiquity of sectoral bargaining means that collective bargaining agreements are common for non-union workers.

About half of German workers have collective bargaining agreements, and wage and conditions standards are significantly more worker-friendly nationwide. In neighboring France, unions are even less common than in Germany, but 96% of private sector workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements. In other words, labor conflicts outside the U.S. might not necessarily revolve around the familiar climax of a card check, and result in employees having a contract and paying dues. 

Even without a union or a collective bargaining agreement, all German workplaces with more than 20 employees are covered by elected works councils—and that’s core to what’s happening at Giga Berlin right now. Management-controlled works councils can be boring channels of communication that merely prevent conflict between workers and their bosses, or, when controlled by a union, they can be major pain points for the company.

Why IG Metall stuck around after a defeat

When Giga Berlin opened, Tesla’s initial plan for staffing was management-heavy, and all those managers helped put in place a management-friendly works council. But IG Metall didn’t just slouch away in defeat. In 2023, the IG Metall claimed that Giga workers were secretly complaining about long hours, short breaks, and NDAs that instilled fear of retaliation from employers if workers spoke out.  

In 2024, after the plant had quickly staffed up, a new works council election became legally necessary again. IG Metall’s slate won a plurality in that election, but not a full majority, which set the stage for a food fight between IG Metall and the anti-union head of the works council, Michaela Schmitz. 

Also in 2024, Tesla and IG Metall butted heads over the practice by Tesla of sending managers to the homes of workers on sick leave. According to a story in The Guardian, Dirk Schulze, regional director of IG Metall said a rise in sick leave was caused by “extremely high workload,” at the Tesla plant, and said “those who remain healthy are overburdened with additional work.” He added that if Tesla managers, “really want to reduce the level of sickness, they should break this vicious circle.”

According to that Guardian story, the manufacturing director of the plant, André Thierig said visiting sick employees’ homes was an attempt to “appeal to the employees’ work ethic.” According to an article in Junge Welt from December of 2025, IG Metall representatives on the works council had recently complained that (Per Google Translate) “André Thierig is so happy to talk about IG Metall that he even regularly stops production for this.”

Here’s what’s making this conflict so dramatic right now

In March of this year, there’s going to be another works council election, and things are getting very tense at Giga Berlin. A report from December by the local TV news station rbb24 lays out the terms of the battle ahead: IG Metall wants raises, and a 35-hour workweek—increasingly the standard for German autoworkers.

“The discussion about a 35-hour week is a red line for me, we will not cross it,” Thierig said, according to rbb24.

And that brings us to the dramatic meeting on Tuesday that resulted in Tesla filing a criminal complaint against IG Metall for recording a meeting. The incident was first reported by Reuters, and later, a memo about it from Tesla leaked to the Financial Times.

Apparently a non-employee representative from IG Metal was attending the meeting, and Tesla says this person attempted to illegally record audio of the meeting with a laptop, and then got kicked out and had police confiscate their computer.

In a statement, IG Metall slate members of the works council called the accusation from Tesla a “blatant and calculated lie,” according to the Financial Times. Also according to the Financial Times, IG Metall regional chief Jan Otto claimed that, “Influencing elections with fabricated accusations reminds us of the tactics of authoritarian regimes.”

Is keeping this factory open even worth it for Tesla?

It’s worth keeping in mind as all this unfolds that Tesla isn’t faring well in Europe. Using November of last year as a snapshot, European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association found that Tesla reportedly sold 12,130 new cars in the EU, compared to 18,430 in November 2024, which by my rough math is about a 34 percent drop. 

Electrek’s Fred Lambert has speculated that Tesla could just close the Berlin Gigafactory and blame all this labor unrest. This possibility, Lambert writes, “allows Elon Musk to spin a potential closure or massive downscaling not as a demand problem, but as a ‘woke union’ problem – sending a message to the rest of Tesla’s workforce at the same time. It’s a perfect exit strategy.” 

And besides, it’s Fremont, California, not Berlin, where Tesla is clearing factory floor space to fabricate its exciting new line of Optimus robots. If Tesla is not a car company anymore, as Elon Musk has indicated it isn’t, what’s the use of one more car factory anyway?