Photo: Tesla
It seems the fears IG Metall had regarding the works council at Giga Grünheide came true. According to Reuters, the election of the members of this council will be held on February 28. Of the 12,000 people that will work there, only 2,000 have already been hired, and most of them are in management positions.
In other words, what Giga Grünheide will have is a bunch of white-collar workers saying what blue-collar colleagues want. If that was remotely possible, these white-collars should have job stability beyond their terms as council members, and that is not very likely to happen: if they go against Tesla's interests, they can wave bye-bye to their jobs. IG Metall believes that these executives will simply give Tesla two years of tranquility in anything related to unions, which Tesla avoids at all costs.
According to Reuters, the German law establishes that only people who work for at least six months for any company can integrate its works council. Even if Tesla hired the other 10,000 people it plans to have at Giga Grünheide tomorrow, they would not be eligible to be part of the first works council. A new vote will only happen in two years if the workforce expands by more than 50%.
Birgit Dietze is pretty concerned with these elections. For the head of IG Metall's regional office for Berlin-Brandenburg-Saxony, it will not be representative of the workforce there when it reaches full capacity. In fact, it will not even represent them when production is ready to start, something nobody has any idea of when should happen.
Tesla has submitted all necessary documents for that. More recently, it was allowed to test production by producing up to 2,000 prototypes that will have to be destroyed to their very last bit. None of their parts will be allowed to be part of production vehicles, and Tesla will have to ensure that is the case.
Considering Giga Grünheide has not even received its final permit, it is possible that the works council election will happen before any production vehicles are made. That speaks a bunch about what Tesla’s intentions are with this move.
According to Reuters, the German law establishes that only people who work for at least six months for any company can integrate its works council. Even if Tesla hired the other 10,000 people it plans to have at Giga Grünheide tomorrow, they would not be eligible to be part of the first works council. A new vote will only happen in two years if the workforce expands by more than 50%.
Birgit Dietze is pretty concerned with these elections. For the head of IG Metall's regional office for Berlin-Brandenburg-Saxony, it will not be representative of the workforce there when it reaches full capacity. In fact, it will not even represent them when production is ready to start, something nobody has any idea of when should happen.
Tesla has submitted all necessary documents for that. More recently, it was allowed to test production by producing up to 2,000 prototypes that will have to be destroyed to their very last bit. None of their parts will be allowed to be part of production vehicles, and Tesla will have to ensure that is the case.
Considering Giga Grünheide has not even received its final permit, it is possible that the works council election will happen before any production vehicles are made. That speaks a bunch about what Tesla’s intentions are with this move.
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