Germany’s largest industrial union, IG Metall, is accusing Tesla of fostering a toxic working environment at its Gigafactory Berlin, claiming the automaker is overworking employees and pressuring sick staff. The accusations land just two weeks before a works council election that could reshape labor relations at Tesla’s only European factory.
The escalation marks the most serious labor confrontation Tesla has faced in Germany, a country where the automaker is already dealing with a 48% sales collapse.
IG Metall takes legal action against Tesla management
IG Metall said Wednesday that Tesla’s management is attacking unions in Germany “with unprecedented aggression.” Jan Otto, a regional IG Metall leader, stated: “The company must not be allowed to get away with this.”
The union’s accusations are specific. IG Metall claims Tesla is overworking employees at the Grünheide plant and putting pressure on workers who have fallen ill — a practice that has been reported at the factory before, with managers reportedly visiting the homes of sick workers to “appeal to their work ethic.”
IG Metall has taken two concrete legal steps. First, the union applied for an injunction at a labor court over what it said were false allegations by Tesla that one of its members secretly recorded a works council meeting. Second, it asked prosecutors to investigate factory director André Thierig for defamation.
The defamation complaint stems from an incident last week when Tesla called police on an IG Metall representative at a works council meeting, accusing the representative of secretly recording the session on a laptop. Police seized the representative’s computer. IG Metall called Tesla’s account “a brazen and calculated lie” designed to damage the union’s standing before the March 2–4 works council election.
Under German law, recording a works council meeting without consent is a criminal offense, making the accusation a serious one. But IG Metall insists no recording took place and that Tesla manufactured the incident for political purposes.
The stakes of the March works council election
The works council election, scheduled for March 2–4, is shaping up to be the most consequential labor vote in Tesla’s history. Roughly 11,000 employees are eligible to vote, and the outcome will determine whether IG Metall can secure majority control of the council.
In the 2024 works council election, IG Metall won the largest single bloc with 39.4% of the vote and 16 seats on the 39-member council, but non-union lists held a combined majority. The union has spent two years organizing to flip that result.
Tesla’s response has been aggressive. Factory director Thierig drew a “red line” against IG Metall’s push for a 35-hour workweek, the standard at every other auto plant in Germany, and explicitly warned that a union-friendly election result would lead Tesla’s US-based leadership to halt investment at the plant. Tesla also threw an anti-union concert featuring rapper Kool Savas and pushed through a 4% pay raise specifically designed to sideline the works council.
Giga Berlin remains the only non-union automotive factory in Germany. Tesla has fought to keep it that way since the plant opened.
A factory under pressure from every direction
The labor conflict comes as Tesla’s Gigafactory Berlin faces existential questions about its future. The plant has a production capacity exceeding 375,000 Model Ys per year, but Tesla sold only about 235,000 vehicles across all of Europe in 2025, a 28% decline from the prior year. Germany alone saw registrations drop 48%.
January 2026 brought no relief. Tesla registrations plunged 44% across five major European markets, with catastrophic declines in Norway (down 88%), the Netherlands (down 67%), and the UK (down 57%).
Meanwhile, Tesla quietly cut roughly 1,700 jobs at Giga Berlin over the past year, reducing headcount from 12,415 to 10,703, a 14% reduction, even as plant manager Thierig publicly denied any layoffs were taking place. Internal works council documents confirmed the cuts.
The combination of collapsing demand, workforce reductions, and escalating labor conflict paints a grim picture for the factory’s trajectory.
Electrek’s Take
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, it is starting to look like Tesla is antagonizing the union to a degree that makes them the bad guys and could push more employees to vote for IG Metall.
As I previously stated when covering the unionization effort at Gigafactory Berlin, Tesla could then use this as an excuse to shut down the factory.
It wouldn’t be the real reason. The real reason is that Tesla’s European sales are collapsing, making Giga Berlin far less useful, but Tesla doesn’t want to admit it.
Placing the blame on a union for making the factory less effective is more aligned with Elon’s politics these days.
I hope it doesn’t affect the vote and that workers feel they can vote in their best interests, but to me it looks like a lose-lose situation for them.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Comments