In 2022, Nazi-saluter Elon Musk opened his brand-new Tesla plant in the East-German town of Grünheide. Ever since, locals came to know that working at Tesla is a backbreaking job.
Recently, an official from Germany’s 2.2-million-members strong IG Metall—Jannes Bojert— described the relentless and overbearing work pressure at Tesla’s high-speed assembly.
Musk’s German factory is no more than an updated version of what Charles Dickens(1812-1890) knew as Dark Satanic Mill s.
Since the beginning, the extreme high density of assembly-line work and the resulting unusually high rates of sick leave as well as Tesla’s staunch anti-union ideology have shaped not just work but also labor relations at Tesla’s Gigafabrik.
Furnished with slave-like working conditions, Musk’s first Tesla cars at the new German plant rolled off the assembly line in March 2022—for the pickup price of €64,000 or $74,000. With the average price of a new car in Germany being $45,000, Musk’s autos aren’t exactly cheap.
Back at the factory, Tesla boss Elon Musk prefers to keep the IGM union away from his sweatshop-like workplaces—for good reasons.
In a recent interview, unionist Jannes Bojert reports about management-led intimidations against union members, the extraordinary high rate of sick leave at Musk’s intolerably high work pressure plant, and on German language courses run by Tesla.
Today, Tesla is the largest industrial site at the East-German state of Brandenburg where Tesla’s Gigafactory opened a bit over three years ago.
Placing its Tesla factory inside Germany might annoy Germany’s prestige manufacturers—Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi.
Yet it also contradicts the neoliberal hallucination that companies always go where labor is cheap. However, labor in Germany is not cheap. Either car makers like Tesla are mad or neoliberal economics is wrong.
Despite such misguided neoliberal ideologies on cheap labor, in reality, the number of employees have developed upwards ever since the opening of the factory. Today, the number of workers at Tesla has reached about 12,000.
In order to fill these positions, Tesla has been recruiting nationwide. And the company has also been looking for workers in neighboring Poland.
All of this has made Musk’s Gigafactory by far the largest industrial location in Brandenburg and a very important employer in an East-German region often associated with economic decline.
Unsurprisingly, Musk’s Gigafabrik does not pay standard collective bargaining wages comparable to other car factories in Germany.
Hence, wages are at the lower end. Meanwhile, the net value or wealth of Elon Musk is $402.6 billion. This is roughly the same as the GDP of Malaysia—$400 billion.
Malaysia is a country that Musk could buy with $2.6bn—$2,600,000,000—to spare. So, even after buying Malaysia, it would not get tight at the end of the month for Musk and his 14 children.
Musk bathes himself in cash and as of recent, also in political power. For the not-so-rich-and-powerful, Musk has something else in mind: low wages. There are still no collective bargaining wages at Tesla.
Monthly salaries at Tesla start at around €3,200 or $3,720, which represents $865 per week.
Yet, this is still a lot of money for many employees who have previously worked in, for example, Germany’s notoriously underpaying catering industry or have simply driven a taxi.
Depending on the actual work done, this is between 10% and 20% below those workers who receive a collective bargaining wage in Germany—which is the vast majority.
If one takes special allowance payments such as holiday and Christmas bonuses into account and compare Tesla with those of other car companies, the gap between Tesla and all other German car companies is even wider.
Still, wages are not everything. Next to a comparatively low income, there are other important issues such as, for example, Tesla’s intolerably low working conditions.
On working conditions, there are even more stark differences between Tesla and all other German car makers.
Today, hardly any automobile plant in Germany works more than 38 hours a week. Almost all of them have arrived at the 35-hour work week or are on their way to the 35-hour work week.
Among other things, there are additional days off for shift workers and in almost all companies in the automotive industry, there are supplementary and paid breaks from assembly-line work during shift operations. These are another 20 minutes of monotonous assembly-line work that make working at Tesla so much worse.
To assure that all of this does not change, there is Tesla’s continuous fight against trade unions and Germany’s works council law.
At Tesla, this anti-union sentiment is spiced up with the customary intimidation of workers and trade union members by an authoritarian macho-management.
Cunningly and following his very own twisted far right ideology, Elon Musk claimed in 2023,
letting workers unionize creates lords and peasants.
The exact opposite is the case. Without trade unions, Musk can play out his narcissistic role as self-appointed Lord of the factory manor to whom all peasant-workers must bow to.
Meanwhile, personal hallucination and right-wing ideologies like these make it hard for trade unions and works councils to represent the interests of workers.
Like virtually all companies operating in Germany, Tesla too, had to accept that there are works councils in Germany—by law.
Deceptively, Tesla claims—wrongly—to be not yet ready to engage in union participation and negotiations as determined by German labor law and the unions.
Instead of cooperating, Tesla’s management is fuelling an anti-union climate while frequently trying to intimidate union members at the plant.
Ultimately, resentment against unions is directed against all those workers who stand up for their fellow workers as well as against workers fighting for humane and just working conditions in Tesla’s Gigafactory.
Given the wide-reaching reports on Tesla’s dehumanizing working conditions from Texas to Shanghai to Germany—including the death of a worker—Germany’s union offers a grim assessment of Tesla’s dehumanizing working conditions.
A recent survey conducted by the IGM union at the Tesla plant showed that working at Musk’s Gigafactory is a rather unhealthy affair:
- Overworked: More than 80% of employees feel overloaded with high-density work tasks.
- Pain: Nine out of ten workers complain of work-related physical pain.
- Suffering: Only one in ten workers believes that they will be able to endure the current working situation until retirement.
- Ailments: 91% of all respondents suffer from physical disorders such as head, neck, joint and back pain.
Predictably, sick leave at Musk’s Gigafactory is at a stratospheric level. What became known as the “Tesla speed” puts an unsustainable level of physical strain on employees.
As a consequence, the average amount of sick leave taken at Tesla remains high. Generally speaking, something like this translates very quickly into high levels of turnover.
High numbers of workers coming into a company and leaving rather quickly is known as turnover rate. The general rule is that the higher the turnover is, the worse the company. Tesla’s Gigafactory is such a place.
At Tesla, both are very high—unusually high—and both (sick leave and turnover) indicate what it is supposed to indicate: inhuman working conditions.
Put simply, sick leave is high because workloads are mercilessly high. Worse, Tesla’s management gives very little or next to no consideration to the physical and mental health of the employees. To Tesla, workers are disposables—like a used tissue paper.
On top of being mere “disposables”, workers experience the Tesla-Speed. It is an untenable assembly-line speed that is endangering the health of those who make Tesla’s cars. Just when you think working at Tesla could not get worse—it does.
Worryingly, Tesla is pressuring sick employees and, to top it up, withholding their wages. This evil management strategy is carried through—continuously and relentlessly.
Unions have noted a large number of such cases. All in all, Tesla’s management operates a three-fold “let’s torment workers” strategy:
- Doubts: In a first step, Tesla’s management retroactively doubts sick notes from employees.
- Privacy: Violating privacy rules, Tesla bosses call for medical diagnoses to be disclosed and for medical doctors to be exempted from their obligation of confidentiality—privacy is gone.
- Wages: Tesla’s final step is the withholding of remuneration. Worse, frequently not a single euro of a wage is paid to a worker.
To add insult to injury—literally!—right when you are sick from being overworked, employees are put under mental pressure with the reference to alleged debts about a medical diagnosis.
Tesla bosses do this to torment workers into giving up their job and by signing a termination agreement. In management, this became known as my way or the highway!
Time to consider such “offers” (read: threats) or for a legal examination of Tesla’s pre-fabricated contract is often refused by Tesla’s management.
Cunningly, Tesla’s management issues such an “offer” only if it is signed immediately. In other words, Tesla’s bosses put even more pressure on workers.
Beyond all this, there is also external pressure put onto workers by Tesla’s management. Tesla puts stress on workers and operates with aggressive labor relations methods.
The next trick in Tesla’s rulebook of authoritarian management is that employees who reported sick are visited at home by euphemistically called “Tesla inspectors”. This puts additional pressure on them.
There have been plenty of reports on this from affected workers in recent years. Yet, there is no information on the exact extent of the mistreatment of workers. Still, these are not isolated cases.
Tesla’s dirty tricks have caused resistance from the workforce and their union. Workers, the union and even public pressure have worked. Some workers even fought back with indignation.
Meanwhile, it is correct that no knowledge of the German language and only rudimentary knowledge of the English are required of employees. Actually, it is a prerequisite for employment in Germany to speak either the German or the English language.
Such rules are eased because of Tesla’s immense need for workers and Tesla’s extremely high turnover rates at the plant. Tesla struggles with the language requirement. More often than not, Tesla fails to meet exactly these requirements.
Interestingly, Tesla’s plan to offer German language courses while doing shift work remains difficult—to say the least.
Meanwhile, the company has been offering free German language courses during working hours—in the full knowledge that these can hardly be taken up. In other words, it is a theoretical (read: not real) offer by Tesla’s management. The cunning plan to offer a Tesla-School worked brilliantly.
Deceitfully and deliberately, Tesla’s management made the capacities for those language classes so small that, so far, only few workers have been able to take it up. Put simply, it is corporate PR rolled out to perfection.
The union’s answer to Tesla’s scam offer has been the offer of free German language courses run by Germany’s IGM union. The classes are run close to the Tesla factory.
Tesla’s management reacted promptly to union-run language classes by announcing it will expand its offer of German language courses. That was exactly the intention of the trade union.
Sometimes, active trade unionism works—a little bit. In spring 2025, the IGM union collected over 3,000 signatures at the plant for a petition to the management.
The union demands immediate relief from unmaintainable workloads and an end to excessive working pressure.
Workers and their union also seek paid breaks as a relief from strenuous assembly-line’s work’s working hours. The union wants what all other automotive companies have: more staff and an end to harassment.
First of all, workers want to be able to walk upright and want to be able to stand up for each other without having to fear retaliatory consequences from management.
Self-evidently, workers also want to have a say in their working conditions. That is about:
- Working Hours: how many hours you have to work,
- Working Conditions: under what conditions, and
- Wages: how much money you get paid for it.
Overall, Tesla’s nasty management should not be able to—unilaterally—determine this at a whim without having to respond to the legitimate demands of the workforce.
- If Tesla does not end its aggressive opposition to the rightful trade union representation,
- if Tesla continues to refuse to engage in Germany’s legally sanctioned co-determination procedures, and
- if Tesla carries on with ignoring Germany’s collective bargaining framework and trade unions,
Tesla will not only harm itself but also its workers. In the end, all this will—again—show that Chomsky was correct when arguing that in capitalism, it is profits over people.
Thomas Klikauer has over 800 publications (including 12 books) and writes regularly for BraveNewEurope (Western Europe), the Barricades (Eastern Europe), Buzzflash (USA), Counterpunch (USA), Countercurrents (India), Tikkun (USA), and ZNet (USA). One of his books is on Managerialism (2013).