News type
news Url
Date end
News memo
On 12 November 2019, the US group Tesla announced that its only gigafactory for electric vehicles and batteries in Europe will be built in a forest area 40 kilometres east of Berlin, where production is scheduled to start in 2021. 10,000 jobs will be created in the small municipality of Grünheide, plus a design and development centre with hundreds of jobs in the city of Berlin. Up to now, Tesla cars have only been produced in the USA, and since October 2019 also in China.
Tesla's 45.000 employees complain about low wages, frequent accidents at work and a somewhat unfriendly climate towards unions. According to the US trade union United Auto Workers (UAW), the starting salary for factory workers lies 30% below the average wage in the industry. Since January 2017, Grohmann Engineering, a German firm in Prüm (Rhineland-Palatinate) with 800 employees, belongs to the group. For months, the IG Metall union had been engaged in a massive dispute with the US group over a collective agreement. Salaries were finally raised by 30% and there is a job guarantee until 2022.
Establishment of an employee-free SE
The European headquarters of Tesla is currently still located near London, but is to be shifted to Tilburg in the Netherlands where the CEO of the newly founded company comes from. The German gigafactory, the Tesla Manufacturing Brandenburg SE is a letterbox company based in the private residence of a lawyer in Brandenburg an der Havel, 112 kilometres from the planned location in Grünheide. The timely founding of the SE enables Tesla to completely avoid co-determination on the supervisory board later on.
Source Info
News date