DW News · Feb 11, 2026 · Collected from RSS
Tesla's German factory in Grünheide is pressing charges against an external trade union member. The company said he was caught recording a confidential meeting without permission; the IG Metall union called this a lie.
A trade union member was detained by police at Tesla's Gigafactory in Grünheide on Tuesday, with the company accusing him of being caught in the act recording a private meeting. The IG Metall trade union, however, disputed this account of events, amid tensions between Germany's main metalworkers' union and the US carmaker in the run-up to works council elections in early March.Tesla's Grünheide Gigafactory currently employs in the region of 11,000 peopleImage: Jochen Eckel/picture alliance What happened according to the company, police and the union? The Tesla factory head Andre Thierig took to Elon Musk's X platform late on Tuesday to comment on the police presence at the facility. "What has happened today at Giga Berlin is truly beyond words!" he wrote. "An external union representative from IG Metall attended a works council meeting. For unknown reasons he recorded the internal meeting and was caught in action! We obviously called police and filed a criminal complaint!" IG Metall, Germany's largest metalworkers' trade union with members in all manner of industries including carmaking, rejected Thierig's version of events. "This assertion is both a malicious and a calculated lie," the IG Metall - Tesla Workers GFBB group in Tesla's works council said in response, saying that the events seemed reminiscent of "a rigged game." It said that a works council member representing Tesla had not given their union representative chance to defuse the sudden allegations, and instead interrupted the meeting and called the police and factory security, who seized the laptop. IG Metall is represented in Tesla's works council at the facility employing in the region of 11,000 people, which opened in 2022, but does not hold a majority. Local police, meanwhile, said they opened a case connected to Tesla pressing charges and seized possible evidence for evaluation. "How the next steps will look is something we will need to coordinate with public prosecutors," a police spokesman said. Tesla approves $1 trillion pay deal for CEO Elon MuskTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Works council elections next month, amid long-running pay scale dispute Works council elections are scheduled for March 2-4 at the Grünheide factory. Tesla has tried and broadly succeeded to prevent its staff worldwide from effectively unionizing. It's the only major US carmaker without recognized union representation in the United States, despite a series of efforts by unions and staff. Despite IG Metall's representation at the Grünheide facility, it is not considered a union factory, because there is no collective bargaining agreement in place. Tesla rejects the introduction of a fixed pay scale of this kind. Tesla staff in Sweden have been striking in a bid to secure union representation, but so far without success. Reports from China are comparatively scarce, but allegations of long working hours, low pay and poor conditions have leaked out several times in recent years. Under China's system, companies have trade unions but financially support those unions, often making them more or less toothless. Edited by: Jenipher Camino Gonzalez