Tesla and unions

Tesla, Inc. is an American electric car and clean energy company which as of January 2023 employs over 127,000 workers[1] across its global operations, none of whom are unionized. As of 2016, Tesla was the only major American auto manufacturer without a union in the United States or Germany.[2][3] Tesla CEO Elon Musk has commented negatively on trade unions in relation to Tesla.

Despite facing allegations of high injury rates, long hours, and below-industry pay, efforts to unionize the workforce have been largely unsuccessful. In the United States, CEO Elon Musk has invited the United Auto Workers (UAW) union to hold a vote at their convenience in 2023. In Germany Tesla's non-union status and lower wages compared to industry standards weaken the power of the metalworker's union IG Metall. In 2023, IG Metall called for an investigation into Tesla over allegations of long working hours and forced non-disclosure agreements. In the Netherlands, rumors circulated in 2021 about Tesla's plans to shut down its Tilburg plant and lay off 96 employees.

United States

Our real challenge is Bay Area has negative unemployment, so if we don't treat and compensate our (awesome) people well, they have many other offers and will just leave!

I'd like hereby to invite UAW to hold a union vote at their convenience. Tesla will do nothing to stop them.

Elon Musk, (3 March 2022)[4]

See also: Labor unions in the United States

In 2010, Tesla acquired the formerly unionized NUMMI plant in Fremont, California which was rebranded as the Tesla Fremont Factory.[5] By 2016, Tesla was the only US auto manufacturer to not be represented by a union. In the fall of 2016, Jose Moran, a Tesla employee reached out to the UAW, going public with a "Fair Future at Tesla" campaign in February 2017, citing high injury rates, long hours and below industry pay as motivations.[6] In 2016, the UAW also indicated its interest in unionizing Tesla,[7] spending over $400,000 by 2018 on organizing, campaigning and filing National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) complaints.[5] In October 2017, Tesla fired Richard Ortiz, which the NLRB later ruled to be illegal retaliation.[8]

In 2018 Elon Musk tweeted "Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? …".[9] Musk was ordered to delete that tweet and offer Ortiz his job back with back pay.[10][11] Additionally Tesla would have to put up a notice in all of its US factories addressing the unlawful tweet.[12] The case was appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which in 2023 affirmed the NRLB's order.[13][14]

In March 2022 Musk invited the United Auto Workers (UAW) union to hold a vote at their convenience.[15] Later, in June 2022, a CNBC report found that Tesla paid MikeWorldWide to monitor a Tesla employee Facebook group and to conduct research on Tesla union organizers on social media from 2017 to 2018. MikeWorldWide monitored discussions on social networks alleging unfair labor practices at Tesla and monitored discussions on a sexual harassment lawsuit. Former and current Tesla employees told CNBC that they believe the company continues to monitor its workers on social media as of 2022.[16]

In February 2023, workers at Gigafactory New York in Buffalo involved with labeling data for Tesla Autopilot announced a unionization effort with Workers United. Workers United is the same union that successfully led the union drive at the nearby Starbucks store in Buffalo.[17][18] A day after the announcement, a complaint was lodged with the NLRB against Tesla for allegedly firing employees who participated in the Workers United organization.[19]

Germany

Tesla is one of the few auto manufacturers in Germany that is neither unionized, nor a member of the Employer Association. Because electric vehicle production requires 30 percent fewer workers than traditional combustion-engine vehicles, a non-unionized Tesla weakens the IG Metall union's bargaining power in the overall automotive sector.[3]

Grohmann

In January 2017, Tesla acquired Grohmann Engineering. IG Metall and the Works Council Chair Uwe Herzig of Grohmann Engineering stated that wages under Tesla were 25‒30 percent below the Metal Industry ("Gesamtmetall") collective agreements. Employees expressed concern after former CEO Klaus Grohmann was ousted and business contracts with other firms were cancelled.[20]

By October 2017, Tesla and the Tesla Grohmann employees came to an agreement that set their salaries on par with the Metal Industry collective agreements without explicitly signing the agreement. While IG Metall still pushes for formal ratification, it indicated there have been "good negotiation results," citing threats of strikes and internal pressure to bolster the agreements.[21]

Giga Berlin

According to IG Metall, Tesla was offering employees at the new Giga Berlin facility wages twenty percent below the collective agreement standards provided at other automotive facilities in Germany.[22][23] On November 22, 2021, seven non-union Giga Berlin employees initiated a Works Council proceeding. IG Metall cited a concern about the Works Council being dominated by management as only earlier employees would be eligible to run as candidates and the majority of the 1,800 hires were middle management personnel. In total, Tesla planned to hire 12,000 employees and, if the number of employees were to double, the next Works Council election would be two years later instead of four.[24][25] On March 2, 2022, the Works Council was established. Nearly half of the votes went to the managerial friendly "Gigavoice" list.[26]

In January 2023, IG Metall called for an investigation after stating that workers had called the organization to report that they were being made to work longer hours, with less time between shifts. IG Metall also stated that workers were being forced to sign non-disclosure agreements alongside their regular work contracts and were therefore scared of openly discussing their work conditions for fear of retribution.[27][28][29]

Netherlands

In March 2021, rumors were leaked to Brabants Dagblad that Tesla would shut down its Tilburg plant and lay off 96 of its 450 employees, because it no longer made sense to continue re-assembling the Tesla X and S models. By July 2021, according to the Federation of Dutch Trade Unions (FNV), forty employees accepted voluntary redundancy, with no further announced layoffs or organizational restructuring.[30]

See also

References
  1. "Annual report Form 10-K 2022 Tesla Inc". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. January 31, 2023.
  2. "The United Auto Workers Focus On Tesla, The 'Only' Non-Union Major American Car Company Whose Workers 'Are Not' Unionized". New Labor Report. Western New York Labor Today. 2016-07-05. Retrieved 2021-12-30.
  3. Levin, Tim (April 3, 2021). "Tesla is on a collision course with Germany's biggest union and neither side is likely to back down". Business Insider. Retrieved 2021-12-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  4. Musk, Elon [@elonmusk] (2022-03-03). "Our real challenge is Bay Area has negative unemployment, so if we don't treat and compensate our (awesome) people well, they have many other offers and will just leave! I'd like hereby to invite UAW to hold a union vote at their convenience. Tesla will do nothing to stop them" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  5. Dayton, Kevin (2018-05-01). "Opinion: Would Tesla close unionized plant like GM and NUMMI did?". The Mercury News. Retrieved 2021-12-24.
  6. Campbell, Alexia Fernández (2019-09-30). "Elon Musk broke US labor laws on Twitter". [[Vox (website)|]]. Retrieved 2021-12-24.
  7. Bomey, Nathan (May 19, 2016). "UAW wants union for Tesla factory". USA TODAY. Retrieved 2021-12-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  8. Scheiber, Noam (2021-03-25). "Tesla employee's firing and Elon Musk tweet on union were illegal, labor board rules". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-12-24.
  9. Musk, Elon [@elonmusk] (2018-05-20). "Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  10. Kolodny, Lora (2021-03-25). "Tesla ordered to have Elon Musk delete anti-union tweet". CNBC. Retrieved 2021-12-14.
  11. McFerran, Lauren; Emanuel, William J.; Ring, John F. (2021-03-25). Tesla, Inc. and Michael Sanchez, Jonathan Galescu, Richard Ortiz and International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, AFL–CIO (decision and order). Decisions of the National Labor Relations Board. National Labor Relations Board. p. 9,10. Retrieved 2022-01-06. General Counsel argues that to remedy fully CEO Musk's unlawful May 20, 2018 tweet, which coercively threatened that employees would lose their stock options if they selected the Union as their representative, the Board should order the Respondent to have Musk delete that tweet and to post a notice addressing that violation at its facilities nationwide. … (f) Direct its agent and supervisor, CEO Elon Musk, to delete his May 20, 2018 statement
  12. Peters, Jay (2021-03-25). "Tesla has to tell Elon Musk to delete a 2018 tweet, labor board rules". The Verge. Retrieved 2021-12-24.
  13. Reply Brief to Court of Appeals (appeal). 2021-10-26. Retrieved 2022-01-06. The Court should set aside the Board's ruling that Musk's tweet was unlawful and must be deleted.
  14. Schreiber, Noam (2023-03-31). "Tesla and Musk Lose Ruling on Factory Union Issues". The New York Times. Retrieved 2023-04-29.
  15. Boston, William; Elliott, Rebecca (2022-03-03). "Elon Musk Invites UAW to Hold Union Vote at Tesla". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2022-03-03. 'Tesla will do nothing to stop them,' the chief executive says
  16. Kolodny, Lora (2022-06-03). "Tesla monitored its employees on Facebook with help of PR firm during 2017 union push". CNBC. Retrieved 2022-06-04.
  17. Capoot, Ashley (14 February 2023). "Tesla employees launch New York union campaign". CNBC. Retrieved 2023-02-14.
  18. Eidelson, Josh (2023-02-14). "Tesla Workers Launch Union Campaign in New York". Bloomberg News. Retrieved 2023-02-14.
  19. "Tesla Just Terminated Dozens in Response to New Union Campaign, Complaint Alleges". Bloomberg.com. 2023-02-16. Retrieved 2023-02-16.
  20. Vetter, Philipp (2017-04-16). "Tesla: Ärger mit dem Maschinenbauer Grohmann" [Tesla: Trouble with the machine manufacturer Grohmann]. Die Welt (in German). Retrieved 2021-12-24.
  21. Vetter, Philipp (2017-10-18). "Deutschland: Tesla einigt sich auf deutliche Gehaltssteigerung" [Germany: Tesla agrees on significant salary increase]. Die Welt (in German). Retrieved 2021-12-24.
  22. Waldersee, Victoria (2021-10-07). "Tesla's gigafactory electrifies California-Germany culture clash". Reuters. Retrieved 2021-12-24.
  23. Eddy, Nathan (2022-01-03). "German union steps up efforts to recruit Tesla workers with office near Berlin plant". Automotive News Europe. Retrieved 2022-01-06.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  24. Barnstorf, Phillip (November 25, 2021). "IG Metall fürchtet Strategie in früh gewähltem Tesla-Betriebsrat". RBB 24 (in German). Retrieved 2021-12-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  25. Waldersee, Victoria (2021-11-24). "German union fears new Tesla works council will be top heavy". Reuters. Retrieved 2021-12-14.
  26. "Erster Betriebsrat bei Tesla steht fest" [The first Works Council at Tesla has been set]. RBB 24 (in German). Retrieved 2022-06-25.
  27. "Tesla under fire in Germany over union concerns on working hours, contracts". Reuters. 2023-01-16. Retrieved 2023-01-16.
  28. "Tesla under fire in Germany over union concerns on working hours, contracts". Automotive News Europe. 2023-01-16. Retrieved 2023-01-16.
  29. Bhaimiya, Sawdah (January 16, 2023). "A major union in Germany says workers at Tesla's Berlin factory face unreasonable working hours and fear speaking out". Yahoo News. Retrieved 2023-01-16.
  30. Gotink, Bart (2021-07-21). "Tesla blijft in Tilburg en gaat fabriek opnieuw vullen, mogelijk voor Tesla Energy" [Tesla will remain in Tilburg and will reuse the factory, possibly for Tesla Energy]. Brabants Dagblad (in Dutch). Retrieved 2021-12-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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