Tesla workers at a 2025 protest in Germany, carrying an IG Metall banner with the slogan "Tesla Workers gegen Faschismus" (transl. Tesla workers against fascism)
United Auto Workers (UAW) president Dennis Williams expressed interest in unionizing the factory in May 2016, shortly after Tesla announced increased local annual production targets of 500,000 vehicles by 2018, which would have placed it in the top ten sellers of new vehicles within the US.[15] In the fall of 2016, Jose Moran, a Fremont Factory employee, contacted 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.[4][16] In October 2017, Tesla fired Richard Ortiz, who was involved with the organizing campaign, which the NLRB later ruled to be illegal retaliation.[17]
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
Replying to @dmatkins137
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.
CEO Elon Musk published a tweet in May 2018,[18] that implied workers would lose stocks if they formed a union. Three years later, the NLRB ordered Musk to delete that tweet, and reinstate former employee Ortiz with full back pay.[19][20] Additionally, Tesla would have to put up a notice in all of its US factories addressing the unlawful tweet.[21]
Tesla appealed the NLRB rulings to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which in 2023 initially upheld the NLRB order.[22] In a published response, Ortiz stated "I look forward to returning to work at Tesla and working with my co-workers to finish the job of forming a union".[22] In a 2024 rehearing, the court reversed its decision, holding Musk's tweets to be constitutionally protected speech and that the NLRB must reconsider its order to reinstate Ortiz.[23]
Four years after the initial tweet, Musk invited UAW, via another tweet, to hold a union election at their convenience without retaliation.[24] UAW president Ray Curry responded that if Tesla was serious about supporting organizing, Tesla would acknowledge they broke the law when they fired Ortiz and Musk published the initial tweet.[25]
A CNBC report in 2022 found that Tesla paid public relations firm MikeWorldWide to monitor a Tesla employee Facebook group and union organizers on social media from 2017 to 2018. MikeWorldWide monitored discussions regarding alleged unfair labor practices at Tesla and a sexual harassment lawsuit. Former and current Tesla employees told CNBC that they believed the company continued to monitor its workers on social media as of 2022.[update][26]
UAW won 30–160 percent salary increases at the "Big Three" in late 2023.[8] The new UAW president Shawn Fain attributed previous unionizing failures to internal corruption, "coziness" with management and bad collective agreements.[2] UAW subsequently launched organizing drives at 13 non-union automakers, including Tesla,[2] with a combined organizing budget of US$40 million through 2026.[9] By contrast, UAW had spent $422,000 on Tesla alone in 2017 (equivalent to $541,000 in 2024[27]).[28]
Workers who label data for Tesla Autopilot at Giga New York in Buffalo announced a union drive with Workers United on February 14, 2023.[6] Workers United previously led the first successful union drive at Starbucks, also in Buffalo, 6 mi (9.7 km) away.[31][32] A day after the announcement, Workers United filed charges with the NLRB against Tesla for firing 37 workers (including one organizing committee member) in alleged retaliation for union activity and to allegedly discourage union organizing.[33][34] In November 2023, the NLRB dismissed the retaliatory firing charge, but found merit in the other charges regarding workplace surveillance and captive audience meetings.[35]
Following allegations raised by Workers United, the NLRB regional director in Buffalo, New York filed a complaint with the national board in April 2024 alleging that Tesla had unlawfully implemented company policies to prevent workers at its Buffalo plant from unionizing, including by implementing a corporate IT acceptable use policy that restricted workplace organizing.[36]
Tesla is one of the few automakers in Germany that has not signed any individual company collective agreements, nor is a member of the Employer Association in the Metal and Electronics Industry [de] as of 2024.[update] The Metal and Electronics Industry refers to the network of companies that negotiate with IG Metall.[37]
German labor representation has a dual structure of trade unions and works councils. Trade unions like IG Metall negotiate collective agreements with individual employers and regional collective agreements with employers associations (e.g. textile or chemical industry). Works councils are made up of elected employees in the workplace. They negotiate works agreements and have various co-determination, participation and information rights. In theory works councils do not overlap with collective bargaining regarding wage adjustments. While formally separate structures, many works council members are de-facto union representatives. Unions are financed by membership dues which are typically 1% of a member's salary. The more union members and the higher their wages (whether or not they are covered by a collective agreement), the more financial resources a union has.[38]
Tesla acquired Grohmann Engineering (now Tesla Automation) in January 2017, inheriting the existing works council. According to IG Metall and the works council chair Uwe Herzig said that wages at Grohmann Engineering in April, after the acquisition, were 25 percent to 30 percent below the equivalent of the regional collective agreements in the Metal and Electronics Industry [de].[41] In October, management and the works council concluded a works agreement that brought employee wages in line with the regional collective agreement without explicitly signing a union collective agreement. IG Metall pushed for formal ratification, while acknowledging that there had been a "very good negotiation result". It credited the threat of strikes with pressuring Tesla to sign the works agreements.[42]
According to IG Metall, in October 2021, Tesla offered employees at the new Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg (Giga Berlin), wages that were 20 percent below the corresponding collective agreements provided at other automotive plants in Germany.[43][44]
Seven non-union employees at Giga Berlin initiated the works council election [de] process in November 2021. Any employee with at least six months of tenure is eligible to run as a works council candidate. Tesla ultimately planned to hire a total of 12,000 employees. In the first six months, Tesla hired 1,800 employees, mostly middle-management. IG Metall expressed concern that the future works council would be dominated by management, as only those with 6 months' tenure would be eligible to run.[45][46] In March 2022, employees elected their first works council. Nearly half voted for the manager-friendly "Gigavoice" slate.[47]
IG Metall called for an investigation in January 2023, after workers reported being forced to work longer hours, with less resting time between shifts. IG Metall also stated that workers were being forced to sign non-disclosure agreements and therefore feared retaliation if they openly discussed their working conditions.[48][49]
Giga Berlin's initial workforce of 1,800 employees doubled quickly enough to trigger a rule requiring another works council election 2 years after the first one, instead of the usual 4 years.[45] The second works council election was scheduled initially for March 18, 2024 to March 20, 2024. IG Metall petitioned the Frankfurt (Oder) Labor Court [de] for a preliminary injunction against the electoral board's proposed timeline. The original timeline set a deadline of February 15 for submitting candidate nominations lists. Given that Tesla factory production was suspended earlier for a month until February 11, due to supply chain disruptions by the Houthi militia in the Red Sea, this would have left each candidate list with only several work days to collect the mandatory 50 signatures from co-workers.[50] The Frankfurt (Oder) Labor Court granted IG Metall's petition, but the electoral board and Tesla appealed to the higher Berlin-Brandenburg State Labor Court [de], which overturned the lower court and upheld the original election timeline.[51]
The election concluded on March 20, 2024, with 234 candidates from 9 lists.[51] With 39% of the vote the "IG Metall Tesla Workers GFBB" list won the plurality of seats, with 16 out of 39, making them a major opposition. The remaining 23 seats were divided among four non-union affiliated lists; 15 seats for "Giga United", 5 seats for "One Team", 2 seats for "Giga Fair" and 1 seat for "Giga für Alle" (transl. Giga for all).[52] Michaela Schmitz, the current works council chair, is vocally anti-union. During the final days of the works council election campaign, Schmitz ended a rally speech with "What we don't need, is a union!" (German: Was wir nicht brauchen, ist eine Gewerkschaft!).[53] On April 4, Schmitz was re-elected by the works council for a second term as chair. Schmitz comes from the "Giga United" list , which is mostly composed of managers.[54] In total, 8,917 Tesla workers voted,[52] out of 12,500 eligible to vote.[54]
An IG Metall member of the works council was fired in October 2024, in what IG Metall described as "aggressive tactics" against workers. IG Metall countered with its own lawsuit in December 2024, to forcibly remove Michaela Schmitz as works council chair; claiming she had obstructed pro-union works council members.[55]
In September 2024, in an attempt to crack down on worker absenteeism, Tesla representatives conducted unannounced visits to the homes of employees out on sick leave.[56]
Sweden
Mechanics affiliated with IF Metall, a Swedish trade union, initiated a strike against TM Sweden, a Tesla vehicle service subsidiary, on October 27, 2023, over the company's refusal to sign a collective agreement.[57] The ongoing strike is the longest ever in Sweden within the past 80 years. Strikes are very rare under the "Swedish model" of social partnership, which was codified in the 1938 Saltsjöbaden Agreement, still in force today.[58]
TM Sweden employs 130 mechanics in Sweden. About half of them are IF Metal members.[58] The strike, initially affecting mechanics at ten workshops servicing Tesla vehicles, later spread to other facilities servicing various car brands. While workers continued with their regular tasks, they refrained from servicing Tesla vehicles during the strike.[59]Strikebreakers arrived at Tesla service centers, prompting concerns among the strikers about their impact on the labor dispute.[60][58] Strikers were banned from the company premises. According to union leader Gabriel Kuhn, Tesla contacted individual strikers after family members shared news of the strikes on social media, which discouraged non-union participation in the strike.[58] According to statistics from the Swedish National Mediation Office [sv], one-third of the 130 mechanics participated in the original strike.[61] Non-union members and even some IF Metal union members did not participate in the strikes.[58]
The strike led to the PensionDanmark [da], a pension fund, to divest its Tesla shares in protest.[72] In response to the escalations, Tesla posted a job opening for a Swedish government affairs specialist with "significant experience with Nordic legislative and regulatory advocacy", presumably to help with lobbying efforts.[73] In September 2024, a foreign delegation of Ford Germany works council members and IG Metall deputies joined the picket line at Tesla service center in Malmö, Sweden, as the strike continued.[74] In January 2025, Tesla appealed to the Karlstad administrative court to mandate the Swedish Transport Agency provide license plates for newly sold vehicles, which is currently blocked by the postal union's sympathy strike.[75]
^McFerran, Lauren; Emanuel, William J.; Ring, John F. (March 25, 2021). 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 NLRB. National Labor Relations Board. pp. 9, 10. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021. Retrieved January 6, 2022. 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
^Gronholt-Pedersen, Jacob (December 6, 2023). "Danish pension fund to sell its Tesla shares over union dispute". Reuters. Archived from the original on February 9, 2024. Retrieved February 20, 2025. PensionDanmark, one of Denmark's largest pension funds, said on Wednesday it had decided to sell its holdings in Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab over the U.S. auto company's refusal to enter into agreements with labour unions. The decision is part of a growing Nordic movement to force Tesla to sign collective bargaining agreements with Swedish mechanics, who have been on strike since October.
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