[AMG Power]

Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg is Tesla’s first manufacturing location in Europe and supposedly its most advanced, sustainable and efficient facility. Hundreds of thousands of Model Y vehicles and millions of battery cells are manufactured there.

But Tesla is facing a rather unique problem here - that of substantial sick leave being taken by employees.

Managers at Germany’s Tesla Gigafactory are trying to tackle this sick leave rate that’s up to three times higher than the industry average, but their tactics aren’t popular.

The average rate of sick leave in Germany during 2023 was 6.1 percent and in the car industry, it stood at 5.2 percent. But in Giga Berlin the rate is up to three times as high, reaching 17 percent this past August, before falling to a still-high 11 percent the following month.

Tesla’s initial response was rage and implied threats of job cuts.

Despite the threat, the sick rate remained high resulting in the management offering a reward of €1,000 to Tesla staff who turned up more than 95 percent of the time. And when that wasn’t enough to change the attitudes of workers, the men reportedly described as “dishonorable,” the pair got into a car and started knocking on doors.

Home visits like this, even unannounced, are not illegal in Germany, employment lawyer Till Heimann from the law firm Kliemt says.*But that doesn’t mean the visitors are welcome. Dirk Schulze of the IG Metall union described Tesla management’s door-knocking plan as an “absurd” response to problems caused by the heavy workload employees face at the plant. That workload encourages absenteeism, which places the remaining workers under more pressure, and so it goes on.

“If the factory management really wants to reduce the number of sick days, it should break this vicious circle,” Schulze said.


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