Tesla<\/a>‘s gigafactory outside \u200cBerlin, where staff are voting for a new works \u200ccouncil after a campaign marked by mud-slinging and legal challenges.<\/p>\nVoting began on Monday \u200bat Tesla’s Gruenheide plant, the U.S. electric car maker’s only European production site, with results expected later Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The current council is dominated by non-union members. The IG Metall union is fielding 116 candidates \u200cin a bid \u2060to win a simple majority – 19 of 37 seats. The union secured 16 in the last election \u2060two years ago, when the council had 39 seats.<\/p>\n
IG Metall has accused management of stoking anti-union sentiment. Plant director Andre Thierig has \u200bcountered that \u200bthe union is focused solely \u200bon boosting IG Metall membership.<\/p>\n
“We \u200care very satisfied with our election campaign. We are running with a great team and our issues are clearly striking a chord with our colleagues,” IG Metall’s lead candidate Laura Arndt said in a statement to Reuters.<\/p>\n
Works councils, elected by staff, are \u200ca cornerstone of German labour relations, \u200brepresenting employees in talks with management.<\/p>\n
IG Metall \u200bdominates councils across German \u200bcarmakers – including Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes – but remains \u200cthe underdog at Tesla, whose CEO \u200bElon Musk is \u200boutspoken in his criticism of unions.<\/p>\n
Tensions peaked in February when Tesla accused an IG Metall trade unionist of secretly \u200bfilming a works \u200ccouncil meeting and filed a criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
IG Metall dismissed the \u200ballegation as a “calculated lie”.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Rachel More and Christina \u200bAmann. Editing by Mark Potter)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Rachel More BERLIN, March 4 (Reuters) – Germany’s top industrial union is fighting for more influence at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[112,190,13817,19122,5286,19123],"class_list":{"0":"post-34625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-berlin","8":"tag-berlin","9":"tag-germany","10":"tag-ig-metall","11":"tag-industrial-union","12":"tag-tesla","13":"tag-works-council"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116185092912626793","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}