Like Elon Musk try Twitter manager after Mass layoffs in NovemberHis flagship company Tesla is also facing staffing issues globally, with vacancies doubling since mid-June, along with the latest gigafactory exit. company in Germany.
When the gigafactory in Berlin opened in March, it had a goal of producing 5,000 vehicles a week by the end of the year. But it’s a long way from achieving its goal after facing major recruitment problems—the company has so far recruited only 7,000 of the planned 12,000. This shortage of personnel goes hand in hand with miss ambitious production goals; in 2022, Musk said German media he expects to build half a million Teslas in Berlin by 2022.
According to former and current employees at gigafactory, the company is also losing experienced personnel. They say that current employees are leaving due to low and unfair wages and inexperienced management in the highly competitive German manufacturing sector. Tesla did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment.
One current employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing his job, described the giant Berlin factory as “utter chaos”. “Some people take sick leave longer than they actually work. There are people I don’t see work three weeks in six months. Many people fall ill because they are unmotivated,” they said, blaming poor working conditions. They claim that the exits involve temporary and permanent employees who have been there for more than a year, hired before the gigafactory opened.
Worldwide, Tesla posted a record number of vacancies for the year in November, listing nearly 7,500 jobs. This is double that of posts in mid-June, according to data from its own website. Although most of these vacancies are in the US, Germany comes in at a close second, with 386 vacancies advertised at the Berlin factory as of 11 November, including one for for “bulk recruiters”.
Local labor experts say Tesla is unlikely to find more qualified workers to fill the gap, because it is seen as an unattractive employer in the heavily unionized auto sector. construction of Germany and it competes with rival carmaker Volkswagen for skilled workers in the Berlin acreage. The job center in nearby Frankfurt (Oder) said on October 4 that Tesla had hired 1,000 formerly unemployed workers, calling it “the biggest hiring project since reunification” and according to some reported, Tesla was already the largest private employer in Brandenburg.
According to German metal workers association IG Metall, Tesla is paying 20% less than similar businesses based on employee contracts and job descriptions. IG Metall rep, Birgit Dietze wrote in a press release in June, “We know from active members of IG Metall that hiring is not happening at the pace planned.”
Holger Bonin, research director at the Institute of Labor Economics, based in Bonn, says that this is an issue with the specialist job market in the country as a whole, rather than the fact that many workers have qualifications in the Berlin area can easily get a job at Volkswagen. instead the main factory in Wolfsburg.
