Another thing Musk hates about Germany: Absentee workers at his Tesla plant

Elon Musk was taken aback last fall by reports of high absenteeism at Tesla’s factory near Berlin.

“This sounds crazy. Looking into it," the company’s workaholic chief executive wrote last September on X, the social-media platform he owns, responding to a tweet citing a sickness rate above 15%.

The number of workers calling in sick has long been a flashpoint at the facility, where managers are battling to preserve the freewheeling spirit of an American tech company amid union pressure to hew closer to more worker-friendly European practices.

The culture clash offers corporate context for Musk’s increasingly frequent interjections on European politics, including his recent endorsement of the far-right Alternative for Germany party.

“From MAGA to MEGA: Make Europe Great Again!" Musk tweeted on Jan. 18, riffing off the campaign slogan that brought Donald Trump to the White House. On Tesla’s earnings call on Jan. 29, he reiterated his view that Europe’s bureaucratic ways need to be disrupted.

Tensions between Tesla’s working culture and local norms are set to reach the German courts in a test of the company’s global resistance to unionization.

Late last year, the IG Metall union filed a lawsuit seeking the removal of Tesla’s works council leader for having “repeatedly flouted the law to hinder our commitment to the interests of the workforce." An initial mediation meeting is scheduled for Feb. 11.

Tesla told local media at the time that the suit was desperate. The company and Musk haven’t responded to requests for comments for this article.

Ringing doorbells

When the sickness rate at Tesla’s gigafactory jumped last August, Musk’s local deputy André Thierig dispatched managers to ring the doorbells of absent workers. Higher sickness rates on Fridays suggested that Germany’s social model was being abused, Thierig told local media at the time.

Despite their reputation for hard work, Germans called in sick more than any other European nationals in 2022, World Health Organization research shows, with almost 25 days of absence a year for illness or injury per employee on average.

Economists attribute the high rate to Germany’s generous system of employee compensation. Workers are legally entitled to receive full pay from employers for up to six weeks of absence through illness a year.

IG Metall has said Tesla’s absenteeism rates are far above peers’ rates because of an “extremely high workload." The union conducted a survey in October that found 83% of workers felt “often or very often overloaded."

Musk, who also leads other companies, such as rocket maker SpaceX, and has taken on a role in the Trump administration, is well known for his grueling schedule and high expectations of staff. After acquiring X, Musk told employees they would need to be “extremely hardcore" and work “long hours at high intensity."

In Germany, gripes about working conditions would normally be handled by a company’s so-called works council, a group of elected employee representatives.

But Tesla’s council is divided. Following a vote in March, IG Metall has 16 seats, while smaller groups that the union says are close to management together have 23.

In October, Tesla fired a production worker who held one of the IG Metall seats after accusing him of threatening physical violence. The union has denied the allegation, which stems from an argument after the worker was called at late notice to a morning meeting following a night shift. The worker is appealing his dismissal.

“Tesla management repeatedly tries to hinder union work in Brandenburg," said Dirk Schulze, the union’s regional leader, in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.

Opposed to unions

Elon Musk makes no secret of his opposition to unions, which he has accused of creating hierarchy and negativity within the workplace.

Tesla is the only automaker in Germany that doesn’t have a collective bargaining agreement with workers. IG Metall hasn’t yet attracted sufficient support in the factory to fight the company for the right to negotiate wages.

In November, when Tesla boosted pay for its German factory workers by 4%, Thierig credited the company’s independence for enabling it to act “fast and flexibly," according to a statement made to local media at the time. He also stressed how it raised wages “without labor disputes or strikes."

The comments came as local giant Volkswagen was locked in noisy negotiations with IG Metall over wages, investments and potential factory closures.

After almost three months of talks, VW signed a deal with the union in late December that envisaged reductions in the company’s production capacity without compulsory redundancies. Analysts welcomed a settlement, but some criticized its lack of urgency, given a shrunken European car market and an unpredictable, expensive transition to electric vehicles.

Last year, EV sales in Europe fell after Germany, the region’s largest market, cut subsidies. Tesla was hit harder than most, with registrations down 11%, according to industry trade body ACEA.

This year, carbon-dioxide emissions rules are set to tighten in the European Union, requiring most carmakers to sell many more EVs or else pay huge fines. Without a gas-engine business, Tesla is a potential beneficiary of those rules, as it can agree to shoulder the excess emissions of traditional automakers for a fee, helping them avoid penalties.

Despite this and other EU measures that support EVs, Musk has called for Europe to deregulate—a position on which he is aligned with Germany’s once-fringe AfD party.

“Only the AfD can save Germany," Musk wrote in a recent German newspaper editorial. The party’s approach to deregulation “reflects the principles that have made Tesla and SpaceX successful," Musk added.

In an hour-long conversation with AfD co-leader Alice Weidel on X on Jan. 9, Musk complained about the truckload of paper required to open Tesla’s Berlin factory—a plant that local AfD politicians have opposed.

Countries need a “sort of garbage collection of rules," Musk said. “If there’s any doubt about [rules’ and regulations’] being a net good, we should eliminate them because otherwise we get to this point where everything is illegal."

Write to Stephen Wilmot at stephen.wilmot@wsj.com